Teesworks Joint Venture

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Lee Rowley]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: the report in front of us says explicitly that the accusations levelled at this project are not true. It is beholden on Members in this place, when they get things wrong, to say that that is the case; and it is vital that we ensure that this project gets going, keeps going, accelerates even further and gets the benefits for Tees Valley as soon as possible.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

The report says:

“We did not see sufficient information provided to Board to allow them to provide effective challenge and undertake the level of due diligence expected of a commercial Board”?

Does the Minister think that is acceptable? Can he expect the people of Teesside to have confidence that decisions being taken in this way are in their best interests or will deliver best value for money? Is it not time to get the National Audit Office to look at the matter?

[Lee Rowley]

The hon. Lady needs to ensure that when she quotes from that report, she does so with completeness. It is also the case that paragraph 4.8 of the report says:

“we have sufficient evidence and consistency of views to form our conclusions as set out in the report.”

The hon. Lady was in this place a few months ago saying that the report would not be sufficient and referring to the pretence of an “independent” inquiry, which she is now quoting from. Labour Members cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that the inquiry does not work and then, when conclusions come out that they do not like, seek to disregard them.

Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Julie Elliott Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 3rd July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

It is an honour to rise to oppose this Bill in the strongest possible terms. I was very disappointed in how the Bill was presented by the Secretary of State, who left his place without even listening to other Front-Bench speeches. I was incredibly encouraged, however, by the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns), who gave a reasoned and constructive speech, and, of course, by my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). She comes to these issues from a different place from me, but I agreed with every word she said.

I want to cover three main areas: the unprecedented powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State and, by implication, the removal of balanced decision making from those in local government who have been elected to serve their local communities; the incompatibility of the Bill with international law and the conflation of the UK’s long-standing cross-party position in respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights with the state of Israel; and the exposure of the UK Government to extended and repeated legal challenge, which would take away money that, as the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Sir Simon Clarke) said, needs to be spent in our local communities.

Let me go through those three points. The Government have often stated their commitment to devolution, and they have delivered it in many areas, allowing as much decision making as possible to take place near the people whom politicians are elected to serve. This Bill flies in the face of that claim. It will act as a gagging order on local authorities in a way that no other piece of legislation does. Many in local government have raised huge concerns about the impact of the Bill, including the Local Government Chronicle, the Local Government Association and the TUC. Particular concerns have been raised about the Bill’s impact on the 6 million local government pensioners. Is that really the Government’s intention? The Bill will ban public bodies—mainly local authorities but also universities and others—from working within current procurement rules and making their own decisions appropriate to their own areas. If we look to history to inform the future, we will see that the most effective example in my lifetime was the successful campaign against the apartheid regime in South Africa. That undoubtedly helped bring down that regime and led to democracy in South Africa, which is something that the international community and the UK should be proud of. Are we really suggesting that we should not be allowed to take such a position again?

I turn to the Bill’s incompatibility with international law and the UK’s long-standing cross-party position in respect of the Occupied Palestinian Territories and the Golan Heights, which are being conflated with the state of Israel. Why does the Bill highlight those three areas? On the face of it, it looks as though the Secretary of State wishes to penalise councils that have acted not against the state of Israel but against illegal settlements built on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, in flagrant defiance of successive UN Security Council resolutions, which the UK helped draft and voted in favour of. It seems to me that the UK Government are throwing all sense to the wind. We all wish to see this part of the world living in peace. The violence that has erupted today is an example of how crucial it is to bring peace to this area. The failure to distinguish between the sovereign territory of Israel and the territories occupied in 1967, as outlined in UN Security Council resolution 2334, is an alarming deviation from the long-standing UK policy. I ask the Secretary of State to look again and remove the most contentions parts of the Bill. Those who push this Bill make a very dangerous conflation between legitimate criticism of illegal Israeli actions and the horror of antisemitism, which we all abhor.

Finally, and briefly—I am going to stick to the time limit—this Bill, if it goes through in its current state, will result in an appalling waste of money. It will undoubtedly lead to not one, not two but numerous legal challenges, with each costing the Government, and therefore the British taxpayer, an enormous amount of money. In the current economic climate, throwing things to the wind and rushing headlong into such a Bill, which does not solve the problem that it sets out to solve, is absolutely irresponsible in the first degree. I ask the Government to either look again and remove the contentious clauses, or start again and bring to the House a Bill that actually does what it sets out to do and that sorts out the problem and does not cause utter chaos in this area of policy making.

