Britishvolt
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Ian Lavery
Thanks for that intervention. The supply chain is so, so important. Britishvolt suggested at the time that there would be 3,000 jobs created at the site and 5,000 jobs created in the supply chain. That would have been felt throughout the whole of our region in the north-east and probably further afield.
Links with Nissan would be brilliant. We need to take a leaf out of Nissan’s book in the way it has operated in the north-east for so many years. We were hoping to see some sort of link. Nissan is looking towards an on-site gigafactory with Envision AESC, which is in progress as we speak.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government seem to have forgotten and neglected the area north of Teesside? This great part of our region, whether it is Tyneside, Northumberland or Wearside, always seems to be forgotten. We were forgotten when it came to a freeport, levelling up and now Britishvolt, which, as my hon. Friend says, would have created jobs across the region and given it a brighter future.
Ian Lavery
That is very, very well put. People in our region are very much aware that there has been investment in Teesside. I welcome every penny coming into the region, by the way—every single ha’penny of investment we can get—but it has to be further afield than just one particular pocket of the north-east region. As my hon. Friend says, there has been a complete lack of investment in our region and it has been left behind for decades now. That is just not acceptable any more. This is the idea that could have transformed and changed that for a lot of the people we proudly represent. People were excited by the thought they actually had the potential to get a decent job with good wages, terms and conditions.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Ms Ghani
There is nothing I could disagree with there. It is absolutely right that we focus on the skilled workforce that so many of our manufacturing sectors are struggling to recruit, and any opportunity to show and share with the skilled workforces, or even help them to “skill up”, is welcome news.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
The Minister for Industry and Investment Security (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The latest statistics, published in February 2022, show that 3.2 million households in England were fuel poor in 2020. Updated estimates are due to be published next month. Fuel-poor households can benefit from schemes including the energy company obligation, the local authority delivery scheme and the home upgrade grant, which will help them to improve the energy efficiency of their homes.
Mary Glindon
According to the Fuel Poverty Monitor released by National Energy Action today, from next April onwards the number of households in fuel poverty in the UK could reach 8.4 million. What additional targeted support will the Government provide for those on the lowest incomes—particularly those who are not receiving benefits—when the energy price guarantee increases to £3,000 in April?
Ms Ghani
The Government are committed to tackling fuel poverty, and I welcome the work of National Energy Action, which published its Fuel Poverty Monitor today to highlight the difficult situation in which many households have found themselves. Just as we provided support during covid, we are providing it now. I believe that the report looked fundamentally at means-tested benefits, pensioners and those with disabilities. The Government have committed £26 billion for 2023-24, including £900 for households on means-tested benefits, £300 for pensioners and £150 for those with disabilities, as well as an extra £1 billion to allow the extension of the household support fund. However, I know that we will continue to do more.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
Milton Keynes has been slowly becoming a globally recognised innovation hub on the Oxford-Cambridge arc, particularly on autonomous vehicles and with the connected places catapult. May I take this opportunity to congratulate my hon. Friend and Milton Keynes on achieving city status as part of the jubilee celebrations? I assure him that our funding allocation mechanism is designed to support emerging clusters such as Milton Keynes.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
George Freeman
I would be delighted to meet the hon. Lady. We have allocated £8 billion over the next three years for life science and medical research across the Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and all relevant agencies. We will launch a cancer mission shortly and I would be delighted to talk to her about it.
Fairness at Work and Power in Communities
Mary Glindon Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The announcements made in the Queen’s Speech do nothing to increase the trust that the people of North Tyneside have in the Tory Government, nor to alleviate their concerns about the rising cost of living, which is starting to bite really hard in North Tyneside. I have heard from so many of my constituents who are hurt and angered by the antics in No. 10 during partygate, while they rigidly followed covid rules. They were unable to be with relatives in hospitals or care homes and, worst of all for some, were not able to be with them in the last hours of their lives.
To add insult to injury, included in the estimated £4 billion of fraud in the furlough scheme is the North Tyneside Conservative party, with a furlough claim for a member of party staff who continued to work during lockdown. When I raised this sorry state of affairs with the Prime Minister at PMQs, he simply brushed the issue aside. Fortunately, the incident is now being properly investigated.
