Levelling-up Agenda in the North

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for his constituency and his area. Does he accept that the whole of the north is in a similar position and that the whole of this younger generation faces a bleak future, as has been indicated by the commission, while they watch the growth of wealth to exponential levels in the City of London and elsewhere? Does he agree that only a massive change—perhaps a wealth tax—to redistribute money to the north is the way forward?

[Ian Lavery]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and of course I would agree with those sentiments. I would certainly agree to use some form of wealth tax, which would benefit people in this country.

The commission said that

“three regions—Yorkshire and the Humber, the North East and the West Midlands—have no social mobility hotspots at all.”

In line with what my hon. Friend has just said, that means that a child born in poverty in somewhere like the Wansbeck constituency, which is the sixth worst area for social mobility in England, will very likely live and die in poverty, through no fault of their own.