Local Radio: BBC Proposals

Debate between Ian Lavery and Nigel Evans

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)]

May I break it very gently to the House and those following the debate that not everybody listens to Radio 4 or the World Service? As mentioned by many previous speakers in the debate, lots of people depend in many ways on listening to local radio. Local radio is extremely popular in this country, a reminder of our pride in our robust local characters and in local heritage, history and traditions.

I was born in the north-east; I believe it is like nowhere else in the country and it should be celebrated rather than ignored and piled in with the rest of the country as if we are just one big blob. Most speakers have said that people in their regions want to hear the local news of relevance to them told to them by people with the same accents as them. They want to hear about what is happening on their high streets and the local weather—what it will be like tomorrow? People do not want to know what the weather will be in Southend when they live in Newcastle upon Tyne or Northumberland, where I live, where it is misty all the time. Basically, we are being misled. We need to make sure we get this right. The BBC must listen, for heaven’s sake, and understand the value of the crown jewels of local radio, as it has been described.

The right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) mentioned that non-league football plays a huge part in people’s lives. People cannot put on Radio 4 and find out how Ashington or Bedlington have got on. It is fantastic for people when the local radio station has reporters with the same accent as them telling them how the different clubs and teams are doing in the different parts of the region. That is invaluable.

It is good to listen to fantastic journalists with skills and knowledge of their own area telling us what is happening in politics. It is great to be interviewed by people who understand us and who press us on the local issues. It is great in the morning to get a phone call from Alfie Joey from Radio Newcastle asking if I will come on and talk about this, that and the other. It is essential; it is what people want.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) mentioned that we in the north-east have a huge issue with digitalisation. Of course we do; people in the north-east still call the radio “the wireless.” Not everybody uses wi-fi. We have to remember that.

A lot more can be said, but I have fond memories of Radio Newcastle. I remember when my mother used to make the Sunday dinner in the morning to feed seven of us. There was a programme called “Sing something simple”, and we once rang up and said, “Can you give a message to our mother on Mother’s Day?” and Radio Newcastle gave a message to her. She was absolutely past herself; she said, “If I had known my name was going to be on the radio, I would have got my hair done.” That is how much it meant to my mother.

In conclusion, we have some fantastic reporters and fantastic journalists, and the way they are being tret, bullied and intimidated by the BBC is not acceptable. The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) suggests that he supports the strikes; I am going to invite him on to the picket line. He cannot deny it; he will have to come. We hope that the BBC will reflect on the fact that local radio is the people’s radio.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We look forward to seeing Mr Walker on the picket line.

Britishvolt

Debate between Ian Lavery and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery]

I will come on to that point later in my speech, but my hon. Friend makes a very valid and strong point.

On the issue of competitive energy sources, the UK’s industrial energy pricing is far from competitive and drives investment away, while our green energy infrastructure is nowhere near able to guarantee a supply of energy via the national grid. In December 2022, the UK cost per megawatt-hour was £580, while in Germany it was £225, in Italy £259, in France £238, and in Sweden £206. If we are ever going to reach our targets and support the automotive industry, that disparity must be addressed without any further delay.

That is just a drop in the ocean of the wider strategic issues that have been allowed to develop in the industry. We have hundreds of thousands of workers producing parts for vehicles that will not be required, with no clear plan on how those workers will transition and be reskilled in a rapidly changing industry. That is part of the wider issue of a chronic skills shortage that needs to be addressed by having the proper training available for our young people leaving schools and paying them a proper living wage to do well-paid skilled jobs. We are being rapidly overtaken by European competitors who have support from the European Commission and the member states themselves, and we are also being stymied by the strength of the US and, in particular, China, which has a near dominance in the supply of cells, cathodes and anodes, as well as the base materials for their manufacture.

