Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I am very sorry to hear about the case that the hon. Gentleman raises, and I am sure that the thoughts of the whole House will be with the friends and family of the constituent that he referenced. Indeed, our thoughts are with all those affected, particularly farmers, and I want to join him in thanking our firefighters, who have worked tirelessly to keep people safe. We have provided Dorset and Wiltshire fire and rescue authority with an increased budget of almost £75 million, but I will ensure that he gets the meeting he has asked for to ensure that we can properly support our firefighters and protect our farmland.

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

Q8. This morning, I spoke to the parents of a young man who is unemployed in my constituency. There are 20 people on the dole in my area for every job that is advertised. Unemployment is a personal crisis and a social crisis. Will the Prime Minister join me in reminding the House that unemployment is not a price worth paying, which the Conservatives clearly believe, and will he indicate that he will break with the failed economic orthodoxy that suggests that such a thing is true?

[The Prime Minister]

I am pleased that the employment rate is up, that inactivity is down and that we have created over 380,000 jobs since we have been in power. Going further, I know that my hon. Friend, as a proud Yorkshireman, will welcome the reopening of Doncaster Sheffield airport just yesterday, which was made possible by the decisions we have made. That is a Labour mayor working with a Labour Government to create jobs across the country.

Outsourcing: Government Departments

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Westminster Hall

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

I spent the last 10 years, under our two previous leaders, working on our outsourcing. It is hard to summarise 10 years’ work in three and a half minutes, but I came to the conclusion that outsourcing simply does not work for a number of reasons that I will outline quickly and in broad terms.

Let me first pay tribute to the workers who go to work one day to discover suddenly that their contract of employment has been sold to another employer—almost like a modern-day form of servitude. So often, we then see cuts to services, and pay and conditions. Much has been made of that already this morning. I pay tribute to those workers, particularly the three women in my constituency who went to work, found that their employer had changed, their union had been derecognised and their pensions removed. They fought like titans: they went on strike, then to a tribunal, and eventually finished up being sacked. The courage of working people fighting for justice should never be forgotten.

There are several things about outsourcing that simply do not work. The first is that no evidence whatsoever has ever been produced showing that it is cheaper to outsource than to keep services in house, especially when we count the transactional costs, which remain with the civil service and the Government. If we add those together, it always costs more to outsource. Secondly, when there is a disaster—as there is from time to time—the profits go to shareholders but the risks remain with the public sector, so we have the privatisation of profit but the socialisation of risk and quite often the cost of bankruptcy.

We have already talked about pay and conditions being driven down and about a two-tier workforce, so I will not go further into that, but I will speak a little about what my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough and Thornaby East (Andy McDonald) described as a shadow state. One third of all taxpayer money is now spent on outsourcing—a staggering amount of money—and that is a direct assault on our democratic processes. I say that because Ministers do not have day-to-day supervision of and responsibility for the actions of outsourced operations. That poses problems not just for democracy but for Parliament. It has become clear over time that questions that we Back Benchers are entitled to ask questions on behalf of our constituents and the nation simply cannot be answered because they relate to services provided by the private sector—that is a major assault. On Monday, I will have been an MP for 29 years—some will say that that is far too long—and in that time, Parliament’s capacity to ask questions about public services has been massively diminished as a result of what has happened.

My other point relates to freedom of information requests. We know that we as citizens can make freedom of information requests about any services provided by the public sector. The minute a service is outsourced, though, that capacity goes. Time and again, we encounter problems with services provided through taxpayer money but in a privatised form, and we are not able to get to the truth of what has really been happening with that service. The lack of accountability to Ministers and to Parliament, and the exemption from freedom of information, all make outsourcing very difficult.

I remember speaking to Dave Prentis, the then leader of Unison, about ethos. He said to me, “Look, Jon, it’s about ethos. The ethos of the private sector is largely driven by the desire to maximise shareholder value; the ethos of services provided in the public sector is just that—public service.” The difference between the two kinds of ethos is at the centre of the problem that we face when we deal with outsourcing.

