Levelling-up Agenda: Tees Valley

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

I almost have to laugh. Talking down Teesside? It is the greatest honour of my life to represent the amazing and diverse citizens of Stockton North, and to champion the vibrant history and culture of the Tees Valley. The real problem is that for the past 10 years, the Tories have been booting down Teesside. Their mind-boggling incompetence in handling the covid crisis is yet another catastrophic kick to the region. Pointing out the heartbreaking inequalities that affect our constituents is not talking down our area. It is standing up for our area in the face of a national Conservative Government who have neglected the north-east for years. The Tees economy is on the cliff edge of a hard Brexit, and the lack of investment and post-pandemic rebuilding will push it into the abyss.

The North East England chamber of commerce policy director, Jonathan Walker, got it exactly right when he said:

“The human, social and economic cost of this is appalling. Levelling up has to mean more than just shiny projects. It must mean giving young people in our region the same life chances as they’d get in other parts of the country.”

He came out with another statement today; he said that the Chancellor’s announcement today was a missed opportunity:

“On the face of it a levelling-up fund sounds good but it is far too small in scale and ambition to be effective.”

I want our young people to get the benefits, but sadly I see no prospect of them getting the support they need. There are plenty of these shiny projects, but the absence of substance breaks my heart, because they could have so much more. Our constituents deserve better than this. They need better than this.

I appeal to the Minister to stress to his colleagues the need for true levelling up; for help sustaining jobs and creating new ones; to be open, honest and transparent when dealing with public money; to end the health inequalities that continue to blight our communities; and, perhaps above all, to give our young people real hope that they can have the careers they want and a future they can look forward to. Let us make the expression “levelling up” more than a cliché. Let us make it a demonstration of action.

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

I ask Back Benchers to keep within five minutes to start with. I am planning to call Front Benchers at around 5.15 pm. Simon Clarke.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Howell]

The Tees Valley Mayor’s initiatives, such as the Tees Flex bus service, are a very good step in the right direction. I wish that that service would come up to the north of my constituency.

We must remember that, in order to level up, the benefits and successes of regeneration from freeports, green jobs and so on must be distributed across the region. The critical advantage is connections to those projects by air, bus, train, bike—whatever. I welcome the Chancellor’s decision to provide funding to start a feasibility study on Ferryhill station and include it in the national infrastructure plan. The residents have been asking for it for 24 years. When a certain Tony Blair was the MP for Sedgefield, there was no progress whatever. The comment we got from the local Labour group was, “Thatcher stopped that.” Well, 24 years is plenty of time to fix it.

My point is that we need a long-term plan focused on connectivity. It is important to have an integrated transport system and short, medium and long-term commitments to encourage optimistic investment by business and housing in places where it is needed. We look forward to further benefits of opening this rail connection, which would open the door and provide a foundation to better connect Teesside with Tyneside and Wearside and improve connectivity.

Alongside the levelling up of our physical infrastructure, we must also level up our social infrastructure. This funding will be vital in the medium to long-term response to covid, since research shows that the pandemic is likely to exacerbate existing social and economic problems in left-behind neighbourhoods. What I mean by levelling up our social infrastructure is building social capital and investing in our communities and community projects.

I am co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for “left behind” neighbourhoods, and we have identified 122 constituencies with left-behind communities. We define those by using the community needs index and taking the bottom 10% of the wards in England. Some 30% of those were in former—I say again, former—red wall constituencies, and seven of the eight constituencies in the Tees Valley include left-behind neighbourhoods.

One proposal, for a community wealth fund, would provide investment and put left-behind communities in charge of the spend, enabling them to build the social capital and civic infrastructure they need. I welcome the Chancellor’s commitment in the spending review to a levelling up fund and the new community fund, and I hope to work with all local colleagues to maximise its application in our area.

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Before I call the last two Back Benchers, I remind them that I want the Front- Bench speeches to start at a quarter past.

