North-East Independent Economic Review

Ian Lavery Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman]

I am delighted by the recommendation for promotion, but as the hon. Gentleman knows, that is way above my pay grade and way beyond my decision-making powers.

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

Too modest!

[Guy Opperman]

I am happy to be modest on this occasion.

A mayor is someone working from the bottom up and driving the region forward. A Minister in the Government—I say this with no disrespect to the work of the Minister on the Front Bench or any replacement—is here for at least four days a week and unable to drive things from the bottom up. However much the Member of Parliament who was the Minister would like to be in touch with everything that is going on, it must surely be accepted that someone local needs to be driving it forward. That is certainly the case with the Mayor of London and the mayors of Paris, San Francisco and other regions, and they have been successful. It is, however, a matter for debate, which is what this process is about. A legitimate debate is taking place about how to make progress. Tomorrow I and 400 other delegates will discuss the report’s individual parts at the International Centre for Life in Newcastle. I am not suggesting that anything is set in stone, but one thing is clear: the north-east is leading the debate about where the structures should go.

In the limited time available, I want to endorse the comments made about transport. I recently met staff representatives from Newcastle airport and I welcome the developments there and the attempts to expand transport.

Clearly, future growth must be engineered through education and skills. We cannot plan for the future without more of the brightest and the best getting involved in initiatives such as Teach First and acting as role models for local children. As it stands, the north-east has only a third as many of those dynamic individuals as London. We need to motivate children from all economic backgrounds to apply to Russell Group universities. One of the report’s targets is for 35% of the area’s secondary schools and 40% of its primary schools to reach the top quartile, and it sets out some very good ways, such as Teach First and the north-east schools challenge, to achieve that. It is good that we are encouraging university technical colleges to build links between academia and industry and take advantage of the north-east’s unique characteristics.

On apprenticeships, I am pleased to say that I have made my limited, modest contribution by employing an apprentice—not as an apprentice MP, I hasten to add, but as an office manager. There should be greater incentives to encourage everyone to take on an apprentice, and the report eloquently notes specific measures that could enhance the situation.

On local community banking, at our June conference at the Sage in Gateshead 170 people came together to discuss how they could turn around their local economies and get local communities lending. On larger infrastructure, the local enterprise partnership could run the infrastructure bank. There is no reason why community banks could not be backed by local authorities, universities or the Army, which is looking at them. If we can get regional and local lending to address not just the high-cost credit issues that were discussed in the previous debate, but the issues of bank and mortgage finance, that would be a great deal better than the present, patently insufficient system whereby the big seven banks are remote, London-based and computer-run, and totally unresponsive to and not located in the community.

I cannot finish without raising two particular points. First, I welcome the comments of Northumberland county council on the need for a rural deal so that the report does not just deal with the urban centres. It needs to be for the countryside as much as for the urban centres. Secondly, a survey by Business Quarterly, which is available online, found that there is great confidence that this north-east independent review will address some of the region’s economic needs.

I support the review and will discuss and debate its benefits tomorrow. We must acknowledge that the north-east is leading the way.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

If the Adonis review is meant to solve the great woes that our regions faces, I fear for future generations, and in particular for young people, because it does not address many of the problems.

I am delighted to be here with good colleagues and comrades on the Opposition Benches—and Members on the Government side of the House—discussing the real issues facing the region, but what is amazing is that we are scrapping over the crumbs from the table. Before the election, the region received funds from the regional development agency, which supported hundreds of thousands of excellent jobs. According to the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, our RDA was a shining example among the RDAs in the country. There was a pledge not to get rid of the RDA in the north-east because it was so good, yet now we have two LEPs with very little power and even less finance, and here we are scrapping over a report that is trying to address the massive problems we face in our region.

What is the situation in Wansbeck? The proportion of jobseeker’s allowance claimants stands at 7%, compared with 6.7% at the north-east regional level and 4.5% nationally. Youth unemployment is a great problem. It is even more worrying that the proportion of 18 to 24-year-old claimants stands at 13.1% compared with 9.4% at the regional level, while nationally it stands at less than half that at 6.3%. These statistics are shocking, but they hide even more serious issues, such as the extent of the under-employment resulting from shoddy working practices such as zero-hours contracts and people working part-time because they are unable to find full-time work. We will never know, or get to grips with, the numbers involved and the extent of the problem. The consequences of this type of employment are disastrous.

It is, perhaps, because of where we are now that I offer, with some reluctance, my support to this review. Last year the largest private sector employer in Northumberland, Alcan, which was based in my constituency, closed its operation. The knock-on effect on the local community has presented an extreme challenge. Alcan has left behind a power station operated by RWE, which is not without its own challenges in terms of carbon targets.

Wansbeck, however, is not without its success stories. It is easy for me as a Member of Parliament to get up here and continually criticise, but we must press the views of, and the situation facing, the people in our communities. It is no good saying unemployment is fine in the region when it is not. When people say we should be talking up the region instead of talking it down, I say, “Give us a reason to talk it up.” That is what I say on behalf of the people I proudly represent.

In 2014 AkzoNobel will begin the manufacture of its Dulux and wider decorative coatings range from its new state-of-the-art plant in Ashington in my constituency. I am delighted with that, and I give due credit for it. We have also had a number of other successes with small and medium-sized enterprises. I had the opportunity to visit the All-in-One Company in the recess. It is a unique, small factory that specialises in custom-made onesies; I had not even heard of onesies, by the way. People get on the internet, design their own onesie, press a button and then get the onesie delivered to them. The place is absolutely fantastic. The beauty of it is that the person who started the company came from Oxfordshire and she said to me, “Mr Lavery, I was delighted to come to this region because the north-east was the only region that could deliver what I wanted. It had the right people and I think that coming to Ashington in your constituency was an even better idea.” That was a great credit to us, and we have some great people and great businesses in the region—small, medium and large.

Let me now deal with the skills shortages. In the time I have left, I want to place on the record my thanks and congratulations to Northumberland college, in my constituency. It is delivering a range of different things. It is now offering up to 28 different apprenticeship frameworks and has more than 700 apprentices. It is also leading the way locally, having established an employment skills forum, with the aim of driving up skills and employment in Northumberland. We are looking to increase employer and individual engagement and investment in skills; support individuals to gain sustainable employment by improving employability; and strengthen joint working between employers, employer groups, skills networks, universities, colleges, other skills providers and the local authority. The college has done a marvellous job. It is only a matter of a year ago that we could have lost a college that is much needed in the area of south-east Northumberland; it could have been subsumed into a huge university in the area, so I was delighted at what happened.

There is a huge need for the skills gap to be narrowed in my constituency. We have the people, but they are, sadly, unemployed, because the jobs just are not there. Where there are jobs we face a problem with skills. We have the colleges and schools now working together to try to encourage people to join. We have the employers now sitting around the table with the colleges and schools. We are now looking at the whole situation, hoping that we will eventually get together to make Wansbeck a place where employment succeeds.