Productivity and Economic Growth: East Midlands

Jeevun Sandher Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[James Naish]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: there are fantastic advanced manufacturing capabilities across the country, including in the east midlands, and the supply chain and the skills chain are key to making them thrive. I will come on to skills in the east midlands in a moment.

Ahead of the comprehensive spending review last year, the all-party parliamentary group for the east midlands launched an inquiry into regional priorities. We received 34 written submissions and held an oral evidence session here in Westminster, with contributions from local government, business, infrastructure, skills and other sectors. This work was about trying to distil, from the people who know our region the best, what the most serious barriers to boosting economic growth and productivity are, and about determining what practical steps the Government should take to address them.

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech about our region and the help it needs. Does he agree that for our region to do well, we need more devolution—including where I am in Leicestershire—as he has in his county? Is he pleased that the Government set out in the investment strategy that more money has to come to our region, which receives two and a half times less money for transport spending—or used to? Finally, does my hon. Friend agree that local leaders on the brilliant councils in my region, who are doing a great job, need even more powers to help to ensure that our region can grow, thrive and prosper?

[James Naish]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I have already mentioned the need for greater devolution. Of course, in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire we are seeing the dividends of that under Claire Ward, but I appreciate that Leicestershire still has some way to go to get the equivalent devolution. I absolutely support my hon. Friend’s call.

Before I share the recommendations of the APPG inquiry, I should say that I hope the Minister recognises that the inquiry’s very existence shows that we are serious about growth as a region. What is more, over the past 25 years we have delivered 35,000 more homes than our counterparts in the west midlands, even though the west midlands has a population that is about 20% larger. We are clearly taking our growth responsibilities seriously locally, yet despite that housing growth, transport spend per head in the region has fallen to just 54% of the UK average. That is not just slightly below, but 54% of the average—the lowest level of any UK region or nation. Rail funding per head is just over 40% of the UK average, and only around a third of the level seen in the west midlands.

The gaps have not emerged overnight: they are the product of choices over many years, under Governments of different colours, and they have had real consequences, shaping whether businesses grow, whether local labour markets function properly and whether people—my constituents—can access high-quality job opportunities. In short, inadequate investment has suppressed our region’s true potential. That is why the APPG inquiry was conducted. I place on the record my thanks to everyone who contributed to it. I believe its conclusions were fair and grounded, and we will make sure that the Minister receives a copy of the report.

The inquiry came to five primary conclusions. First, unsurprisingly, it suggested that the Government need actively to rebalance public investment, especially in transport, so that it better reflects housing and employment growth potential and delivery. I wholeheartedly welcome the Treasury’s Green Book being updated, but that in itself will not correct historical imbalances that must be addressed if we want places like the east midlands to maximise their potential. There is a genuine need for overcorrection.

Secondly, the APPG inquiry recommended that we pilot enhanced local employment hubs across the east midlands, devolving skills, careers and business support in a way that genuinely reflects local labour markets. One of the strongest themes in the evidence received by the inquiry was frustration with the fragmentation of the skills system. There are too many pots of money, too many separate agencies, too much inconsistency and too little flexibility, all of which hamper growth and productivity.

Thirdly, the inquiry recommended that we should expand women’s health hubs across the region, given the relatively poor life expectancy of women in too many parts of the east midlands. All genders and all age groups must contribute to closing the east midlands growth and productivity gaps, and targeted interventions will be required to realise that.

Fourthly, the inquiry recommended that the east midlands should play a central role in the country’s net zero transition, given its historical role powering millions of homes and businesses across the UK. Linked to that was the call made by more than 30 MPs to finally electrify the midland main line to Sheffield, which has sadly become a byword in our region for slow, uneven and stop-start infrastructure investment into a really important part of the country.

Fifthly, the inquiry suggested that the Government should reform how flood resilience funding is targeted so that it reflects social need and repeated risk, rather than underlying land values. Flooding can sometimes seem like a subject separate from growth and productivity, but in the east midlands, which has the greatest share of properties at risk of flooding from rivers or the sea of any English region, it is very much part of the same conversation. If we want growth, if we want to boost investor confidence, and if we want housing delivery and economic resilience, flood adaptation and mitigation are not optional extras. They must be seen as enablers for economic growth as well as for protecting food and energy security, which our region provides in abundance, especially in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire.