Oral Answers to Questions

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

1. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of Government funding for local authorities in England.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

13. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of Government funding for local authorities in England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Luke Hall)]

Next year’s settlement for local government responds to the pressures facing councils by providing access to the largest year-on-year increase in spending power for a decade. Core spending power is expected to rise from £46.2 billion to £49.1 billion in 2020-21—an estimated 4.4% real-terms increase.

[Luke Hall]

Manchester City Council will receive a £30.9 million increase in the provisional settlement—a 7% rise that includes 17.6% in additional adult social care grant. Decisions on the future funding formula are to be taken in the weeks ahead, but we will release some provisional figures in the coming weeks for working groups to look at.

[Judith Cummins]

If the Government are to deliver on their commitment to the north, combined authorities must receive fair funding. The Government have promised to level up throughout the country, so will the Minister confirm that in any new devolution deal funding for West Yorkshire Combined Authority will match that of any other combined authority, such as Greater Manchester, on a per-head basis?

[Luke Hall]

Negotiations on the deal are ongoing, but we are optimistic. We can confirm that Bradford Council will receive an increase of £25.6 million in the settlement—a 6.4% real-terms rise in core spending power on last year.

Integrated Communities

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work that I know she did to promote integration and community cohesion as a councillor in Tower Hamlets. She raises the important issue of people abusing the valuable right to choose home education for their children, and that is why, under the strategy that my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary has set out, we will review the guidelines for home education and particularly look at those instances—there is evidence of them already—in which people claim to be home educating their children but are in fact sending them to unregistered, unregulated schools, which is clearly a bad outcome for those children.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I broadly welcome the strategy and the opportunities it provides to Bradford to become a more cohesive place for all. I urge the Government to make sure that their aims and ambitions are matched by sufficient funding to make them a reality. I also ask the Secretary of State to realise that the root cause of many of these problems is a lack of opportunity. There are too few good jobs, low levels of educational attainment and, ultimately, too many people living in poverty. If we truly want more integrated communities, we have to deal with those fundamental issues.

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady is right to raise the importance of opportunities and how having a more integrated society will help with that, particularly learning English, but it is about a lot more than that and other skills are required as well. It is good that we have a strong economy with more people—including more women—employed than ever before. That is a prerequisite, but of course there is a lot more to do, and I hope she agrees that the strategy will help.

Department for Transport

Judith Cummins Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 27th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for securing this debate through the Backbench Business Committee and providing Members with an opportunity to hold the Government to account on their spending. I am particularly pleased that we are debating the supplementary estimates for the Department for Transport, because I have frequently raised the issue of regional transport disparities in the House, and at the heart of this is the question of funding.

Put simply, the way the Department currently allocates and spends money is deeply unfair. It is unfair because its decisions on where to invest are based on a narrow and ultimately unsatisfactory value-for-money assessment. If the Government target transport spending in areas of high economic development or places where people already use public transport extensively, they are reinforcing inequalities rather than correcting them. Transport spending needs to be used as a tool for unlocking economic potential, and of course investment in public transport is one of the key ways of encouraging people to use it.

Bradford, like towns and cities across the north, is held back by a persistent lack of investment in our transport infrastructure. In recent months we have seen the cancellation of many rail electrification projects, the postponement of essential motorway upgrades in Yorkshire, and combined authorities forced to reduce bus services owing to continuing budget cuts.

The north as a whole, and Yorkshire in particular, is getting a raw deal. Recent analysis by the Institute for Public Policy Research North has found that the true extent of regional spending disparity is considerably higher than the Government’s estimates. Under this analysis, future transport investment in London is 2.6 times higher per person than in the north. London is set to receive over £4,000 per person, compared with just £1,600 per person across the north as a whole. The situation is set to be even worse in Yorkshire, the lowest of all regions according to IPPR North, where the figure is just £844 per person.

