Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Jacob Young Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young (Redcar) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders). I congratulate him on Ofgem’s recent announcement that Ellesmere Port, as well as Redcar, will progress to stage 2 of the hydrogen village trials.

Today’s debate is on making Britain the best place to grow up and grow old, and we are doing just that. However, the Queen’s Speech must be viewed in the context of a war in Europe and a growing energy crisis, which is why the energy security Bill is one of the most important Bills in the speech. Defence and energy security go hand in hand. Putin has been emboldened because of Europe’s collective reliance on Russian gas and he uses it as a weapon, as can be seen in his rash reaction to Finland’s desire to join NATO. Not only will our energy Bill enable us to achieve energy sovereignty in a dangerous world, but it moves us further along the path to net zero and creates thousands of jobs in the process, in places such as Teesside.

In Teesside, we are quickly becoming the centre of excellence for green technology through: offshore wind; the world’s first industrial-scale carbon capture utilisation and storage project; hydrogen production, with 5 GW of hydrogen planned and the hydrogen village trials that I mentioned a few moments ago; and, of course, our nuclear power station at Hartlepool. It was commissioned in 1983, a whole 10 years before I was born. Only three power stations have been commissioned in the UK since then. In the 13 years of the Blair-Brown Government, not one new power station was constructed and six were decommissioned. New Labour turned its back on new nuclear, and we are righting its wrongs with a new power station every year for the next decade. This Queen’s Speech will help us to address that great national challenge, ensuring that our critical infrastructure remains future-proofed to the evolving needs of the 21st century.

Investment in infrastructure is a key signature of this Government’s commitment to levelling up, but I think we can go further. I look particularly to HS2, which currently has no commitment to using UK-sourced steel in its construction—that is wrong. It is nonsensical to have a situation where every few years the steel industry finds itself in further hardship and us MPs with steel constituencies go knocking at the Treasury’s door. Surely a better use of taxpayers’ money is for procurement rules to benefit foundation industries in the UK over international counterparts, and I hope that that is what the Procurement Bill allows. It is not an excuse for UK industry not to be competitive in its pricing, but we should acknowledge in any procurement decision the economic and social value that investment in UK industry brings and the levelling-up effect that such investment can have.

The purpose of our levelling-up programme is the next generation, which is why this Government are also investing in a world-class schools system to deliver the high-quality education that our young people deserve. The Schools Bill will absolutely set us on a path to achieving that. In Redcar and Cleveland we have made great strides under this Government to invest in our local schools, particularly at a primary school level, with more than £20 million invested to revitalise the 48 primary schools over the past decade, and Newcomen Primary School remains one of the best in the country. Despite that, more still needs to be done to ensure that every child has the education they deserve; in my part of the world that particularly relates to our secondary schools and I hope the Schools Bill will help to achieve that.

Finally, I wish to thank the Government for bringing forward the conversion therapy Bill again. I speak as a gay Christian who cannot wait for this Government to finally outlaw conversion therapy. Everyone, LGBT or otherwise, deserves to grow up and grow old being who they are, without the threat of disgusting, outdated and, I hope, soon-to-be criminal practices labelled as “conversion therapy”.

We are three years into this Prime Minister’s leadership. We have faced the biggest political challenge in the post-war era with Brexit and the single biggest health challenge in 100 years with covid. We now face the dual challenge of our energy security and war in Europe once again. This Queen’s Speech demonstrates our willingness to tackle the big issues of the day—becoming energy secure while levelling up across the whole of the UK. We have been tasked with delivering on the people’s priorities, and we are doing just that.