Budget Resolutions

Jacob Young Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The levy to fund social care is one more tax that will hit hard-pressed families in the spring and will do nothing about the deep-seated need to address the social care crisis and the increasing pressure from an ageing demographic—it will not even touch the sides.

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

Is it not the case that the Labour party still has no plan for social care? When we put forward a plan only a few weeks ago, Labour Members voted against it.

[Kate Green]

The hon. Member may not remember the Dilnot plan, which had cross-party support until Conservative Members torpedoed it. He may not have read the five principles that Labour has set out to underpin our approach to social care, including preventive investment to keep people at home and living independently for as long as possible, as we all want to. We have a plan that would invest in the workforce. It is not enough just to wish for better social care; the people have to be there to deliver it. That is Labour’s plan, and if the hon. Member would like more details, I am very happy to send them to him.

Despite 1.6 million people waiting for treatment, there was no guarantee in last week’s Budget that mental health will receive its fair share of NHS funding. Health stakeholders were most critical of the lack of a workforce strategy or a multi-year funding settlement to support it. We cannot deliver world-class healthcare if we do not invest in recruitment, retention and staff development. It is no wonder that the NHS is struggling when the number of adult health and care students declined by 15% in the three years before the pandemic.

The pandemic also shone a light on the problems that our schools, colleges and early years providers were already facing. No doubt it exacerbated them, but it did not create them. Last week, the Chancellor set out a £3 billion investment in skills, and the Secretary of State claimed that it was the biggest in a decade—but it comes after a decade of cuts to post-16 provision. The Learning and Work Institute calculates that funding over the spending review period will still amount to only 60% of the 2010 figure.

It is astonishing that at a time when our economy has to adapt to the challenges that the Secretary of State referred to—globalisation, digitisation and climate change in the post-Brexit environment—investment in skills remains so lacking. Four in 10 young people are leaving education without the level of qualification they need, the number of apprenticeships has fallen by more than 40%, and 9 million adults lack basic skills in literacy or numeracy. No wonder the Chancellor can promise only a paltry 1.5% increase in growth in the final three years of the forecast period.

At the same time that it is talking up the importance of vocational education, the Department for Education is scrapping most BTECs—well-recognised and respected qualifications that give opportunities to hundreds of thousands of young people.

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[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome). It is fitting that she is the youngest female MP and I am the youngest male MP given the steps that we are taking to invest in the future of our young people.

I am pleased to speak in today’s debate as the Chancellor, as well as being a friend, is my constituency neighbour, as is my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. The Budget, delivered for the whole country by a northern Chancellor, certainly reflected that. It ensures that the areas that Labour forgot are not just recognised, but central to the Government’s mission for a safer, cleaner and healthier Britain.

The Budget sets us back on track, with new fiscal rules of borrowing only to invest and returning to debt falling by the end of the Parliament. While the Labour party carps about the difficult decisions that the Government have to make, we are getting on with the job. The public are backing us, too: they see the changes that we are trying to make and understand that the road to a high-skill, high-wage economy comes with initial challenges.

We voted for change, both in 2016 when 66% of people in Redcar and Cleveland voted to leave and in 2019 when Redcar elected its first Tory MP, and the Government are getting on and delivering that change. The Budget announced £310 million for transport across the Tees valley, which will mean improvements to Redcar and South Bank stations and the station at British Steel; new active travel with better cycle routes across Teesside so that people can get to work more easily without a car; the new Tees crossing, which will decongest the A19 going north; and support for the roll-out of new hydrogen and electric vehicles.

On top of that, the Chancellor cut domestic air passenger duty, which is a boost for Teesside airport. We are getting a direct train link to London from Middlesbrough next month, and next year, the TransPennine line will be extended from Manchester to Saltburn. By air, road and rail, Teesside is becoming more connected day by day, thanks to our Conservative Government.