In North Tyneside, we have an excellent Labour council, led by our outstanding elected Mayor, Norma Redfearn. Thanks to the hard work of Norma, her cabinet and council officers, the council has fought hard to keep many important and vital services in place, despite fierce cuts from the Government. As a result of Government policy since 2010, North Tyneside has had to make savings of £131 million. The core spending per dwelling is only £1,984, compared with the average of £2,155. In this financial year, the council received £63.5 million of revenue support grant—a cut of 81.4% since 2014.
While the Government are making much of their levelling-up agenda in the Queen’s Speech, the reality is that their levelling-up plan has given North Tyneside—where unemployment runs at 6.5%, almost 2% above the national average—category 2 status while the Chancellor’s leafy Richmond constituency has been given category 1 status. Our area also missed out on the potential of 60,000 new jobs and £2.6 billion in new investment with the Treasury refusing freeport status; that affected the area from Blyth down to Wearside. I will never get over the missed opportunities from that, and nor will the people in our area. Of the 45 towns that received towns fund money, 39 were in Tory areas, leaving behind towns like Killingworth and Wallsend in my constituency.
The Tory Government have already failed the north-east on transport, cancelling the High Speed 2 north-east leg, refusing crucial upgrades to the east coast main line, and scrapping Northern Powerhouse Rail. Along with the North East chamber of commerce, I lament the fact that the transport Bill has no good news for our area. We all know good transport links are key to job creation and investment and surely should be part of any levelling-up agenda.
Despite promises, the Government have not given us a cast-iron guarantee that the electricity cables over the Tyne will be buried below the water or raised to allow world-renowned companies in Wallsend and along the rest of the Tyne to bring in potentially millions of pounds more in contracts and thousands of jobs. Smulders in Wallsend employs 600 people; it is desperate to have something done about the cables, and we have been pleading with the Government since 2017—again, no levelling up here, or, in the case of the cables, levelling down.
Far from levelling up in the north-east, the Government are levelling down the region, as in total we receive less from the levelling-up and shared prosperity funds than we did from the EU per year. With so many doubts and concerns about levelling up, perhaps the Government should listen to the chief executive of IPPR North, who warns that they
“must prioritise turning the levelling up rhetoric into reality… People need to feel the benefit of ambitious action with full accountability on this critical agenda.”
The IPPR is urging the Government to make themselves fully accountable by including in the Bill a new independent body outside London to hold the whole of Government to account against legally binding levelling-up missions. I hope to see that there will be some degree of levelling up and I want to see a level social and economic playing field for North Tyneside and the whole north-east. I doubt we will get that in this Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, but what we will see, I hope, in the not too distant future is a Labour Government who deliver for our area and keep their promises to the north-east.
Long Covid: Impact on the Workforce
Mary Glindon Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Layla Moran
The hon. Member hits the nail on the head. People can recover, and very often do, but the way to help them do that is very badly explained to employers right now. Indeed, I will come on to talk in some detail about that.
Many people were told, especially at the beginning, that long covid was something that they were making up. They were told that it was all in their head. I have a research paper here that shows that scans have been done on people’s chests and the reason they were suffering from breathlessness was that the tissue was fundamentally damaged. This is very much a real disease, which now needs a real response.
It is not just public sector workers who have dealt with this. I spoke to Rebecca, who gave evidence to the all-party parliamentary group. She was a fitness instructor, Madam Deputy Speaker. You would think that a fitness instructor would be very healthy and would have very good lungs—before the pandemic, anyway. She used to teach 14 high-intensity classes a week and ran her own business. Now long covid means that she is in bed 60% of the time and describes being
“unable to return to work, and to be the mum, wife or friend I once was”.
It is utterly heartbreaking. We now need to accept that, if we are going to live with covid, we also have to live with long covid. In the evidence sessions that the APPG took in December and January, we heard how the condition is still severely impacting the lives and livelihoods of people across the country. They described how the condition has left them unable to work, sometimes unable to move, forcing them into long periods of absence from work, dipping into their savings and doing anything to stay afloat—something that is much more difficult now with the cost of living crisis.
