Building a High-Skilled Economy

Jake Berry Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

I am very grateful for the opportunity to make this, my maiden speech, today. I understand that maiden speeches—first speeches in Parliament—are very like your first child: easier to conceive than to deliver.

Rossendale and Darwen, the constituency I have the honour of representing, was previously held by Ms Janet Anderson for 18 years. During that period Ms Anderson was a hard-working constituency MP, and will be well remembered by many people in my area. She will especially be remembered for her pioneering support and work for local Sure Start centres, and I take the opportunity to pay tribute to her.

Rossendale and Darwen was formed in 1983, and the first Member of Parliament was David Trippier—now Sir David Trippier—who I am sure is well remembered by many people in the House. Sir David still resides in the village of Helmshore, where my wife and I have our current home. This is apt, as Helmshore is the geographical centre of the constituency, with the Robin Hood being the actual heart of the constituency. For those Members in the House who are avid readers of our two local papers, the Rossendale Free Press and the Lancashire Telegraph, I should add that that is not Robin Hood’s well, where I proposed to my wife; it is the Robin Hood public house at the centre of our village, where the beer, and the welcome, is second to none, especially on a Friday evening.

Rossendale and Darwen, being nearly 220 square miles, is formed of four separate towns—Whitworth, Darwen, Bacup and Rawtenstall. Each of these towns is separate from the others, and they are independent in both spirit and mind while being similar in many ways. Each is boarded by the lofty west Pennine moors, hemming them into deep valleys, with houses and mills alike with steep mountains rising above them; and streams rush through glens, giving the power that once drove the east Lancashire textile mills.

There are also many villages in my constituency, with small, close-knit communities, such as Belmont, Weir, Turton, Hoddlesden and Tockholes. Those villages doggedly cling limpet-like to the hillside during the winter months. Last winter, some were cut off from the outside world for several weeks. In the summer months, the villages are marked by horses paddock grazing, and I am sure that the village of Edenfield, in the electoral division of Eden, conjures into Members’ minds the appropriate visions of pastoral bliss and long summer evenings.

It is not the landscape, beautiful as it is, that binds together this area of east Lancashire, but the character of the people who live in Rossendale and Darwen. The first Member of Parliament to be killed in the second world war was from the village of Stubbins in Rossendale. Captain Richard Porritt, a member of the Lancashire Fusiliers, was killed in Belgium on 26 May 1940, and he is remembered in the Chamber with a shield to the right of your Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last November, I had the honour of attending a Remembrance Sunday service in Whitworth with two current members of the Lancashire Fusiliers just back from Afghanistan, who laid a wreath and cross in memory of their seven fallen comrades. Many families in my constituency continue to have a strong connection with our armed forces. I believe that we in this country have the finest armed forces in the world and I shall do all that I can to support them and their families while I am a Member of the House.

It is apt that I am making my maiden speech during a debate about building a high-skilled economy because I believe that Rossendale and Darwen can be in the vanguard of rebalancing our economy to that of a highly skilled industrial economy. Rossendale and Darwen were at the centre of the first industrial revolution. Rossendale was the centre of the world’s slipper trade, while Darwen was the birthplace of wallpaper, and both were major centres for the textile industry. Such was Darwen’s importance to the cotton trade that it was visited by Mahatma Gandhi in 1931 so that he could witness the effect of the Indian Congress party’s boycott of Lancashire cotton mills.

This white-hot flame of innovation that led to the invention of wallpaper and the introduction of the first power looms still burns in the breast of every young person in my constituency, and we must do all that we can to foster their full potential. I applaud the Government’s commitment to investing in workplace apprenticeships to ensure that our young people, especially in Rossendale and Darwen, have the correct menu of skills to continue our strong tradition of local manufacturing. There are still many well-known manufacturing companies in my constituency, such as J&J Ormerod kitchens in Stacksteads, James Killelea steel in Crawshawbooth, Crown Paints in Darwen and WEC engineering in Darwen, which was visited by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister immediately before the election. All those well-known local manufacturing businesses provide high-skilled jobs for our young people.

The rebalancing of our economy is a key aim of the Government, as is set out in the coalition agreement. With a fairer and more balanced economy in which we are not so dependent on the financial services industry, and in which economic opportunities are more evenly shared among our regions and industries, I optimistically predict that Rossendale and Darwen will prosper and become a regional manufacturing superpower.