I would love to speak longer about these matters on another occasion, but let me make my final point. I came to the conclusion that, in the end, the only way to deal with this is to have a legal presumption in favour of insourcing. That was the policy that the Labour party went on, and one that I hope this Government will build on by bringing forward the large wave of insourcing that we have talked about many times before.

Income tax (charge)

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to be reasonably quick.

I pay tribute to the maiden speeches we have heard today, which were exceptional. In particular, I associate myself with the views of my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Margaret Mullane) when she said that she stands for working class life and communities, and will do everything she can for them. That is how I have seen my 28 years in this place, too.

I think I am probably the only person on the Labour Benches today who was here in 1997, so I want to say something to the Government and to all our Back Benchers. I was there when Labour came into office—I was elected in 1996, so I was here in ’97—and the same lack of humility shown then by the Conservative party, which had been thrashed by the electorate, is being shown today. There is the same short-term memory of the failures their Government had committed under John Major and the other Prime Minister before that, and the same lack of remorse. There is a lack of remorse for what we have now: food bank Britain, with millions of people in poverty. Not a word from those on the Conservative Benches. There are millions of people on NHS waiting lists. No remorse from the party opposite for that. There is no remorse for the fact that our economy has not been properly invested in throughout their whole period in office. This country was the lowest investor in the whole of the G7. There is no remorse for all the other failures either, and no sense of humility when the public told them that they had made a series of mistakes.

[Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Jon Trickett]

No, I am going to try to be quick. I am not going to take any interventions.

All those matters, and others too, require us to make a change in the direction of our economy. That is what this Budget has begun to do; we are turning the page.

One final reflection on ’97. When Labour introduced the minimum wage, one of the great reforms of the century, the Tories kept us in the Lobby night after night after night. We were proud to do it. The arguments they made then have a parallel with the arguments they are making about our Budget today—that there will be job losses, an impact on profitability, small firms will be in trouble and so on. Let me say this. Eventually, they accepted the minimum wage because it was the right thing to do. There were no job losses and there was no impact on profitability. So, I say to those on the Government Front Bench: continue in the direction you are travelling, but move faster and be even more radical. I recommend that they have a look at Spain, where a socialist Government are in place. They have—I think I am right in saying—the highest rate of growth in the G7. They introduced a 0.5% wealth tax on estates worth more than €3 million a year and they are getting high growth. That shows that a determined Government restructuring the economy, as we need to do, can deliver change and not damage a country’s economic success.

I represent 23 villages, all former mining communities that were treated brutally by the Tory party 40 years ago. It is a distant memory for many, but I remember every single moment of the strike. They destroyed the mining industry and have done nothing to replace it in the last 40 years, so we have widespread poverty, as there is in all post-industrial communities throughout our country. They perpetrated a hoax on those communities by saying that they would level up. The levelling-up fund was not directed to where poverty was. In any event, it was a competition in deprivation between one area and another. My communities got nothing, yet we are struggling desperately to achieve growth. Levelling up was a great slogan, but it was used as a trick to persuade people to vote Conservative in 2019. What happened? People have learnt their lesson.

Let me come on to one point that I am worried about and then on to a general point. On transport, the differences in the distribution of funding for transport are extraordinary. The previous Government—that lot—spent £418 per head on transport in Yorkshire. In London, it was £1,200. That is three times as much per head per year spent on transport in London than in Yorkshire, and that leaves us with problems. I represent 23 villages—rural communities in many ways, deprived communities, post-mining communities. To get from one community to another, bearing in mind over 20,000 people in our area do not have a car and the trains do not work very well—the train service has left us without adequate public transport by train—the only option is the bus. Buses often do not start until 8 o’clock, but people begin work at 7, or leave home at 7. I have met women walking from one village to another in the dark on unlit streets because the bus service has not yet started. That is a problem the Conservatives created.

