Budget Resolutions

Heidi Allen Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I know that my hon. Friend takes a great interest in this. We have an energy innovation programme, about which we will make some announcements before long. That will address the question of what types of technologies should be moved along from research to development and implementation. He will have an interest in that and I will make sure that he is given the details.

To capitalise on our strengths, we need to reinforce them and project them into the future. We also need to address our weaknesses. We are proud of the fact that more people are employed in this country than ever before—an extraordinary achievement, with 3 million extra jobs created in a time when the Labour party predicted that millions of jobs would be lost. But compared to some of our competitors, on average, we work harder and longer to produce at the same level as they do. We need to raise our productivity, as the Chancellor made clear in his Budget statement.

As the House knows, to a large extent, it is a problem of disparities, rather than a uniform picture. We have industries, companies, people and places that are among the most highly productive on the planet, but we have what the Bank of England has called an unusually long tail of companies and places whose level of productivity is below that of the top performers. The challenge is clear: to reinforce the performance of the top and build on those strengths, while spreading that excellence throughout the economy and the country. That is exactly what the Budget and our industrial strategy White Paper will do, by reinforcing strengths and addressing weaknesses in areas across the board. We talk about innovation, skills, infrastructure, the business environment and local economies.

[Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I wish to put on record my thanks to the Government for finding funding for the initial cost analysis for a station at Addenbrookes. Connecting that science and those brains with the wider country is exactly what we need to do. It is a vital piece of infrastructure and I am very grateful for it.

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is a good illustration of how a strategy can bring forces together. That £5 million investment means that the infrastructure in and around Cambridge can be improved, and that will make the area even more attractive for companies and researchers to locate there, and it builds on the area’s strengths. The part of the world that she and the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay)—one of her close neighbours—represent has enjoyed great success, but I think they would both recognise the opportunity to extend that success to a larger area. That is exactly what we have in mind.