Budget Resolutions

Jack Dromey Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

This was a Budget that let down Birmingham and Erdington. The Government have made big promises to the country over the past two years with the rhetoric of levelling up, building back better and a high-wage, high-skills economy. The gulf between the rhetoric and the reality grows wider by the day, however.

Let me say why levelling up matters to the people of Erdington. A man who gets on a train at New Street and gets off at Gravelly Hill or Erdington is likely to live seven years fewer than he would if he continued his journey to Four Oaks in leafy Sutton Coldfield. The fact that such a grotesque comparison is possible in modern Britain is nothing short of a scandal. That is why it is so important for the Government to fulfil their promise to invest in communities such as Erdington.

Last week the Government released details of the successful bids for the levelling-up fund, and Erdington High Street submitted a bid to the fund. Like so many others across the country, Erdington is a proud community, and proud of its history as a thriving working-class community, but sadly the high street has fallen into decline, with big names leaving one by one and empty shopfronts left behind. Working with Birmingham City Council and all the key local stakeholders, the local community decided to turn that around. They submitted a comprehensive and ambitious bid to the levelling-up fund, underpinned by a solid business case and significant private sector investment. Part of the high street bid was £43 million in match funding alone, nearly double the amount of funding provided to the three other bids that Birmingham had made to the fund. However, the answer from the Government was no: there would be not one penny from them for the redevelopment of Erdington High Street.

That decision is inexplicable and outrageous. Erdington is the fifth most deprived constituency in the country. What planet are the Government living on, if levelling up means nothing—not a penny—for the most deprived communities in Britain? If it is to mean anything, surely it requires the Government to support the Erdington High Street bid.

Following the contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), let me say this. The Government talk about a new era of optimism. What about schools and young people? We know that 42% of children growing up in Birmingham are growing up in poverty. Kevan Collins, brought in by the Government, warns of serious long-term consequences—scars as a consequence of the Government’s letting down the children of Birmingham and Britain. As for a new age of optimism more generally on the economic front, let the Government use those words to the families who will have to pay an additional £3,000 in tax. Two thirds of those paying national insurance will still have to pay the full whack.

The idea that what the Government did in the Budget was somehow to listen and learn and react to the people of Britain and their legitimate concerns could not be further from the truth. The simple reality is that we have slow and anaemic growth, an economy that is not firing on all cylinders as it needs to be to achieve recovery, and grotesque unfairness. When the Government talk of levelling up, I am afraid that there is a belly laugh from the people of Erdington, who feel badly let down.