I regret this Government’s decision to raise bus fares from £2 to £3. I do not suppose there is anybody in this whole Parliament who does not have access to a car, but there are many people across the country who do not have a car because wages are so low. People are walking in the dark at 7 o’clock in the morning to get to work from one village to another. And for those of us who do have a bus service, it is going up by 50%. It will be roughly £6 a day to get to and from work. That is £30 a week and £1,500 a year in bus fares to get to work and back. Clearly, that gives us a problem. In my constituency, there are villages that are only seven miles apart, yet the bus takes one hour and 19 minutes to get from the one you live in to the one where you work. That is completely unsatisfactory. If we are going to raise bus fares—that is the decision that has been made, which I regret—we need to reform the way buses operate so that they are accessible to communities. The Government have made some announcements in relation to that already, which is welcome.

My final point is on the lack of investment the Conservative party presided over for years. I heard the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt) saying today, “Okay, there might have been a black hole in the public finances, but we were going to cover it with cuts.” That is effectively what he said. The cuts were always taking place to investment and they were going to cut more investment. If we measure my constituency by GDP per head—a controversial measure, but the one we are familiar with—that lack of investment means the average worker produces £29,000 per year of GDP. Wages are pegged to productivity, as we all know, so we have low wages—less than £30,000 a year. But listen to this. In Camden—we know it is a different economy in Camden—GDP per head is £174,000. The regional differences between output, capacity and productivity are all the result of that failure to invest.

The Budget sets out to invest, and to invest big and go for growth, but I will be pressing, for all the held-back, post-industrial communities up and down our country— not only the coalfields but in the midlands and elsewhere —for the investment we achieve and the growth we deliver to be more equitable than it has been under the Conservatives.

With those few thoughts, and an encouragement to be more radical and even more bold for the future—let us bear in mind ’97—I wish the Budget well.

Infected Blood Compensation Scheme

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate the Minister on the way he spoke to the House. He spoke firmly, with a sense of urgency and great clarity in his use of English, which was very much appreciated. The truth of the matter is that there is a deeply ingrained scepticism in the community we are talking about. Words, in the end, will not count; actions will. Of course, today we are taking significant action on the road.

When we reflect on the views of victims and their relatives, it is hardly surprising that there has been a breakdown in trust. It always seems to be the case that the British establishment’s first reaction when there is a disaster is to close ranks, deny the truth and not listen to the victims. It is only in recent times that victims’ voices have begun to be heard. With disasters such as the Post Office scandal, the policing of the miners’ strike or Hillsborough, the establishment always closed ranks.

The Langstaff report is very clear. First, it says—this goes to the root of the scepticism that people feel—that, from the 1940s, Governments of different parties were fully aware of the scientific opinion that these actions could infect recipients of blood transfusions. Sir Brian Langstaff says that the disaster did not happen by accident. He tries to imagine what it must be like for those suffering the agony of being victims, and then being refused the truth that a wrong had been done by successive Governments.

My constituent Katie has been in touch with my office. Her dad died in the 1980s when she was an infant. Imagine living life with a cloud upon you after losing your father when young, because of negligence by operatives of the state and the cover-up that followed.

The only way we can reduce the scepticism is for the payments to begin to flow through. In the meantime, there is clearly a wish for some reassurance from the Minister today. He has made some of these points already, but I will go back to them.

First, someone who lost her father in the ’80s when she was two will probably struggle to find the appropriate evidence, as she is not necessarily skilled enough to search for it forensically. Langstaff discovered—this is shocking—that documents were destroyed knowingly by the Government of the day because they thought that it might incriminate them. It was an establishment cover-up of some scale. How can victims establish that they deserve justice if documents have been lost or even wilfully destroyed? The Minister mentioned that, but we need to hear more from him about it either today or in the coming period.

Secondly, as other Members have said, civil society groups have the confidence of the victims—the Haemophilia Society is one, but my constituent mentioned Tainted Blood, of which the Minister is probably aware. It would be helpful if the Minister said that he and the Government are open to further conversations with civil society groups, which can speak on behalf of victims. It is important that the victims’ voices are heard, and because those groups have the confidence of victims, those exchanges and that dialogue would be very helpful.

The Minister referred to one of the central requests that have been made. We are dealing with people who do not necessarily have large resources to employ representatives such as lawyers and other advisers. The Minister indicated that the Government are open to victims having their own representatives. However, if the Government are to encourage the appointment of such representatives, it must be clear that they are not appointees of the Government; they must see themselves as representatives of the victims. Otherwise, people will not have the necessary trust in them.

