Green Investment Bank (Leeds)

Jason McCartney Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland]

That is very helpful, and I thank my right hon. Friend very warmly for his intervention. Whether it is as popular with his constituents as it will be with mine, I do not know, but I thank him for it and agree with his sentiment.

The vision for the green investment bank is admirable and exciting, and the case for its location in Leeds is similarly exciting and innovative. They seem to be an excellent match. The Leeds city region already has a mission to become a world-class, low-carbon economy, and at the same time, as we know, the Government have said that they want to be the greenest Government ever.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) said, the Leeds city region is wide and diverse, covering the whole of west Yorkshire, parts of neighbouring north and south Yorkshire and the 10 local authority districts of Barnsley, Bradford, Calderdale, Craven, Harrogate, Kirklees, Leeds, Selby, Wakefield, and York. With close to 3 million people, a diverse resident work force of 1.5 million, 106,000 businesses and an economy worth £53 billion per year, it is a region to be taken seriously.

[Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. He mentions Kirklees, my local council, and I shall add some more statistics from our part of the world. David Brown engineering in Lockwood, Huddersfield, has just received money from the regional growth fund for its offshore wind turbine gear technology; the transition town movement in the valleys of my constituency, Holmfirth, Slaithwaite and Marsden, is up and running; and on a more regional basis, in west Yorkshire and beyond, there is also co₂sense Yorkshire, an organisation leading the charge in Yorkshire for carbon capture and storage technology. Does he agree that it all adds up to a fantastic case for Yorkshire to secure the green investment bank?

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Mulholland]

I thank my hon. Friend. This debate does show the strength of support for the bid from all round the Leeds city region and, indeed, the Yorkshire and Humber region.

Let me say this one more time, because I have heard doubts cast on it: Leeds is the second biggest financial centre in the country—not Bristol and not Edinburgh. I will give some figures. Financial advisers in the Leeds city region were responsible for almost 200 deals in 2010, worth £10 billion to the economy. If that is not music to Ministers’ ears, I do not know what is.

[Jason McCartney]

I praise my hon. Friend for the positivity of his arguments. He is laying out a compelling case for the bank’s coming to Yorkshire. Does he agree that another big element is the certainty, unlike in some other potential locations, that there will not be a referendum on independence in Yorkshire—no matter how much I would like one, as a born Yorkshireman? We do not want to be negative about anywhere else, but Yorkshire does not have that uncertainty about potential referendums on independence.

[Greg Mulholland]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The show of unified support for this bid from all political parties is vital, and I am afraid that the political situation is different for some of the bids to which he refers.

In 2009, there was a 32% rise in the value of deals in the financial district in Leeds, despite the value of deals in the UK falling by 16% in the same period. Three banks and four building societies have already chosen to locate their headquarters in the Leeds city region, including the headquarters of the UK’s largest financial insurance provider and its investment function, responsible for £75 billion-worth of assets, as well as 10 private equity firms, including the UK’s leading mid-market equity house. We do not just have a big financial sector; we also have the right skills set to support the green investment bank’s products. The sector has direct and recent experience in establishing new financial institutions, with the financial service sector in the Leeds city region having been involved in the delivery of 19 of the past 21 building society mergers.