Teesworks: Accountability and Scrutiny

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

This is an important debate. I raised the issue at Prime Minister’s questions a month ago, and I stand here today unsatisfied at this Government’s progress on being transparent with the people of this country on such a crucial issue.

This debate is not only about the conduct of government, both regional and national, but about priorities, the economy, the cost of living and trust. It is a debate about hard-working communities in the north-east that are being let down by their elected representatives. The north-east has suffered the greatest cuts to public spending since the Conservative Government took power in 2010, through their programme of austerity and their abolition of our regional development agency, One North East, which focused economic regeneration across the region from Sunderland to Teesside—its abolition damaged our economic prospects.

The beauty parade of the levelling-up competitions since 2019 was exposed by the BBC “Panorama” programme last year for tilting investment to the wealthy Conservative seats of Richmond and Newark while places like Stockton and Billingham missed out. The dereliction of the former Prime Minister David Cameron and the then Business Secretary, Sajid Javid, in letting the Redcar steel site collapse in 2015 was a shocking contrast to the intervention under Labour in 2009, which allowed the site’s rebirth with SSI.

Conservative Governments under five successive Prime Ministers have undermined both private and public investment in the north-east of England, which is why the people of Tees Valley were entitled to hope that, despite abandoning steel on Teesside eight years ago, the Tories’ belated promise to develop the SSI site would be made good.

In Sunderland, we know the importance of investment, because it gave birth to Nissan and its advanced manufacturing supply chain. We know the benefits that industrial rejuvenation provides in terms of good jobs that are skilled, well-paid and vital to local pride. On Teesside, the site that has become known as Teesworks is rightly billed as the biggest industrial opportunity in Europe. A large-scale site, connected to the port, with good energy supplies and the experienced industrial workforce on Teesside is not just a regional opportunity for the people of Middlesbrough, Stockton, Redcar, Hartlepool and the wider north-east; it should be an international opportunity for the UK.

That is what makes the details that have emerged about the activities of Ben Houchen and the South Tees Development Corporation so troubling. It is why this attempt by the Conservative Government to water down transparency and accountability is so damaging to the confidence that private investors need to have if Teesworks is going to be a success, as we all want it to be. It is why last month I asked the Prime Minister whether he or any of his Ministers had given commitments to BP, Equinor or any other companies about contracts at the Teesworks site. I was appalled by the triviality of his reply, when he asserted:

“Contracts at the site will be a commercial matter for the companies involved.”—[Official Report, 10 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 334.]

We know already that interventions by STDC are shaking the confidence of outside investors. We need the confidence of an inquiry that only the NAO can provide, because we know that other issues in Tees Valley are already giving private investors cause for concern about their investments due to the behaviour of the Mayor and actors around the combined authority.

The Financial Times has done a superlative job of setting out the complicated issues around Teesworks. Another report by Jennifer Williams today about issues with Mayor Ben Houchen’s approach to PD Ports suggests there are wider behavioural issues at stake. Its headline reads, “UK port accuses Ben Houchen of wasting public funds in legal action”, and, “Mayor accused of risking ‘the public purse and the reputation of Teesside’”. As the article states:

“PD Ports owns and operates Teesport, the country’s fifth-largest port by tonnage”.

It is an important asset for the north of England. Back in April 2021, The Daily Telegraph reported that the Mayor was

“mulling an audacious takeover of PD Ports”,

which is owned by Brookfield, and was seeking to “absorb” its container gateway. It is not for me to comment on a Conservative Mayor’s seeming addiction to nationalising economic assets, but since that article the issue has ended up in court.

Given the troubles at Teesworks, the Financial Times reports:

“Court papers filed by PD accused the STDC of foul play, claiming its chief operating officer at the time, Jerry Hopkinson, was told by then-STDC board member Paul Booth that the corporation’s intention was to buy the port ‘at a discount’ by denying access to its land and then ‘flip it to make a profit’.”

Mr Booth contests the account, while STDC itself says that the comments

“were made in a personal capacity”.

This is concerning. The problem that the people of Tees Valley and the country face is that there are clearly now a series of issues regarding the conduct of elected and appointed officials engaged with Tees Valley Combined Authority and STDC. These problems reflect troubling allegations at Teesworks.