That brings me to my final point. I can imagine the kinds of conversation that the civil service has had with Ministers about this matter over decades: “Minister, you may be dealing with billions of pounds. You have a duty to ensure that every single penny is properly spent, so please exercise care in any announcements you make.” I imagine that those conversations happen on most days. Of course we have a duty to protect money, and very significant amounts will have to be spent to compensate people properly, but equally there is a duty to deliver justice to the people who were treated by state actors in a shabby and disgraceful way over decades. When there is a lack of paperwork and victims are perhaps very ill or dying, how will we secure value for money for the taxpayer while delivering justice for people who have struggled for decades as a result of Government negligence? I leave those thoughts with the Minister and hope that he will address them in his reply.

Like other Members, I hope that as the scheme is rolled out and we establish confidence among the victims, the Government will organise opportunities for the Minister to come back to the House so that we can raise constituents’ questions and establish a more trusting relationship between the Government, who are doing dramatic work on this matter, and the people who have suffered for decades.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

The Government have been clear that we will not be returning to freedom of movement, but clearly we want economic and cultural ties to be far closer than they are at the moment—indeed, closer than they were under the previous Government. That is in the interests of the UK and in the interests of the EU. On the economic side, the Government have already set out their objective of a sanitary and phytosanitary agreement to achieve mutual recognition of professional qualifications to help our excellent services sector, as well as to ease the position for our travelling musicians around Europe, which is hugely important to our cultural soft power.

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

9. Whether he plans to increase the number of facilities management services that are insourced within Government Departments and agencies.

[The Minister without Portfolio (Ellie Reeves)]

The Government will always aim to secure value for money in meeting their facilities management requirements. Our plan to make work pay is clear that we will call time on the previous Government’s ideological approach to outsourcing and ensure that decisions are based on robust assessments of value for money, service quality, social value and, crucially, delivering the best outcomes.

[Jon Trickett]

I thank the Minister very much for her response and I welcome the whole team to the Front Bench. The problem with outsourcing is that, normally, the outsourcers will drive down pay and conditions for the workforce, thereby creating a two-tier workforce; they are not properly accountable to Ministers; they are exempt from freedom of information requests; and finally, there is the question of public service centres. Will the Minister confirm that we will proceed with abandoning the previous Government’s ideological obsession with outsourcing?

[Ellie Reeves]

My hon. Friend is right that too many decisions about outsourcing were ideologically driven under the previous Government, without consideration for things such as social value or service quality. That is why we have said that we will do things differently. Social value and outcomes will be at the heart of that. Our new deal for working people will transform the world of work.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

My hon. Friend obviously knows a great deal about this as a result of his distinguished 31 years of experience in the House, but pivotal role allowances have been in place for 10 years to help us to retain certain key individuals. A number of initiatives were introduced by my distinguished predecessor Lord Maude, the former right hon. Member for Horsham, and I intend to build on those, but I am happy to engage with my hon. Friend, because this is a serious issue.

In 2022, the last year for which we have figures, there was a 12.4% turnover from the senior civil service, and resignations were at 5%. We need to look carefully at what that means across different roles, and at how we can retain the specialisms for longer periods so that key Government programmes benefit from the sort of leadership that has enduring expertise at the table.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

15. What steps he is taking to increase transparency of lobbying by businesses.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

The Government outlined wide-ranging improvements to transparency in lobbying in their policy statement “Strengthening Ethics and Integrity in Central Government”, which was published in July. They include revising guidance to widen the range of lobbying engagements declared by Departments, and linked reforms of the consultant lobbying framework.

[Jon Trickett]

If you are one of the tens of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises bidding for contracts from the public sector, you will be met with a wall of bureaucratic paperwork designed to prevent relationships between the contractor and the service provider. If you are an ex-Prime Minister, you can make dozens of phone calls on behalf of an interest in which you seem to have been involved, including nine texts to the current Prime Minister. Is it not clear that that was reprehensible behaviour, and that the lobbying rules allowed it to happen? When will the Minister tighten the lobbying rules properly to prevent people from being able to benefit from the old system of “It is not what you know, but who you know”?