Alongside that huge investment in our transport infra- structure, the Government made a specific announcement of a UK and world first. The UK Infrastructure Bank, which the Chancellor announced in March, has made its first investment of £107 million in the new offshore wind quay at South Bank. That will enable us to get on with the job, build out the quay, regenerate the site and create the jobs of the future on the south bank of the Tees. On that site, we will manufacture blades for wind turbines almost as tall as the Eiffel tower and huge turbines that make Big Ben look like Little Ben. They will form part of the largest wind farm in the world at Dogger Bank.

The Budget also contained Teesside freeport’s approval as a tax site and the green light for it to become operational from mid-November. I declare my interest as an unpaid member of the Teesside Freeport board. I am now almost certain that that means we will be the UK’s first post-Brexit freeport. That is a pledge that I made and a challenge that I set myself when I made my maiden speech just along this Bench 18 months ago—delivered for the people of Redcar and Cleveland.

The real icing on the cake was the announcement made by Gezza on Wednesday evening. Of course, I refer not to the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) but to the noble Lord Grimstone, who is working night and day to make Teesside great again. He announced that Sabic is to invest £850 million in its Teesside petrochemicals site, creating and protecting more than 1,000 Teesside jobs and confirming the parable that investment in the north-east from Saudi Arabia is like buses: we wait all day and then two come along at once—apparently that is a football joke.

That investment stands at the heart of our Conservative ideology that it is not the state that delivers the jobs of the future. We deliver strong public services, we level up infrastructure, we drive forward economic growth and we support the innovators, the entrepreneurs and, yes, the lenders to ensure that those who want to build something in Britain can get on and do it. It is not the Government who create jobs; it is businesses. That is why the Chancellor is supporting them and has supported them throughout the pandemic.

Finally, I was so pleased to see the Chancellor’s backing for research and development in the Budget, taking our investment in the technologies and jobs of the future to 1.1% of GDP. However, I want to see that increase going towards the D in R&D. So many brilliant ideas are killed by their inability to be demonstrated. Redcar and Cleveland is home to two world-leading development sites: the Centre for Process Innovation and the Materials Processing institute. They are two fantastic organisations, the latter established days before D-day as Churchill’s Government prepared to have the best steel innovation available to meet the challenges of rebuilding Britain after the war.

In the March 2020 Budget—that seems like a lifetime ago—the Chancellor backed the programme of research and innovation for the UK steel and metals sector. Page 85 of the 2020 Red Book referred to £22 million for the Materials Processing Institute for innovation in decarbonising the steel sector. That funding, alongside support from Innovate UK, has created 25 high-skilled jobs. PRISM will go on to make huge strides in decarbonising our foundation industries. That is what we can achieve when we invest in research and, crucially, in development. We can create the jobs of the future, the technologies that will help us tackle climate change, and level up across the country.

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[Bridget Phillipson]

Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that sometimes when the Whips come calling and they have a piece of paper that they would like you to read out in the Chamber, just say no. We have had far, far further to climb because of the massive hit to our economy—the worst of any advanced nation. Much of that, sad to say, comes down to the Chancellor’s resistance to adopting the measures that were necessary back last autumn to control the virus.

Labour has set out our climate investment pledge not only to get us on track with our commitment, but to avoid greater costs in the future and to ensure that we can seize opportunities, too. That means developing our domestic hydrogen sector, greening our steel industry, building the cycle lanes and infrastructure, creating new jobs to retrofit homes, ensuring that electric vehicles and their batteries are manufactured here, and that all our families can enjoy the local environment, clean air and open space. We are ambitious for Britain to lead the world with the jobs and technologies of the future, creating prosperity and opportunity in every corner of our country. Under Labour, we will work with business and trade unions to make this a reality.

[Jacob Young]

Just before the hon. Lady concludes her remarks, I just wanted to give her the opportunity to welcome Sunderland’s levelling-up fund bid, which was granted by this Government.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Absolutely. I supported the bid, so of course I welcome it; that is hardly a revelation. I will always welcome additional investment coming to my constituency, although I notice that the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) is also in his place, and I am sure that, like me, he was disappointed that our restoring your railway fund bid to look at reopening the Leamside line, which would create benefits for the wider north-east, was sadly knocked back by his Government. I am afraid that it is not entirely good news for Sunderland and the north-east.