Future Government Spending

Debate between Mark Garnier and David Morris

Wednesday 4th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)]

It has been a pleasure to speak twice this week under your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker. If this is to be my last speech in this Parliament with you in the Chair, may I say that I have had an absolutely great time under your guidance as Deputy Speaker? However, I do hope to come back, and to see you there again and we could have another life of five years together.

Today’s issue is a serious one, but I would like this speech to be in the right vein; it should deal with what this means to those watching our debate today. We are bandying figures about all over the place, but what do they actually mean to people? I can talk only about my experiences over the past five years. I was a newly elected MP and we were going through the Lobby making decisions that we knew were going to affect people’s lives. But we had to take these decisions to get the country on the right track. Over my five years as a first-term MP—after the election I hope to be in a second term, but I do not count my chickens—I have wanted to see what has happened in my community. The first thing I remember talking about was a road in my community. I am glad to say that that road, which took 70 years to build, came to fruition with my guidance and under the coalition Government. Costing £123 million, the road will join up the M6 with the port at Heysham and will increase the prosperity in the area tenfold. For every £1 spent on the road, £10 will be put back into the local economy.

We are considering building a new power station. My constituency already has two nuclear power stations, which account for 2,000 jobs in the area. Thankfully, again under this coalition Government, we have a footprint for a third nuclear power station, which will be completed in the next five to 10 years, creating a further 2,000 new jobs.

Let me turn now to schools. Without wanting to be overtly political, schools that were closed down under the previous Government have reopened under the coalition. In my constituency, a school was closed down and has now reopened. Sadly, another school, Skerton, has closed, but I am fighting to get it reopened as a free school. We can find the money to carry out all this work at a time when austerity is at its worst.

Sea wall defences have been built in my constituency, at a cost of more than £10 million. A mandate went out just before the last general election in which five out of the 10 categories of coastal protection were wiped away. Thankfully, we have put two of them back, and we have saved an area off Sunderland Point.

[Mark Garnier]

My hon. Friend has talked a great deal about how much money the Government have put into his area. Does he also not recognise that private sector investment, such as the £140 million of private sector investment that will be put into the Wyre Forest in the future—