[Alex Burghart]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to my previous answer; we have published a document called “Strengthening Ethics and Integrity in Central Government”.

On small and medium-sized enterprises, I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that the Procurement Act 2023, which recently received Royal Assent, will make life much easier for SMEs that want to do business with the Government and get a share of the £300 billion of public procurement this Government have to offer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Oliver Dowden]

As ever, my right hon. Friend raises an erudite question. My disposition, and that of the Government, is that open source AI is an important basis upon which we can build many world-leading applications. We can see companies in this country growing at a fast pace by developing innovative AI off the back of open source. Of course, there are risks associated with it, but there is a high bar to be met before the Government would start imposing additional regulatory burdens on open source AI, given the associated benefits for economic growth.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

T3. Palantir has this week received one of the largest contracts imaginable. The company is based in silicon valley in California. It was established by the CIA and it has continuing links with the American defence network. It looks as though huge amounts of British NHS money and profits will be migrating back across the pond to California, but the most concerning thing is that information about millions of our fellow citizens—their health data—will be handled by that company. How can that be right?

[Alex Burghart]

Obviously, any contract of any size that the Government deal with—the Department of Health and Social Care and the NHS in this case—goes through an extremely detailed and careful process in order to ensure that we get the best value for money for the British public, that we help our public services solve the problems they face and that national security is maintained. If the hon. Gentleman has a problem with a particular element of that contract, he should bring it before the House. Otherwise, I believe he is just scare- mongering.

British Steel

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

Unfortunately, there is never a simple answer to these questions. Access to the grid is a challenge for many industries, let alone for the steel sector. We have been doing everything we can to increase access to the grid. British Steel’s proposal—negotiations will continue—says that it has chosen two sites over one, with its key site at Scunthorpe and a second site at Teesside to be closer to its manufacturing work. That decision has been made for many other commercial reasons beyond access to the grid.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

Yorkshire and the Humber is one of the great centres of steelmaking—in our area, there were more than 8,000 jobs in steelmaking, the last time that was counted—but how many jobs will be left when the Minister has finished with her cuts? Has she noticed that whenever the Conservative party is in government, it deindustrialises further? Unite the union—I declare an interest as a member—is saying that if the Government would commit to procurement of steel for all our relevant contracts, 8,000 further jobs could be created. What exactly does she make of that? Has she met representatives of the union to discuss that matter?

[Ms Ghani]

I meet representatives of the unions regularly, and I co-chair a steel council. The steel procurement policy note on increasing procurement in the UK was a personal ambition of mine. Previously, we did not calculate enough of the data on what was being procured and how we could continue to secure more contracts. Procurement has increased, with the value of contracts up by £97 million on the previous year. I want to go further; that is only the starting point. Earlier today, I was with the Minister for Defence Procurement, the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), and I will continue to work to ensure that there is more UK steel in all our construction, whether rail, road, automotive, aviation or anything else. The reality is that last year it increased by £97 million-worth of work.

All-party Parliamentary Groups

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 19th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

This has been a fascinating debate—I almost used the word “delay”, but I would not dare to when speaking about the Father of the House. In the few minutes I have, let me try to make the case against a vote. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Chair of the Committee has listened—we all have—and maybe some refinement can be achieved.

My hon. Friend might have made a stronger case if he had recalled to the House the distinction that his report makes between two types of all-party group. Many of them are benign, as we have heard. When I came to Parliament in 1996 through a by-election, they seemed relatively benign to me, but then I worked twice in Government—in No. 10 and the Cabinet Office—and then for 10 years on the Opposition Front Bench. Over the years, I reflected on the asymmetry of power between the people who have money and, as a result, access to power, including access to this place, and the millions of people around the country who also have interests but are not always heard. I therefore resigned from every APPG—I may be the only person here who is not in a single one. Maybe Members will say that I am not a very effective MP, but it seems to me that, if I want to speak to MPs, commercial interests, or private and civil society groups, I am capable of doing so without being in an APPG.

