Financial Assistance to Industry

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2026 General Committees

[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

It is good to see you in the Chair, Mrs Barker—I am sure you will keep us under control if we stray from the chosen path.

Let me first make a broad argument. This an important Committee. We are making a decision that begins to change the direction in which the country has been governed for so long, over my lifetime—a direction characterised as basically market-led. In 1950, when I was born, there were 8 million people in manufacturing, but now there are 2.5 million; there were 700,000 coalminers, but now there are none left; and there were 600,000 people in agriculture. We are seeing the most dramatic changes in the way our labour market works, and, unless the state and the Government take an active, interventionist role in creating and restructuring our economy, I fear for our future. That is not simply nostalgia, or an old man looking back to the happy times in the past—although they were happy—but somebody saying, “This is the nature of our society now.”

I represent 23 coalmining villages, and I know that the Minister’s constituency shares many attributes with mine. This is an important investment, and, in Bedfordshire, where it will take place, there is significant deprivation in pockets, but it is not everywhere. I am not going to quote the figures, but I looked at central Bedfordshire and compared it to Wakefield, where my seat is. Poverty and deprivation are much more deeply entrenched and wages are lower in the Yorkshire coalfield than in Bedfordshire. Why is a major investment taking place in Bedfordshire rather than anywhere else? I was struck by the penultimate paragraph in the explanatory note, which says:

“The territorial extent of this programme is the United Kingdom, and the territorial application of this motion is the United Kingdom.”

My area is less than 200 miles from Bedfordshire, but it takes people who live there four and a half hours to get there by public transport. There are over 20,000 households without a car in my constituency. People in my area will not go to Bedfordshire.

This investment is important; it is a signal that the Government intend to change the direction in which this country has been governed for too long, and that is welcome. I am sure that I do not need to press the Minister very hard, because she represents a coalmining seat in Yorkshire, but when we consider trying to attract investment, let us think about the regional impact, not only in Wales and Scotland, but in the Yorkshire coalfield, which I speak for. I welcome the report we have in front of us today, because without that, it would be difficult for me to go back to the coalfield and say, “Well, I voted for half a billion pounds to be spent in Bedfordshire while representing an area of deep chronic poverty.” I make that point quite strongly.

I also received lobbying from a company that is a competitor. The hon. Members for North West Norfolk and the hon. Member for St Albans mentioned competitors, and I think the Minister will reflect on what has been said, so I do not need to add to that. I want to come to the question of state aid rules and whether this whole investment complies with the various regimes of state aid. First, we are part of the World Trade Organisation, and we are bound not to take action on state aid that is illegal under WTO rules. I assume the Minister’s advisers have looked at that, and I raised it with her yesterday to be sure. There are then the UK’s home-grown regulations in the Subsidy Control Act 2022, which also controls the way in which the Government can intervene in the economy when considering reconstructing. That is a very important part of this proposal. It looks to me as though competitors may feel that they have a legal case to challenge this decision under the existing state aid rules. Can the Minister confirm that that has been carefully considered by the civil service and her advisers?

Let me say this to the people talking about rejoining the European Union: if that were to take place before 2031 and the money had not yet gone—by the sound of it, it will not go until 2031 or 2033—would we be in breach of the much more stringent state aid rules that apply within the European Union? Let me be clear: I do not think we should join the European Union. I am against it, and always have been, partly on the grounds of state aid, which controls the capacity of a Government to begin to rebuild their economy in the way I have just described.

I just want to know this: supposing some foolish person was to say, “Let’s rejoin the European Union”, and succeed, if the money had not been released, would we be in conflict with the state aid rules in Europe when we give this money to the Bedfordshire development? I gave the Minister advance warning of this and I am sure she will have thought about it; perhaps she will write to us all if she has not.