Together, the recommendations show that the east midlands is not looking for a silver bullet. Indeed, there is not one—although I will briefly put on the record the need for junction 24 of the M1 to be upgraded as a strategic priority for our road network.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Jeevun Sandher Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak. I thank, too, my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall and Camberwell Green (Florence Eshalomi) for bringing forward this debate, and for her excellent chairmanship of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which is evident from the contributions from across the House.

I am here to speak not only about how construction and building homes will help to create hundreds of thousands of good jobs, but about how we need to create millions more if we want everyone here to live a decent life. I am an economist, and I came to this place to ensure that everybody could earn a decent living and have enough money to pay the bills, but we are so far from that today. The average salary for a non-graduate is around £30,000. For two earners to raise two kids, they need to earn £35,000 each, but around 40% of full-time jobs pay less than that. That is 10 million workers who cannot afford a decent life, and those who cannot earn enough are turning away from Labour Members, as they have turned away from Conservative Members.

If we want everyone to have a decent job, the Government must help to create them. We are making a good start with house building. I welcome the £500 million that is going into affordable house building this year, and the £40 billion for the 10 years to come, because construction jobs are good non-graduate jobs. Building those 1.5 million homes means creating good jobs. A skilled construction worker earns £35,000. Around 300,000 of those jobs will be created when we build 1.5 million homes, and another 300,000 more jobs will be created in decarbonising buildings.

That is welcome, but we need to create a lot more good jobs if we want everyone to live a decent life. We need millions more—a lot more than the 600,000 jobs that will be created in the construction of homes and insulation. This is a job far bigger than housing and local government alone. Good jobs in healthcare, childcare and social care are all needed.

That is the path we should follow—the Government should create good jobs. We should not simply wish that enough good jobs will be created—that is the path we should not follow. In our technological era, growth alone does not automatically create enough good jobs where we need them, either for the people or places that require them. We came to this place to create a better life for all, but that is not possible for almost half of all workers because there are not enough good jobs. We can create hundreds of thousands of good jobs through construction, but we need to create millions more if we want everyone in this country to live a good life.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

Planning and Infrastructure Bill

Jeevun Sandher Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 24th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dr Jeevun Sandher (Loughborough) (Lab)]

I rise to speak about how the Bill will allow us to invest in our communities, benefiting every part of the country and not just London.

I have spent my entire adult life in a no-growth economy where costs rose because we did not build enough. The rent we pay, our rail fares and our energy bills have all soared because we could not build the homes, rail or wind farms we need—higher costs caused by a planning system whose default answer is no. The Bill changes that answer to yes.

The Bill targets constraints that have stopped us from growing. Prices are information. Where prices are high, we can see that we desperately need more supply. Rents as a share of income are up by 20% since 2020. Our transport costs are 26% higher than in peer nations. When Putin invaded Ukraine, we had the highest electricity bills in the G7. What do these prices tell us? Not enough homes, not enough rail, and not enough clean energy.

Infrastructure is being held back by our broken planning system. Our infrastructure projects are among the most expensive and slow to build of high-income nations. The Bill lifts the constraints and helps get us building, but it can go further. The NIC states that the largest increase to planning timetables is at pre-application stage, adding over two years on average. It is delaying critical infrastructure. I hope that the Minister will address this in his remarks.

We must also ensure that the benefits of the Bill are felt across our nation. My constituency is in the east midlands, where transport spending is the lowest in the country, private rents are rising faster than anywhere else, and productivity is the lowest in England. That is why it is harder to get a good job. For too long, investment has flowed to London and the south-east. That is because the benefit-cost ratio in the Green Book has a hardwired London bias. Wages are higher in London, so the estimated benefits of spending are also larger in the capital. With more projects built here in London, the logic becomes self-fulfilling. That London bias is why the gap between London and the rest of the UK is larger than the gap between west and east Germany. The Treasury, to its credit, does understand the problem, but the tyranny of the benefit-cost ratio is sadly still with us. We must end this bias and build prosperity in the places that need it most.

The Opposition spoke about levelling up but did nothing to deliver it. The Leeds tram, upgrading the line from Cardiff to Swansea, electrifying the midland main line—all were rejected by the last Government, who put London first and everywhere else last. They spoke of levelling up, but as my dad likes to say, talk is cheap. Now is the time to stop talking and start building. That means fixing the planning system so that we can build the homes, wind farms and, yes, pylons that we need. If we change our approach to infrastructure projects, we can also build the roads and rail we need outside of London, making it easier to transport goods and for my constituents in Loughborough, Shepshed and the villages to get around.