On the other hand, I would be happy to be party to many of the groups that have been mentioned today, which seem benign. However—and this is the point that I think sticks in the craw—commercial interests have dominated so much of our political life that that asymmetry of power and access to wealth and to this place is so profound that it is eating away at the body politic itself. We have funding coming from the arms industry, the tobacco industry, polluters, petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, private healthcare and so on. They are all putting money into APPGs.

Members might ask, “Well, what’s wrong with that?” I am not against the arms industry—I am not a pacifist—but it is one of the largest beneficiaries of state procurement with taxpayers’ money. The private sector in health has an interest in trying to undermine the way in which the health service works. Tobacco is clearly regularly the subject of regulation. They all have access to the House and to Members of Parliament simply because they have the capacity to buy influence through the APPG system. I am not suggesting that anything about that is corrupt, but people outside, such as Peter, who I met yesterday in my constituency, where the local bank has closed—he is 88 years old and nearly blind—want to know that we operate on their behalf and not purely in the interests of large commercial operators.

Then there is the problem of foreign influence. The Committee made it clear in the report that foreign countries have not only attempted to influence our Parliament through APPGs, but succeeded in doing so. Some hostile countries, as we would define them, have sought to influence, but it is not just them. From the news today, we know that Britain was in competition with Spain over the location of a battery factory—I am glad we have got it for the UK. There is a Spain APPG, and I do not suggest in any way that it is malign, but foreign countries—allies or not—have an interest in understanding how our Parliament works.

I am glad that the Committee has recommended changes. If we can get through today without a vote against, the Committee can go away and reflect on the debate and tackle the malign aspects of APPGs. Parliament would then be in a much better place.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Johnny Mercer]

I recognise the ongoing concerns about those who remain in Afghanistan. The Prime Minister has asked me to do what I can to get the Afghans who are currently in hotels into long-term accommodation in the UK. That will allow us to turn back on those flights out of Afghanistan. I recognise that there are still people there who should be in the UK, and I will, of course, look at the case my hon. Friend raises later today. That process of bringing people out of Afghanistan remains with the MOD, but it will have heard his comments and I will do everything I can to help him.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

I return to the issue of nominations into the other place. Is the Minister aware that 27 members of the Lords donated £50 million to his party and that one in 10 Tory peers have given more than £100,000 to his party? Is that all just an unfortunate coincidence, or are we seeing a return to cash for honours? Would it not be simple just to say that nobody who makes donations to political parties can receive an honour in the future? Would that not be the simplest way of dealing with this utter scandal?

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Alex Burghart)]

We all remember the cash for honours scandal that happened under the hon. Gentleman’s party’s tenure, and we all know how many union barons are barons.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 14th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

Yes, I am absolutely delighted to do so. The Metro Mayors are key parts of our innovation ecosystem, and the three innovation accelerators that have we put in place are fundamentally co-created and led from the bottom up in Glasgow, Manchester and the west midlands. I am actively reaching out to work with the Metro Mayors, as well as with devolved Science Ministers, on extending our science investment to unify all regions of this country and strengthen those urban economies.

[Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)]

But the problem is that in my constituency in the Yorkshire coalfield, there are 20 times fewer people employed in science and technology innovation than in Cambridge. We can be proud of what Cambridge has achieved, but why should areas such as mine be so left behind? There is no economic reason why the golden triangle between Greater London, Cambridge and Oxford should be preferred over the rest of the country, so is it pure politics?

[George Freeman]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman could not be more wrong; it is quite the opposite. The truth is that the Oxford-Cambridge-London triangle is golden for a reason: it is home to two of the world’s top three universities and five of top 15. Our central mission is to ensure that we grow an R&D economy all around the country that nurtures and invests in research, including a fantastic cluster in Yorkshire: the Yorkshire bioeconomy, advanced manufacturing in Sheffield, and Doncaster. We are investing in all that, but one does not create the Oxford-Cambridge triangle overnight; it requires us to invest with local leaders, as they are doing across the north-east in County Durham and Northumbria, in the innovative companies of tomorrow. This is a historic moment for the former coalfields.