CATL in Germany has received grant and loans from the state of €750 million, or 22.8% of the total build costs; Northvolt in Sweden has had €505 million, or 17.1%; and in North America General Motors has had $2.5 billion, or 36.2%, Stellantis has had $l billion, or 35.7%, Tesla has had $1.3 billion and Ford has had $884 million—the list is nearly endless. Compare that with Britishvolt, which was promised just £100 million by the Government, and guess what percentage that was of build costs—only 2.3%. That is absolutely disgraceful. Moreover, the £100 million was heavily caveated, to the point where the company never had a penny of Government support. How can this country—how can we, as a manufacturing nation—expect to be competitive while Governments across Europe and beyond are offering real incentives for the manufacture of batteries, far greater than those offered by our Government? We have to pull our socks up. We have to get on to the pitch. We have to start playing the game, for the sake of this nation.

In the autumn, when Britishvolt was facing financial difficulties, it asked for £30 million of the £100 million grant that had been agreed by the Government. The company asked for this to be released early because it had cashflow problems, arguing that the money would help keep it afloat and attract the private investment that it needed to reach the other milestones set by the Government. The Government have repeatedly made the point that they need to act responsibly with taxpayers’ money. I agree with that, and I am sure no one disagrees with it, but it seems to me that £30 million for a company that says the money will allow it to stay in business and create 8,000 jobs in a region that has been held back for so long, keeping it afloat, is a worthwhile investment. That £30 million is a mere drop in the ocean of the money lost so carelessly during the pandemic, which went into the coffers of those with close ties to senior members of the Government, but when it might be spent on benefiting held-back towns in the north-east, it is held under very tight wraps.

By this point, the Government’s attitude towards the company seems to have cooled considerably since the previous January, when they were singing its praises from every rooftop they could find. The pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been harsh reminders of the need for national self-reliance, particularly in key strategic industries. Simply assembling the batteries in the UK is not enough; as we enter a new phase of globalisation, we must take control of our own destiny—and of battery manufacturing—if we want our car industry to survive. We still do not have a single fully functioning gigafactory, although, as was mentioned earlier, predictions suggest that we will need anywhere between eight and 10 by 2040.

All this has real consequences at an individual human level. Towns and villages across south-east Northumberland and in the north-east as a whole, including my constituency, have been held back for decades. Once thriving industrial communities, they have had their economic and social fabric swept from under them with nothing to replace it. More than a decade of brutal austerity has hollowed out our public services and civic spaces and left us battling high levels of unemployment, low pay, poverty, crime, and addiction problems. The jobs that were promised to come with the gigafactory had the potential to be the first step in changing the fortunes of our region. The income from the new well-paid local jobs would have supported thousands of families across our communities, and might well have helped to kick-start a new era of manufacturing in industrial work that could have reignited the economy in the towns and villages close by.

There was a good deal of reluctant optimism about announcements of new developments in transport and infrastructure, alongside the announcements about the factory and the possibility of money from the Government’s new towns fund and levelling-up fund, but bit by bit, drip by drip, that has ebbed away. Only last week a bid from Ashington, in my constituency, for levelling-up money to transform the crumbling town centre was rejected, while Richmond, in the Prime Minister’s Yorkshire constituency, received a cosy £19 million. That is pretty offensive to people in held-back communities.

Bedlington in my constituency got about £8 million to build new cycling lanes, although the bid was somewhat ironically designed with getting workers to the new Britishvolt factory in mind. Although every penny given to Bedlington is welcome, many are already questioning whether new cycle lanes are all that levelling up will amount to, given how starved the town has been, like many in my constituency, of crucial infrastructure funding for so long. The levelling-up fund has proved itself to be time-consuming, expensive, divisive and unable to meet the needs of held-back towns in the north-east. The south-east has received nearly twice as much as the north-east from the fund, and none of this touches the sides of the cuts to local councils since 2010 and the introduction of austerity.

The best use of levelling-up money for south-east Northumberland would have been getting behind the Britishvolt gigafactory. The people of Northumberland and the north-east have, sadly, once again been let down by those working far away in the halls of Whitehall and Downing Street. Three Prime Ministers in a matter of weeks and a merry-go-round of Ministers in different positions, based on nothing but blind loyalty, rather than competence and know-how, has been a disaster for any plans the Government may have had to level up my constituency and the region. As usual, we are the ones dealing with the consequences of the internal political drama unfolding in the ranks of the Conservative party.