The cavalier approach of Conservative Ministers and the Mayor to transparency and accountability is harming the investment prospects for Teesside. In case Ministers have forgotten, the rule of law stands at the cornerstone of our democracy. Not only are citizens entitled to know that the taxes they contribute will be spent well and that value is not being extracted from the public realm due to inappropriate dealings behind closed doors; businesses are entitled to know that their property cannot be simply nationalised by local Mayors to, as is suggested at STDC, “flip a profit”. The only way to end the doubts that investors and the public have about activities undertaken by Mayor Ben Houchen, TVCA, STDC and Teesworks is to ensure that there is a full investigation by the NAO. There can be no confidence in the pretence of an “independent” inquiry touted by a Secretary of State who has, in his own words, already found his Conservative colleagues innocent of all charges.

Given the economic situation in which this Government have left the country, we simply cannot allow more taxpayers’ money to be wasted, as it is here. That is why the Humble Address has been designed to enforce transparency and accountability on a Government who have, at every opportunity, tried to hide what they get up to and left hard-working taxpayers in the dark. Ministers have been involved in Teesworks from day one, so why has it taken the work of investigative journalists to bring this to light for the Government to realise that this merits an investigation at all? Is this wilful ignorance, or is it a fear of the public knowing what is really going on?

We have the covid inquiry, the hidden communications, the whole Boris Johnson Administration, and now this.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. That is the second time the hon. Lady has referred to sitting Members by name. I know that it is complicated because there are former Prime Ministers and former Secretaries of State who can be referred to by name, but, otherwise, Members must be referred to by their constituency, as I am sure the hon. Lady well knows.

[Julie Elliott]

I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.

As I and many other colleagues have noted, there is a way out of this for the Government. They can commit to the full National Audit Office investigation, which is so needed in an issue as important as this. They can let go of the idea of the Secretary of State picking the people he wants to carry out the investigation, as has happened with the investigation into the ecocide off the coast of Teesside, and let the NAO do its job, as it has the experience, capacity and independence to do this properly. There must be a reason why the Government do not want this to happen. I ask the Minister, as the Secretary of State is not in his place: why will he not support Labour’s call for a comprehensive, independent investigation by the NAO, so that we can get to the bottom of what has actually gone on? Does he know something that the rest of us do not? When the investigation takes place, can he assure the House that those who were engaged in the process will be able to speak freely and honestly, irrespective of any non-disclosure agreements in place? That is extremely important, because the investigation needs to be thorough, transparent, and, above all, trusted. I know that “trust” and “honesty” are not the buzzwords of this Government, and they are not the buzzwords of this process, but they need to be.

Levelling Up Fund: Tipton and Wednesbury

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (in the Chair)]

I will call Shaun Bailey to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. As is the convention for 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up.

[Shaun Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Tipton and Wednesbury and the Levelling Up Fund.

People across the Black Country, in Tipton and Wednesbury specifically—whether they live on the Tibby estate, the Lost City, Friar Park or the Woods estate—are proud of their communities and where they come from. I am proud to represent an area with a long tradition and a proud sense of community.

Our great Black Country towns of Tipton and Wednesbury have consistently felt like they have been left behind. When I was elected to this place three years ago, I made one simple pledge to them: I would ensure that they were never forgotten again. That has been at the forefront of the work I have done since I was elected as the Member of Parliament for West Bromwich West in 2019. Of course, we have to remember that in 2019, the current Government were elected on a manifesto to level up and invest in communities like those in Tipton and Wednesbury, and indeed across the Black Country.

We know that talent and genius are uniformly distributed throughout the country, but opportunity, wealth and standards of living are not. Unfortunately, in my area, we have acute issues and problems with standards of living and access to opportunity. It is vital that we close that gap. We know that as it widens, it will only compound the problems in communities such as the ones I represent. I want to talk about the importance of the levelling-up fund to the communities I represent, in particular the towns of Tipton and Wednesbury, and to tell the story of the process they have gone through on this journey, particularly in respect of the levelling-up fund.

First, we need to set the context. Look, for example, at employment opportunities. Sandwell Metropolitan Borough, the local authority area that contains my constituency, has an employment rate below that of the west midlands, and indeed Great Britain. In 2004, Sandwell’s unemployment rate was 8.7%, compared with 5.2% in the west midlands and 4.8% nationally; in 2009, that unemployment rate rose to 14.4%, compared with 8.5% and 6.8% respectively. In 2022, unemployment in Sandwell stood at 6.2%, while the national average was 3.8%. Sandwell’s labour market profile shows that the economically inactive rate in Sandwell is 10% higher than either the west midlands or the wider country.

