Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Kate Hollern Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I remind Members why we are here today: the site on Preston New Road rocked houses, damaged communities and terrified residents not just on one occasion, but on two or three. Quite rightly, the Conservative Government put a ban on fracking until they could be convinced that it could be safely drilled out and would cause little disruption to communities.

When the Prime Minister was on Radio Lancashire, host Graham Liver—we have a very good host, and I congratulate him on his wedding—cornered the Prime Minister in the first 30 seconds of speaking to her when he said, “What has changed?” She did not have an answer. He asked three or four times but she still could not answer. She just kept saying that she was very clear that people would be consulted. He asked her what that consultation would look like. She did not know.

Government Members accusing Opposition Members of taking over the Order Paper is an absolute joke. Your Government put in the ban. Your Government said that the ban would not be lifted—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It is not “your” Government; it is “their” Government.

[Kate Hollern]

Their Government put in the ban. Their Government said that they would lift the ban when safety had been assured, but that has not happened. So they can play politics and find an excuse to vote against their conscience, but they cannot blame Opposition Members. I do not support fracking, Lancashire does not support fracking, and the Government have failed to deliver any assurance that it is safe.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Kate Hollern Excerpts

Tuesday 9th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab) [V]]

After 10 years of Government cuts, Blackburn is one of the most deprived towns in the country. We have been under additional restrictions for longer than almost anywhere else. Our high street has been decimated, and going into the pandemic, Blackburn’s health outcomes were some of the worst in the country. So it is right that Blackburn has been identified as a high priority for the Government’s levelling up fund, and I look forward to working with the council on the further development of the exciting plans for the borough to recover and grow.

Having read the fine print of the Government’s self-styled levelling-up agenda, though, I must say I am disappointed. I am concerned that the money is not going to all the right places. Some is going to the Chancellor’s constituency, where multimillion-pound houses are on sale, yet deprived areas like Halton and Salford—both identified as being in the top 20 local authorities—are not so fortunate. There is clearly something wrong with that, so I ask the Minister what level of involvement Ministers have in choosing winners and losers, and whether the Department will share with the House the formula that the Government use to allocate funding.

My next issue is with the Government forcing regions to compete with one another. If the Government really want the regions to recover, all regions should get their fair share of investment. It must mean that the Government accept that places like Blackburn are starting from a lower base and will recover more slowly, and therefore the Government must put more into the most deprived regions to unleash their potential. The Government also need to recognise that the funding announced in the Budget does not come anywhere near the £15 billion that has been cut from council budgets over the past decade.

The hon. Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) boasted about what successive Tory Governments had done for Lancashire. He failed to mention that Lancashire councils have faced, on average, 45% cuts in the last decade. That is not levelling up Lancashire—it is levelling down, particularly in public services.

Briefly, for the sake of time, my final issue is with the Government’s double counting and the smoke and mirrors strategy they deploy. Half of the £6 million being handed out to councils this coming financial year as part of the levelling-up fund has been reshuffled from towns fund funding. The £150 million budget of the pinch point fund announced in 2018 has now been assumed into the levelling-up fund, and £175 million for freeports has also been redistributed. So when the Government talk about a £4.8 billion levelling-up fund and a £3.6 billion towns fund, they need to be honest about the fact that they are playing musical chairs with old money in many cases.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Hollern Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend was a great champion of the strategy in the previous Parliament, and I hope that he will be here. One of its early fruits is the industrial strategy challenge fund, which is already making resources available for research in healthcare and medicine, artificial intelligence, clean energy, driverless cars, advanced materials, and satellites and space technology. That is exactly in line with what he and his group have been urging.

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

T2. The Conservative manifesto pledged to deliver a country“where wealth and opportunity are spread across every community in the United Kingdom”,and I see that Northern Ireland has just had its share. Will the Secretary of State tell me how the Government’s industrial strategy will bring wealth and opportunity to places such as Blackburn, where the national average wage is far less than it is in Maidenhead, for example? Blackburn has seen too many cuts from this Government and it is time that we had some investment, so how quickly can the strategy be delivered?

[Greg Clark]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place. She will discover over time, I hope, that a key part of the industrial strategy is to drive growth in all parts of the country. My Department and I have looked to get funds out of Whitehall and into local places in every part of the country, including £320 million in Lancashire for the funding of the growth deal. She will also be aware that it is necessary to have an economy that is prospering, and one thing that would stand in the way of that is the record peacetime taxation with which the manifesto on which she stood was threatening the country.