A study released this month by Queen Mary University concluded that becoming infected with covid increases the risk of economic hardship, especially if the individual develops long covid. Those individuals describe a patchwork of uneven availability when it comes to long covid clinics and many are desperate for treatment. We heard from one nurse, for example, who has spent thousands of pounds going to Germany to get treatment that she is not able to access here. Public sector workers gave their lives for us. When we were all allowed to be at home, they went in, and they are the ones, according to Office for National Statistics surveys, who have the highest prevalence of long covid. I believe that we owe them so much more than they have had so far.
Unsurprisingly, though, it is not just about public services. We have 1.4 million people across the country experiencing self-reported long covid symptoms. That is 2.4% of the population and that cuts across every single sector, not just the public sector.
In the hospitality sector, which, as the Minister will know, is already struggling, 2.6% of workers have long covid. If we take the 3 million workforce estimate from UKHospitality, that equates to 70,000 workers unable to do their jobs as they did before. In retail, it is 2.3%, which equates to just under 70,000 workers; for personal service, such as beauticians, it is a bit less at 6,000, but still 2.1%. Those are big numbers in sectors that are already struggling post pandemic and struggling with workers’ visas following Brexit. They do not need this.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Lady and her colleagues on securing this important debate. Does she agree that it is not only the people who have had long covid who suffer, but their family members who have to care for them? My constituent Julie Wells has had a working life of nearly 40 years. Her teenage daughter, on a second dose of covid, has been left with totally debilitating symptoms and now needs constant care. Julie hopes at best to get back to part-time work, but she may not. That is a full-time person lost to the workforce because of caring for a family member.
Layla Moran
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. The caring responsibilities are greatly increased, as is the prevalence in children. I was alerted by my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) to a case of a parent who is asking for dispensation for her child from taking examinations because she has missed so many days of school. I am talking to the Education Secretary separately about that point, but long covid affects the entire family, not just the workforce.
Some 1.5 million people have long covid, but 989,000 people say that those long covid symptoms adversely affect their day-to-day activities and 281,000 people report that their ability to undertake their day-to-day activities had been “limited a lot”. That often means they must take part-time instead of full-time work, and sadly it often means they are unable to recover well because they are pushed to try to get back to work.
The effect on business is now being better documented. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development found that a quarter of UK employers cited long covid as one of the main causes of long-term sickness absence among their staff. For small businesses, the effects can be devastating. The Federation of Small Businesses has shared guidance on how to help with statutory sick pay and arranging for temporary staff cover.
However, I am concerned that the ACAS guidance right now is pretty sparse; I hope the Minister might take that up. The guidance signposts to other websites but does not make it clear that one of the most important things to do with long covid is often to let someone rest. People say “listen to your body” when it comes to medical things; I am afraid that with long covid that is actually the treatment plan.
If someone is forced or encouraged into work by their employer—often inadvertently, if they do not have proper guidance—it can set them back and cause even more problems down the line. One of our main calls is for employer guidance, but I also urge the Government to look at the ACAS website, for example, and ensure that it is clear to employers how they can help and support their employees to stay at home and rest as long as they need to, so that they come back and we do not unnecessarily lose people from the workforce.
A legal expert speaking to the APPG described the lack of access to financial support and said,
“lots of people with Long Covid find themselves starting for the very first time to be involved in the obstacle course which is our benefit system”.
It is clear that long covid is having a serious impact on the ability of our workforce to do their jobs, and we can only expect that to get worse as the virus spreads through the population again and we get more cases of long covid.
What can we do? The all-party group has released a report on long covid this week; if the Minister has not seen it, I would be happy to give him a copy. In it, we make 10 recommendations, but I will highlight just a few. First, the Government need urgently to prioritise research treatments for long covid patients. We welcome the money already committed, but we would contrast it with the United States, for example, where $1 billion has been earmarked for this, because the US recognises the effect long covid could have on its economy and sees this as an investment. I urge the UK Government to find similar ambition.
