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Jake Berry Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Jake Berry)]

It is a great privilege to appear before you this evening, Mr Deputy Speaker. You will not be able to get a sausage roll, vegan or not, between the ambition that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley (Mr Campbell) has for his constituency, and my ambition for the area. I will self-declare: I am not taking part in Veganuary, and I am not a vegangelist—the vegan equivalent of an evangelist—but I have tried a Greggs vegan sausage roll. It tasted to me much like any other Greggs sausage roll: not very nice.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate on an important subject for his constituents. As he mentioned, it is not the first time he has done so: he brought it to the House in 2017. When a factory closes after 50 years at the heart of a community, all our thoughts should be with the people who worked there. I am very pleased to hear from the hon. Gentleman that many—96%, according to our measure—of those who worked in the factory have obtained new employment. Mr Deputy Speaker, you, like me, represent a manufacturing area. You will know that many people who work in manufacturing plants are concerned when they hear about redundancies, which affect not just them, but their family, their mortgage, their children, and all their hopes and ambitions for the future.

I understand that the hon. Member for Blyth Valley was absolutely instrumental in putting together the local response group when the redundancies were first known about.

[Mr Ronnie Campbell]

And the county council.

[Jake Berry]

The hon. Gentleman worked with the local authority, the county council, my Department, the Department for Work and Pensions and other Government agencies. I am informed that following the sterling work of the hon. Gentleman and others, 96% of former employees of the factory said that their transition from their former workplace was a success. However, that is not in any way to downplay the stress and disruption that families faced.

Turning to the future of the site, as the hon. Gentleman rightly points out, it was the place where Old Spice was manufactured. Its advertising slogan was, from memory, “The mark of a man”, but they also had this rather wonderful slogan on their bottle: “If your grandfather hadn’t worn it, you wouldn’t exist.” That shows that the advertising campaigns of the 1970s were slightly different from today’s. Thinking about the 1970s, beards are back in fashion, and apparently nationalisation is back in fashion in some parts of the House. Socialism is also back in fashion, allegedly, but not with my constituents. Perhaps Old Spice is due a comeback.

The hon. Gentleman is right that it is extremely important that this site remains vacant. He brings new information to me and to my Department about the interest of Heather Mills in acquiring the site for one of the exciting new businesses of the future—providing vegan food. I will certainly agree to go away with my team and make contact with Heather Mills. I must admit, as someone from Liverpool, that I was on the other side regarding the divorce, but I do know that through that divorce she obtained £24 million from Sir Paul McCartney, and she requires £10 million to deliver on her factory. All that aside, it is a new opportunity for the site and to create the desperately needed, secure, highly paid jobs that for me, as the northern powerhouse Minister, are about delivering the northern powerhouse.

As for the money going into the north-east, since the hon. Gentleman’s last debate we have seen the successful conclusion of the north of Tyne devolution deal. I worked very closely with people on a cross-party basis to secure what I am certain is a hugely exciting opportunity for the boroughs north of the Tyne that, across the lifetime of the deal, will see £600 million invested in the area. That is information new to this debate. I hope that he will reach out to the Mayor, Norman Redfearn, who was appointed temporarily until elections next May. The fact that no one has yet been elected should not discourage the hon. Gentleman from talking to the north of Tyne boroughs and the combined authority about ways in which they can lever in some of the £600 million—£20 million a year—that they are going to receive as part of this exciting deal.

Talking about economic renaissance, particularly of our manufacturing, the hon. Gentleman should look for inspiration—quite a long way down the road, but down the road none the less—at the work Ben Houchen is doing as the Mayor of Tees Valley. Like all the best people seeking to drive the northern powerhouse forward, he is working across political lines. He has been successful in setting up the first mayoral development corporation outside London for decades. On a recent visit to the SSI site, which many people would know as the former Redcar steelworks, I was pleased to announce £14 million of additional funding, which is part of the regeneration and redevelopment of that site, creating the highly paid, secure jobs that we all want to see in the northern powerhouse.

The hon. Gentleman talked briefly about the contribution that the LEP could make. He will be aware that £3.4 billion has already been invested across the north of England as part of the growth deals, with £379.6 million going into the north-east. The north-east has one of the highest performing LEPs. That is why—it is almost a victim of its own success—all of that £379 million is currently committed. That does not mean that if projects are underspent or do not proceed there will not be an opportunity to talk to the LEP about redirecting any underspends from the existing money. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says that he has a meeting with the LEP. I encourage him to use that meeting to see whether that is possible.

In general, I believe that we are in a golden period for investment in the north-east. It is a hugely exciting time, with a Mayor in Tees Valley and a Mayor north of the Tyne. I hope that regardless of our political allegiances, we can lay aside our differences and say that our mission here in the House of Commons is to ensure that people across the north of England—north-east, north-west, Yorkshire and the Humber—benefit from the Government’s plan, the northern powerhouse. In one sentence, that is a plan to create better education, and better social and economic outcomes, across the north of England, so that no other generation will believe that their best hope and opportunity lie in getting the train to London, but can stay in the north of England, which all of us in the Chamber, virtually, have the privilege of knowing is the best place in this country to have the privilege of living.

Question put and agreed to.