Levelling-up Agenda

Jack Brereton Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing the debate.

I am delighted to say I see no conflict between levelling up in Stoke-on-Trent and improving quality of life across the whole country, including the Isle of Wight. There is a clear win-win in relieving housing pressures by levelling up development opportunities in places such as Stoke-on-Trent, which I have discussed previously with my hon. Friend. We have multiple hectares of brownfield land and an eagerness to build, but the clean-up costs for former heavily industrial land are considerable and often unviable in lower priced housing markets. We have a proven track record in Stoke-on-Trent of delivering. Last year, Stoke-on-Trent built more than the average London borough, with 99% on brownfield land. We are one of the busiest housing markets nationally.

I welcome the investment we have seen through the housing infrastructure fund in the north of the city, but we also need similar sites in my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent South. Will the Minister help us to deliver even more and ensure that we get a good slice of the £100 million brownfield fund?

Of course, people need more than just a good house. They need skilled, well-paid jobs, better transport and an improved quality of life. Levelling up is about all those things. If anywhere in the country reflects the need to level up, it is Stoke-on-Trent. It is 12th highest in proportion of deprived neighbourhoods and, after decades of neglect and decline, it has huge potential just waiting to be unleashed.

We are unparalleled in our friendliness, right at the heart of the UK and now with the best fibre gigabit-connected city in the whole country. I slightly disagree with the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who said Hull was the best connected. Stoke-on-Trent is now the best connected in terms of fibre broadband connectivity.

We submit our fantastic levelling-up fund bids at the end of this week. We have been working closely with the city council. I hope the Minister will support our plans. It will be particularly important to capitalise on our authentic industrial heritage in the Potteries to create a modern, dynamic and prosperous city. In Longton especially, we must build on the PSICA—partnership schemes in conservation areas—and heritage action zone schemes we secured in partnership with the city council and Historic England, attracting new residential, leisure and employment uses.

Stoke-on-Trent is on the up. It is one of the fastest-growing city economies nationally and is a centre for world-class advanced manufacturing and the digital revolution. We recently launched our Silicon Stoke prospectus, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), which is about building on the fast-growing cluster of digital firms taking advantage of our investment in gigabit broadband and strengthening what we are seeing at Staffordshire University in games design and e-sports. Attracting these sorts of industries is key to raising aspirations and boosting opportunities locally, as is ensuring that people have the skills to access them, through schemes such as the Prime Minister’s lifetime skills guarantee, the kickstart scheme and T-levels. That is especially important in places like Stoke-on-Trent, where high-level skills and wages and far below the national average.

Access to better jobs and opportunities is also critical in a city where a third of households do not even have access to a private car. We need to level back our transport following decades of local bus and rail decline, and I am glad that we are working on just that. Building on the success of the transforming cities fund, we now need to reopen Meir station and the station at Fenton Manor on the line between Stoke and Leek, and we also need to secure important investment from the bus strategy fund.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Murray (Ealing North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to speak in a debate that you are chairing, Sir Edward. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) on securing this debate. In his opening remarks, we heard about the very full set of interventions that he believes are needed to fix challenges in his constituency, including jobs, transport, education, housing, long-term economic development and so on.

The hon. Gentleman rightly highlighted the decade of under-investment and the impact that that has had. I know he said that he would not speak later in the debate, but I wanted to ask him who he thinks is responsible for that decade of under-investment and whether he can see in this room a Minister from the party that has been in charge for the past 11 years—because meeting those challenges will need a level of sustained investment in devolution that goes well beyond the one pot of money that is currently on offer in the form of the levelling-up fund. One pot of money will not undo the 11 years of real-terms cuts to public services, stagnating real wages and inadequate investment in the future. One pot of money will not change our country when decisions will still be taken in Westminster by Conservative Ministers, rather than democratically in our communities by locally elected politicians.

As my hon. Friends have set out, far more comprehensive change is needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) explained how local government must be in the driving seat and have the resources it needs, and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) set out the importance of having real determination to invest in the future of all people in this country. It is also telling that as we engage in this debate, my hon. Friends the Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) are in the main Chamber right now, pressing the Chancellor and the Treasury to come clean on why they blocked the comprehensive plans put forward by Sir Kevan Collins, the Prime Minister’s appointment as education recovery commissioner. The truth is that the Government’s decisions on education recovery are very far from achieving anything that looks like levelling up.

When the chips are down—and after months of school closures, the chips are very much down for the children of this country—the choices that Governments make betray the reality behind the rhetoric. We are in no doubt that the Government have chosen to betray a generation. Their expert commissioner set out plans that matched the scale of the challenge, focusing on extending the school day, improving teaching and targeted tutoring. In February the Prime Minister promised that no child will be left behind, and Sir Kevan’s proposals sought to make that a lived reality for our children in the years ahead. Drawing on research from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the proposals were informed by the knowledge that urgent, sustained and multi-year expenditure on children’s educational recovery has the biggest impact on those who are furthest behind.

That would indeed have been levelling up. Instead, the plans that have been announced are but a truly pale shadow of the programme we need. The money announced is a tiny proportion of the money invested for the same purpose in the Netherlands and the United States, and I and my colleagues refuse to believe that Dutch and American children are five or 10 times more deserving of sustained Government support than British children.

As the Financial Secretary is due to speak shortly, I want to pick up briefly on a discussion that he and I had yesterday in the main Chamber relating to the G7 communiqué, which the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned and which I believe is also relevant to this debate. A key part of any levelling-up agenda for our country must include the Government doing all they can to create a level playing field for British businesses that pay their fair share of tax, by preventing them from being undercut by a few large multinationals that do not.

I asked the Minister and his colleague three times yesterday to explain why the UK Government’s position has been to push for a global minimum corporate tax rate of 15% rather than to back the ambitious 21% proposed by President Biden. The Minister said it was

“completely inappropriate for a Minister to comment”.—[Official Report, 14 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 50.]

However, the Exchequer Secretary, who I think spoke after the Minister had left the main Chamber, seemed quite happy to defend the Government’s backing of 15%. She said that it was settled on because it would leave

“appropriate room for countries to use corporation tax as a lever”.—[Official Report, 14 June 2021; Vol. 697, c. 70.]

There we have it: an admission that the UK Government supported a lower rate thanks to a desire to keep alive the possibility of a future race to the bottom.

This is a once-in-a generation opportunity for an ambitious global deal to prevent large multinationals from avoiding paying their fair share of tax, but our Government are letting it slip away. That is a shocking failure. Had they supported an ambitious 21% deal, that would have brought in an extra £131 million a week for public services in this country, while preventing a few large multinationals from undercutting British businesses that pay their fair share of tax. That would have been levelling up.

Lastly, I want to ask Conservative Members why they think this country needs levelling up. It has been 11 years since a Labour Prime Minister left Downing Street, and 11 years since a Labour Budget spread power, income and opportunity across the country. For 11 long years, spending decisions in this country have been under the control of the Conservative party, leaders chosen by Conservative Members, and Conservative Chancellors.

[Jack Brereton]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[James Murray]

I am just about to finish. There have been 11 years of real-terms cuts in so many public services, stagnating real wages and inadequate investment in meeting the challenges of the future—11 years in which so many of the problems that we face have been ignored and their solutions underfunded. We can only conclude that levelling up is a nebulous, undeveloped and yet-to-be honoured attempt by the Conservative party to address the problems that it has created.