Secondly, we call for employer guidelines, set out by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in conjunction with the Department of Health and Social Care, to help all businesses to help their employees back into work. Thirdly, we call for the UK Government to launch a compensation scheme for all those frontline workers currently living with long covid, similar to the armed forces compensation scheme.
The Minister will perhaps be aware that the process for the designation of an occupational disease is ongoing; we are hopeful that that will report back soon, and we are discussing that with the Department for Work and Pensions. That designation could be game-changing, particularly in those public sector areas where prevalence was incredibly high, such as education, the health and social care workforce and public transport, which had some of the highest prevalences of covid, particularly at the beginning.
The Office for National Statistics survey points to where we need to look. However, I urge the Government not to wait for that designation. Many of those workers, as in my examples, have already left the professions. They are leaving the sector or deciding to take early retirement, and this is a time when our economy needs a boost. It needs those experienced workers. At the moment, we are not paying any attention to that.
The main reason we secured this debate was to urge the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to look ahead and take this seriously. The best thing we can do right now is to help hard-pressed people in the UK in our fight against Putin, against the cost of living crisis and all the rest. If we are to get our economy back on its feet, we must get our workers back at their desks. If those workers have long covid, there is currently very little out there to support them or those businesses that desperately want them back.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Lee Rowley
I am happy to meet my hon. Friend to talk about that in more detail.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
The Government are cutting fuel duty, at a cost of £5 billion over the next 12 months; raising the employment allowance to £5,000; and zero-rating VAT on energy-saving materials. That builds on existing support, including business rates relief worth £7 billion over five years.
Mary Glindon
Businesses such as Sidhu’s chippies in my constituency had pinned their hopes on the Chancellor reducing VAT to 12.5%. They are now going to be pushed to the brink as energy costs are set to almost triple this financial year. What hope can the Minister offer Sidhu’s and other businesses that have served their local communities for decades but now cannot guarantee jobs and services into the future?
Paul Scully
Our hospitality strategy, which includes fish and chip shops and other restaurants around the country, has a number of workstreams to co-create solutions with businesses rather than the Government having all the answers. The hon. Lady needs to consider the issue in the round, including the business rates relief and other support that we have given of £408 billion over the past two years.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Paul Scully
The hon. Member has reflected her consultation response in her questions. The consultation stuck to the principle that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to flexible working. We support the “right to request” framework, which facilitates an informed two-sided conversation but ensures that employers have the right to refuse requests that are unworkable within their business operations. Clearly, that will need to be robust if they feel that they need to reject a request because of the business situation.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)
We recognise the impact that rising energy prices will have on businesses of all sizes. To understand the challenges that they face and explore ways to protect consumers and businesses, Ofgem and the Government are in regular contact with business groups and suppliers.
Mary Glindon
Given that the Federation of Small Businesses has said that small business confidence in the north-east is now at minus 64%, can the Minister say what consideration he is giving to the measures put forward by the FSB to support small businesses in the energy crisis, including scrapping the planned national insurance contributions increase and extending the household rebate to be matched by an equivalent business rate rebate?
Paul Scully
I met representatives of the FSB and other organisations yesterday, when we touched upon energy for businesses. We will always listen to those representative organisations. Clearly we want to ensure that the £408 billion of support in the last two years to protect businesses, livelihoods and jobs will help us to shape the recovery, with ongoing support from this Government—the Government for business.
Income Tax (Charge)
Mary Glindon Excerpts(3 years ago)
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Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris).
Today my husband Ray would have been 75, and he would have been glued to the Parliament channel, not only looking out for me on the green Benches—hopefully —but, more importantly, following the Budget debate and scrutinising the Chancellor’s announcements, because as cabinet member for finance on North Tyneside Council, he would have wanted to work out just what the Budget meant for our borough and the people of his Camperdown ward. I know that his successor, cabinet member Councillor Martin Rankin, will be doing just the same.