We need long-term thinking and a proper plan for our broader industrial sector, and we need to overcome the major obstacles our automotive industry is up against, if we are to truly level up, or gauge up, our communities in the north-east, not just a few packets of money—not just the crumbs off the table. It cannot just be that who is best at submitting a bid will get the money and other areas that are sadly lacking will again get left further and further behind—my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) talked about that.

This morning, the news broke in the press that Recharge Industries, an Australian-based company, had put in an offer to buy Britishvolt, which is very encouraging, as were other reports in the press this morning that 12 other companies have shown an interest. Let us hope that something can happen, because we cannot have another false dawn. We cannot have another Britishvolt, where we have a project of this magnitude, with the land, the planning and everything else in place, only for the Government to go cold and step back from assisting our regions.

A couple of issues are really interesting. The administrator, Ernst & Young, has a legal obligation to accept the highest offer. It has no legal obligation to accept what might be the best offer for the people in our communities or to say, “I will take that offer because it is going to create tens of thousands or hundreds of jobs.” It has an obligation to seek what is best for the current shareholders. We have to look at that and hope that the administrators bear in mind when making this ultimate decision that this is not only about the shareholders, many of whom will probably not live in our region, or even in this country, and are looking for as much money as possible—the people in our region count and they should not be forgotten. We have to put as much pressure as we can on the administrators.

I am going to ask the Minister a number of quick questions. We have to make sure that the Government step up to the plate on this. I have explained this and I will not repeat myself, but the Government were shouting about Britishvolt from the rooftops one minute and then they were refusing any finances to it the next moment—that is well documented. They said that one of the milestones was private investment, but the company thought that was wrong way around. Those private companies were willing to invest on the basis that the Government would support it morally and financially. If the company had UK Government support, that would hold sway. The British Government basically abdicated responsibility, and jumped off the ship like a rat. That caused investors to be extremely unhappy, and probably put them off in the short and the medium term.

We are where we are with Britishvolt at Cambois. Will the Minister commit to do whatever it takes to get behind whoever acquires the site to build a gigafactory, including offering a proper package of financial support, in line with what other states across Europe offer? I have explained the massive difference in support that European countries get from their Governments. Can the Minister outline the Government’s plans to ensure that the site in Cambois is developed as quickly as possible? There cannot be any more delays. We hope that the Government will get in intense discussions to support any successful bidder for the plant.

Would the Minister tell us why money was not forthcoming to Britishvolt when it requested the £30 million early, which it argues would have gone a long way to reach its milestones and to get the gigafactory developed? Can the Minister clarify what due diligence was done on the company when it decided to offer it a £100-million grant in the first place? Why did the Government eventually go cold on their support? Can the Minister clarify what the Government are doing to reach the target of building eight to 10 gigafactories by 2040? How do they plan to stay competitive with other companies across Europe and globally, given the strategic barriers that I have outlined?

I have spoken for quite some time, but the issue is critical for Members, individuals and families in south-east Northumberland and the wider afield constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for North Tyneside (Mary Glindon), for Hemsworth and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). We feel left behind. We feel that the Government have not supported us, despite the initial euphoria that this was to be the best possible opportunity to transform our area. I say to the Minister that, seriously, we need to get on to that playing field. We need to support the automotive industry. That includes electrical vehicle battery plants. We are way behind if we are to have 80 by 2040. Let’s get cracking. Let’s get the site developed in Cambois. Let’s get the Government support to the preferred bidder and make sure that the bidder wants a gigafactory, not something much less, so we can transform the economy of our great region.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Mr Ian Levy has sought permission from the mover of the motion and from the Minister to make a short contribution, and I have been informed.

Rail Strikes

Debate between Ian Lavery and Nigel Evans

Wednesday 15th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery]

I heard what the hon. Member was saying before, but these negotiations have been going on for two years. This is not just about train drivers; basically, it is about the cleaners, the people who work in the ticket offices—as he probably did—the people who work on the tracks, the people who look after people in the trains and the conductors. It is about the track and about health and safety; it is about everything connected with the rail networks. We need these people. These were the key workers. We need these people to support a strong, healthy and safe railway. We need to be careful what we ask for. There have been negotiations for two years now, and that is the frustration.