Let us look at wages. In April 2022, median gross weekly wages in Sandwell were £470 for all employees, compared to £532.50 across the UK as a whole, and £549.80 for full-time employees, compared to £640 across the UK as a whole. On average, therefore, my constituents take home £90 a week less than the average person in the United Kingdom. Equally, we have to address education gaps. At early key stage 2, 55% of pupils attending state-funded schools in my local authority area achieve the expected standard, which is below the national average of 59% and the west midlands average of 57%. The gap continues to grow at GCSE level, where 61% of students attending state-funded schools in my area achieve a standard pass, which is below the national state-funded average of 69% and the west midlands average of 67%. It goes without saying that Sandwell is the eighth most deprived upper-tier local authority area in the country. One of my wards is, I think, the second most deprived in the west midlands region.

In setting the context of the importance of the levelling-up fund to my communities, we can see that the acute challenges and problems that I was sent to Parliament to address on behalf of my constituents and the communities of myself, my neighbours and friends are absolutely self-evident.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

5. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding for adult social services.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

16. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of funding for adult social services.

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

This Government have recognised the pressures facing adult social services and have provided councils with access to an additional £10 billion of dedicated funding for adult social care for the three years up to 2019-20.

[Rishi Sunak]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. In the short term, £1 billion of extra funding for social care services was announced in the Budget. In the longer term, the Department of Health and Social Care will soon outline its Green Paper and a longer term sustainable settlement. However, the answer is not just about the amount of money that we spend. Her council is a fantastic example of providing good outcomes for social care by using taxpayer resources prudently. Just last week, it was named a top 10 council for social care.

[Julie Elliott]

The Princess of Wales Centre dementia day-care facility, which is based in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) but serves the whole of Sunderland, recently announced that it will close in June, partly due to the cut in local government funding. What will the Minister do to help to support my constituents and those of my neighbour before the extra funding becomes available? Will he meet me and my colleagues to discuss the matter?

[Rishi Sunak]

I would be happy to meet the hon. Lady and her colleagues or, indeed, her local council. Obviously, as she just heard me say, the Budget announced an extra £1 billion for social care, which her local authority will be able to use on its own priorities, perhaps including the example that she raised.

Freehold Estate Fees

Julie Elliott Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd January 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), who is a close neighbour, for securing this debate on such an important issue, which affects every constituency in the country, and certainly many of my constituents in Sunderland Central.

In my years as an MP, numerous constituents have come to me about the subject of freehold properties and management costs. They come with real issues regarding the environment around their properties and the lack of care by companies. They often pay large sums of money that increase without much notice or any relation to cost. They are paying the money—often hundreds of pounds a year—that they agreed to and not getting the services or the maintenance that they are paying for. In an area such as Sunderland, which is a low-wage area, it is often a large proportion of the money coming into people’s homes every week. They are keeping their side of the contract, but the companies are not keeping theirs.

I would like to highlight a couple of things that have happened to my constituents. A light in a communal area took six months to get fixed, and when it was fixed the light was unsuitable for the job it had to do, and was not to the standard of the one before. That led to all sorts of issues to do with safety and all the other problems, including antisocial behaviour, that come when areas are not lighted.

Another example was people coming to do a grounds maintenance job sitting in the van all day because there was nobody to direct them or instruct them about what to do. Not only is paying people to sit in a van not knowing what to do an absolute waste of the company’s resources, it wastes the hard-earned money of my constituents, who pay fees for a job that should be done.

I endorse the points that have been made by my colleagues, and I will not repeat them. Sadly in the current climate, many people would like local authorities to take over maintenance issues, but in Sunderland we have had cuts to our local authority budgets of some £250 million since 2010, so financially it is simply not an option. Councils are struggling to maintain their frontline services, and they do not have the funds to put aside to take over that responsibility.

Effective and intelligent regulation can ensure that this does not happen again. Transparency needs to be brought into the system, and the Government need to act. It is not good enough simply to act in future on new properties; we have had many years of problems building up. In some cases, it is making houses unsellable, which needs to be addressed. The Government need to look very carefully at what they can do to mitigate the problems of people who already live in and own their own properties, and are paying these very unscrupulous, completely not transparent fees.