Having missed out on freeport status in March, I hoped to hear of some direct benefit for our green industries and other businesses on the Tyne in the Chancellor’s statement, but once again it seems that for some—known—reason, Teesside has the Chancellor’s favour. The Chancellor can be sure that I will keep banging on his door and those of his Cabinet colleagues asking for help for the Tyne’s industries to compete on a fair playing field, nationally and internationally, until we get what we need.
I congratulate those involved in the North East Homeless hub and the Whitley Bay Big Local community building, which have been granted £300,000 each from the community ownership fund. The North East chamber of commerce has commented that the Budget contains some welcome announcement for businesses in the north-east, but
“substantial longer-term strategies like the levelling up White Paper, the integrated rail plan and details on how the Shared Prosperity Fund will work, have yet to see the light of day. Without these plans it is difficult to judge how much of a long-term impact the levelling up agenda will have on our economy”.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
It has taken me a while to dig out the quotation with which I wanted to intervene when my hon. Friend mentioned freeports. Bristol’s freeport bid was also rejected. According to the OBR’s document, published yesterday, the primary function of freeports is
“to alter the location rather than the volume of economic activity. So the costs have been estimated on the basis of activity being displaced from elsewhere.”
That feeds into our biggest concern about freeports—that they do not boost economic growth and performance overall. It is just a case of taking those from one area to another, and it means that areas like ours will miss out even more.
Mary Glindon
My hon. Friend is exactly right. That was one of the biggest fears about freeports, and it is why we so desperately needed them to be close to each other.
With inflation set to rise, taxes being increased and the cost of living soaring, there is little comfort for my constituents, especially those on the lowest incomes, who are worried about how they will manage their own budgets. Moreover, there is no certainty about what the public sector pay rise will mean in real terms. It was very worrying to learn that, this very morning, the Northumbria police and crime commissioner, Kim McGuinness, resigned from her national role negotiating pay deals for police staff in response to what she has described as the grossly unfair pay offer made to police staff and officers. She has said that if Ministers will not stand by our workers, there is no point in negotiating with this Government.
Unions across the public sector agree that the Chancellor must allocate extra money to Government Departments to fund pay rises. He must put his money where his mouth is. Data shows that real wages have fallen in every region in England over the last 10 years, by more than £23 per week on average. When we add to that the fact that more than 11,000 households in North Tyneside claimed universal credit and more than 4,700 of them were working people, only a third of whom will benefit from the taper rate, things are looking very bleak for many of my constituents.
North Tyneside Council has suffered Government funding cuts amounting to £127 million since 2011. When my Ray delivered his budget speech to the full council in February this year, he announced that the Labour Cabinet under Norma Redfearn, our elected Labour Mayor, had worked to fill the £6.3 million gap in funding and protect services, including the council’s poverty intervention fund, which has been a lifeline for many people during the pandemic. No doubt there will be many calls on the fund in the coming months.
However, the Local Government Association has pointed out that among the announcements for councils, the spending review makes no mention of whether local government will receive a three-year financial settlement, or whether and when local government reforms will be implemented. In recent years, settlements have been published in draft form very late in December, after the stated target date of 5 December. The LGA rightly says that this target should be met and that councils should receive early certainty with a three-year local government settlement.
Whether it is in public services, local government, household budgets, the environment or business support, there remain so many ifs and buts in this Budget that I am afraid we may need heavenly help if we are to get anything worth while or concrete from our Chancellor.
Oral Answers to Questions
Mary Glindon Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Anne-Marie Trevelyan
The Government are committed to new nuclear power, as we set out in the Energy White Paper last year. We have entered into negotiations with the developers of Sizewell C to consider the financing, and to set to building that as the next one after Hinkley Point C. We have committed £385 million for developing advanced nuclear jobs, including small modular reactors, for deployment in the 2030s.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
As I mentioned in an earlier answer, I met a number of trustees a few weeks ago and we discussed a number of issues in detail. I left them with a number of issues to go away and consider. The proposition as it currently stands is one that the Government do not wish to take forward, but I have asked the trustees to come back to me once they have considered the questions we discussed.
Industrial Strategy: North-East of England
Mary Glindon Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered industrial strategy in the North East of England.