A letter was sent to the Secretary of State this morning, asking for discussions. He dismissed it, and at the Dispatch Box today he basically laughed when he was asked if he would be trying to facilitate arrangements to avoid the strikes. He laughed! Why does he not accept that the best way to address the situation is to get everybody around a table, lock the door and get it resolved? We are talking about health and safety, about compulsory redundancies and about inflation-proof pay rises. These are basic human rights, to be perfectly honest.

I just want to say: do not believe anybody who is criticising the RMT—do not believe for one second that they will not come for you. Do not think that they will not come for your job, your pensions, your income and your future. As Pastor Martin Niemöller said,

“First they came for the Socialists,

And I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,

And I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,

And I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for”—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you.

[Ian Lavery]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. You have been in the Chair three times when the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) has made allegations. He withdraws his ridiculous remark and consistently comes back to say it again. As Deputy Speaker, you are not protecting the likes of myself. I need your protection.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. Do not make allegations against the Chair, ever. You saw how I treated Mr Anderson. You just leave it with me—I don’t need lectures on how to do my job.

[Ian Lavery]

I will leave it there.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you very much.

Cost of Living and Food Insecurity

Debate between Ian Lavery and Nigel Evans

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Thank you.

[Ian Lavery]

Mr Deputy Speaker, that has taken out a minute and a half of my time, but thank you very much for allowing me to continue. I am far from a coward, by the way.

The debate in here is quite often about relative poverty or absolute poverty, but that does not make any difference, man. We live in a country—the sixth richest economy in the world—where we have 4.3 million kids living in poverty, and we have 14 million people living in poverty. It does not matter how or what we claim about poverty, and it does not matter whether we have reduced it by 1 million or whatever. If we have millions of people in poverty, we should be bloody well ashamed of ourselves. It is a political choice and we can do things about it. We could have done something about it last night, but obviously we did not do what some of us chose to do and vote against the benefits uprating.

To move on very quickly, the fact is that there are them that have and them who do not. Is it not really embarrassing to this country when we have chief executives of energy companies, which have just made $40 billion in the last few weeks, suggesting that it is not bragging to say their companies are like cash machines? What does that make people in poverty feel? And we introduce a “Buy now, pay later” scheme and think that is enough support.

Thank you for your forbearance, Mr Deputy Speaker. In concluding, let us tax the super-wealthy, the Tory donors and the corporations—they are the real benefit cheats in this country—because, quite frankly, that is the only way we will start to tackle the inequalities and make life look much brighter for many people in our country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Lavery]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I would like your advice about the intimidation that I seem to be getting from the Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson). The last couple of times I have been in the Chamber, there have been some absolutely terrible remarks. I am sure you remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, the last time he had to return and apologise. How can this be stopped? How can we tackle it? If Members do not want to give way, they do not have to, but they should not suffer abuse as a result.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order. I was in the Chair the very last time this happened. That is why I intervened to say that the hon. Gentleman was not giving way. I could not hear what the hon. Member for Ashfield said, because I was talking when he said it, and he then withdrew it. However, Mr Speaker made it absolutely clear at the beginning of today’s sitting, after what happened on the streets of London yesterday, that we must all be temperate in the language we use, not only in the Chamber but outside it. I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members will take that on board before they stand up, and even when they make sedentary interventions, and that they are very temperate in the language they use.

Covid-19: Transport

Debate between Ian Lavery and Nigel Evans

Tuesday 12th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab) [V]]

First, may I pay my respects to the dozens of transport workers who have sadly died as a result of covid-19, working for us as public servants? They are the real key workers, and we should never forget that. Workers across the country need our protection.

The Secretary of State mentioned the funding to support cycling and walking to work. That is long overdue in my constituency, but we must understand that for many people in our communities walking or cycling to work is virtually impossible. Many of my constituents are entirely reliant on the already very poor public transport to access their employment. Those employed in unionised workplaces, with responsible employers, might just have the flexibility to access safer transport services at varying times throughout the day and evening. However, those working for unscrupulous bosses might not—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I am sorry; that is going on way too long. Secretary of State, can you answer the points already made?