The Government’s future spending plans therefore fail to address the historical under-investment in northern transport and infrastructure. Addressing the historical underfunding in Yorkshire will require step-by-step increases in per-person levels of funding until they are equal to those in London. The ambition to create a northern powerhouse and rebalance our national economy will remain unmet for as long as the current funding disparities in transport remain in place.

Let me be clear that I have little to no problem with the Government investing in London’s transport system; I believe that all regions benefit from a modern and extensive public transport system. What I do have a problem with are the gross inequities between different parts of the country. These inequities have real consequences for my constituents. Bradford, a city of over half a million people, with a young and enterprising population and home to some of the country’s best known companies, does not have a through railway station and is not directly on an inter-city network. This means that train journeys between Bradford and Leeds take over 20 minutes and average only 33 mph. Is it any wonder that nearly 75% of the 45,000 journeys between Bradford and Leeds each day are made by car? Bradford’s unsatisfactory rail link is a perfect example of the wider problem. For too long, ambitious transport projects in the north have been passed over, while billions have been spent on similar projects down south.

[Lilian Greenwood]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about the need for regional rebalancing. Does she agree that the Department for Transport needs to make changes to the transport business case methodology so that it takes account of the wider economic benefits that can flow from investment in transport, rather than just journey time savings for large numbers of existing transport users?

[Judith Cummins]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, as always.

The establishment of the first sub-national transport body, Transport for the North, is a welcome step in correcting the regional imbalance, and I am particularly pleased that its strategic plan includes details of the northern powerhouse railway, including a new station in Bradford. In order to make this plan a reality, the Government must ensure that Transport for the North has the powers and, crucially, the money it needs. One way to quickly and effectively start making progress would be to unpick the skewed value-for-money formula used by the Department for Transport to make investment decisions, and to create a new formula that stops favouring areas with historically high levels of investment.

Bradford and the north face particular challenges and opportunities, and these opportunities require real action by the Government. Above all, they require a real financial commitment from the Government in order to address the historical level of underfunding of transport in the north. This is the only way to unlock the north’s economic potential and to put fairness back into our transport system.

Yorkshire Devolution

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis]

I absolutely share the frustration that my hon. Friend expresses. I am seeking today to engage in the most constructive fashion with the northern powerhouse Minister, and I think this represents a very important opportunity for him and for the Secretary of the State to send the strongest signal of intent to the north of England that they are listening to what people are saying, and are prepared to make decisions that best serve those people’s interests.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. Does he agree that, if Government get behind the coalition of the willing, a deal for Yorkshire will be possible? The Secretary of State needs to deal with this issue with the utmost importance and get a date in his diary to meet with Yorkshire leaders as a matter of urgency. To do otherwise would be a terrible indictment of his commitment to securing a deal for Yorkshire.

[Dan Jarvis]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. She knows that this Friday in York, the coalition of the willing—leaders from across our area—will meet to reaffirm their support for the wider Yorkshire proposal. I very much hope that when the Minister sums up, he is able to confirm that either he or the Secretary of State will arrange a meeting to sit down with those local government leaders and discuss the way forward.

I was explaining the fact that results in education and health outcomes mean that in our area we lag behind other more affluent parts of the country. I do not begrudge any other part of the country its affluence, but I do understand why people in our region are disillusioned and angry. That desire for Brexit, and the need for devolution, are symptoms of the same malaise. I believe that if we are to make Britain healthy again and heal its divisions, we need a new economic and political settlement that involves genuine devolution of political and economic power that will spread prosperity and opportunity to towns and counties of all regions.

In short, if we are serious about closing the north-south divide, piecemeal changes simply are not good enough. The solution must be as ambitious as the challenge is profound. That is why I believe that a wider Yorkshire deal is the way forward. By working together across the whole of our county and, like in the west midlands, not being confined to just one city, we would have the collective clout and the brand reputation to co-operate and compete not only with other parts of the UK, but with other parts of the world.