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I am delighted to have been granted this debate on such a crucial subject for our region. There are two local enterprise partnerships in the north-east, so we have two local industrial strategies: one for seven north-east local authorities, and one for the Tees valley. My area is covered by the North East LEP, which leads on the creation of the local industrial strategy, as its footprint includes two combined authorities: the newly created North of Tyne combined authority and the North East combined authority. As the North of Tyne combined authority has a devolution deal that specifically refers to the LIS, the picture is a little more complicated than elsewhere, as the Minister will appreciate. However, both combined authorities are working together, and with businesses and partners and through the LEP board, to make sure the local industrial strategy makes sense for residents and businesses in the north-east.
I will not talk about the north-east’s fantastic industrial and inventive past, because we see that backward look too often in the region, and although it is important to recognise that we have been passionate, ambitious and innovative for hundreds of years, looking back does a disservice to the brilliant people and businesses that we have today. It does not highlight the fact that the north-east has proportionally more businesses in manufacturing—10.5% against 7.7% nationally—or the fact that in 2018, the growth in the number of businesses massively outstripped what was happening nationally; we had 14.2% growth, versus a national fall of 0.5%, and we have seen a growth in productivity since 2014. Those are positive things, but that is not to detract from the less positive things happening in the region that I think my colleagues will talk about.
Looking back would not highlight the fact that the north-east is a brilliant place to live; I am sure all of us in this room agree on that. It is way more affordable than significant parts of the country. As of March, our average house price—for a very nice house—was £123,000, whereas the national average was £227,000, so I urge people to look at relocating to our area.
Mary Glindon
Perhaps not too many, but all are welcome.
I want to talk about what is strategically important to the north-east today, and what will make a difference to our future. For the north-east, the industrial strategy and the local industrial strategy will be about our ambition, the sectors in which we are strong, and the infrastructure that will lead to growth, and they have to be about turning strategy into action. The LIS is seen as building on the north-east strategic plan, which was agreed with businesses and communities of all shapes and sizes. It has an ambition for more and better jobs—100,000 jobs by 2024, with at least 70% being what are termed better jobs in managerial, professional and technical roles. We have already seen more than 64,000 new jobs created, of which 77% are classed as better jobs, but we need more investment and support from the Government, so that more can be achieved, and we need the right infrastructure put in place.
Yesterday, some of us went to the drop-in held by Highways England. I was pleased to go and congratulate it on the fantastic new Silverlink interchange on the A19, which has massively improved access to the Tyne tunnels. It was done on time, through collaboration between the council, businesses, and Highways England—a great feat for the region.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I also visited the Highways England drop-in yesterday; my hon. Friend and I were there at the same time. I was told that the project to widen the A19 between Wynyard and Norton will go ahead in May. Will she join me in welcoming that, and an end to the terrible noise that the people of Billingham suffered as a result of the project?
Mary Glindon
That is fantastic news. I hope that the project is done in the same timely way as Silverlink was, and with minimum disruption.
I hope the Minister is aware that a team from the north-east has been talking to the Government about how to make real the industrial strategy’s grand challenge on ageing, by working with local businesses of all sizes and with our universities. There is an opportunity to meet that challenge in our region. There is definitely a commercial opportunity and benefits for society in working with a population that is living longer. There are benefits for expertise, too. In my constituency, Procter & Gamble’s research and development team is focusing on what its older customers will need to live happy and independent lives. We know about a lot of projects that would influence that.
Across our region, there is groundbreaking work in health and life sciences. I am sure colleagues here will expand on that. The north-east has real strengths in the offshore renewables sector, and our region is ready to take advantage right away of any changes in that environment. Shepherd Offshore, Smulders, WD Close and SMD are all top-class, world-renowned companies in my constituency making a difference across the sector, but they could do even more with the right investments; I will continue to go on about that in Parliament.
