Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Logan Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Antony Higginbotham (Burnley) (Con)]

What progress the Government has made on ensuring regional equality of economic opportunity.

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

What steps the Government is taking to promote regional economic growth to support recovery from the covid-19 outbreak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julia Lopez]

My hon. Friend has been a fantastic champion of Burnley’s small businesses since his election. The Government are determined to reduce imbalances in access to finance for smaller firms. Some 83,000 SMEs outside London have already benefited from programmes run by the British Business Bank, which is the UK’s Government-owned economic development bank. Infrastructure is also central to our economic plan, providing opportunities for SMEs throughout the supply chain. We will publish a national infrastructure strategy, including our ambitions on levelling up across the whole UK, later in the autumn.

[Mark Logan]

Pubs and restaurants in Bolton have been harder hit than those in nearly any other of the UK’s 650 constituencies, largely due to an unfairly enforced economic lockdown. Will my hon. Friend assure me that the Government are doing everything they can to support businesses in Bolton? I urge the Government to align our restrictions with those in the rest of the region.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. It is an incredibly challenging time for constituents in Bolton North East and in many other areas of the country, and I know they will appreciate his advocacy. Local lockdown decisions are determined following advice from national medical experts, local leaders and directors of public health, in accordance with data provided by the Joint Biosecurity Centre. We consider case rates, trends in the data and causes, but also local geography, before making judgments about whether restrictions are needed. We of course keep all these measures under constant review.

I share my hon. Friend’s concern for the hospitality sector, and I have spoken to the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), about the taskforce he is setting up as Business Minister to work through some of the issues for the night-time economy in particular.