One of the main things that hinders the development of those industries to some degree—this is important to South Tyneside, Gateshead and Newcastle—is the need to find a way to secure a significant investment to re-route the National Grid power lines that cross over the Tyne. That would make such a difference in how the Tyne is viewed by companies from around the world. I have been pursuing the issue for a while locally, with National Grid and with another Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Minister, and I am pleased that all four local authorities, the port of Tyne and the North East LEP are working together to look at how the power lines can be diverted to secure further contracts and local jobs for companies up and down the Tyne. I know it is a vast sum of money—around £20 million—but where there is a will, there is a way, and that is what we are working on.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on making a powerful, important and positive speech about our region and its opportunities. She makes the case for the power of public investment and private sector partnership. Does she agree that it is not only large business that should invest in our region? So should small and medium-sized businesses, which are the lifeblood of our economy. For example, Sage, which is headquartered in my constituency, is working really hard to develop a strategy for a public-private partnership, so that through our public sector organisations, there is more support for growth, investment, productivity and exporting. However, it needs a clear industrial strategy to back that up.
Mary Glindon
That was an excellent intervention, which the Minister must have heard. I can only agree wholeheartedly with everything my hon. Friend said.
On digital and data, the north-east’s history of engineering excellence continues in the digital age. North Tyneside was recently judged to be a hotspot for digital growth. In my constituency, and that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Sir Alan Campbell), our residents work in world-class digital businesses, such as Accenture and DXC Technology. There is also groundbreaking public service digital work in the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and work in local companies such as Perfect Image and Infotel UK.
The most important strength in our region is our people. We have thousands of skilled, passionate and hard-working people who drive our economy, creating and leading businesses, large and small, and working together to serve the region. Although the devolution of the adult education budget to the North of Tyne combined authority is a start, and the national careers strategy gives some important pointers, we need to ensure that we leverage the capabilities of local people.
The industrial strategy and local industrial strategy needs must be backed up with deeds. We need sector deals, which make a real difference, and clear support and investment in skills, with joined-up thinking across Government. I ask the Minister to commit to working closely with colleagues in the Department for Transport to ensure that the east coast main line upgrade is prioritised, and that our north-east transforming cities bid gets solid backing.
In both cases, there is a compelling economic case for investment. Colleagues right up the east coast of England and Scotland know that the east coast main line is as critical as investment in HS2. On the transforming cities bid, we are all working together to continue to secure investment to upgrade the metro, to reopen the Northumberland-Newcastle line to passengers, and to ensure that people and businesses can make the right connections in Sunderland, South Tyneside and Durham.
As the north-east is the only region that exports more than it imports, we will be hit hardest by Brexit. I had not mentioned Brexit up until now, but it had to come in somewhere. For 2014 to 2020, our region received £437 million from the European structural investment funds, which will be replaced by the shared prosperity fund post Brexit. The consultation was expected last year, but we know that the Brexit timetable has changed.
The consultation has been postponed, with as yet no further date announced. Worryingly, it has been said in response to recent parliamentary questions that the final decision on the fund’s design will be taken during the spending review. However, the spending review report will be published only with the Budget in the autumn. I hope that the Minister can tell us a bit more, and assure us that the consultation will begin soon. We do not want any gaps in replacing the loss of European funding.
I will be quiet now, because colleagues wish to talk about the industrial challenges in their constituencies. Those challenges are many, and influence the current and future prosperity of our region. I hope that the Minister has listened to what I have said, and will listen carefully to everything that my colleagues ask of him, and that he will give us clarity and reassurance that the Government are prepared to commit adequate support and resources to our great region, so that it can flourish for everyone in the north-east.
Mary Glindon
I neglected to congratulate the Minister on his appointment. We are all pleased to hear that he has roots in the north-east and a personal knowledge of it, and we will call on that—he has dropped himself right in it.
I hope that the issues about British steel, which have been stressed over and again, will be carried forward because they are so important. Will the Minister take on board and pass on the message that a no-deal Brexit is no good for the north-east in any shape or form? It would be catastrophic.
Members in the debate have shown the pride of the north-east today. We want an industrial strategy that works for everyone—as the Minister said, to get prosperity in every region so nobody misses out and everyone can flourish in the north-east through a good industrial strategy. We will push the Minister as we move towards the publication of our industrial strategy. Thanks again to everyone who has participated in this debate and to you, Mr Betts.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered industrial strategy in the North East of England.