Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Howell Excerpts

Thursday 1st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Joy Morrissey (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

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

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

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

[Matt Vickers (Stockton South) (Con)]

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

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[Julia Lopez]

The new Member for Beaconsfield is another very refreshing change in this Parliament, and I thank her for her question. She might wish to point her constituents to the Chancellor’s plan for jobs, which is designed to help unemployed people find work through training to develop their skills. That support includes incentive payments for employers to hire new apprentices and funding to triple the uptake of traineeships. The Prime Minister also set out his commitment this week to lifelong learning. As part of that, adults who do not have a full level 3 qualification will be able to take level 3 qualifications in high-value subjects for free from next April.

[Paul Howell]

I also welcome the Minister to her place. Economic growth in the regions will be maximised by the public and private sectors working in partnership. Currently, there are 92,000 civil servants in London, 56,000 in the north-west and only half of that in the north-east—and two thirds of those are in Newcastle, leaving negligible numbers in Durham and the Tees Valley. Does she agree that any relocation of Government Departments to the regions can be a critical lever and that it is important that they do not all now just move to another metropolitan centre? It is imperative that Departments such as the Department for Transport and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government consider locating to areas such as Sedgefield, which sits on the intersection of the Tees valley and County Durham and has all the rural challenges, but also has excellent connections to London.

[Julia Lopez]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He also makes a passionate pitch for his constituency. The Government are committed to levelling up across the UK, ensuring that this Administration is much less London-centric. The Places for Growth programme is working with Departments on their relocation plans ahead of the spending review and continuously exploring opportunities to build clusters of civil servants across the whole UK. I welcome my hon. Friend highlighting what Sedgefield has to offer, and I am sure the north-east will benefit from the relocation of civil service roles.

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[Michael Gove]

We are undertaking a number of strands of work. One is making sure that we can more effectively disperse key decision makers across the UK—to Teesside and other parts of the UK—and my colleague Lord Agnew is leading work to ensure that new senior civil service posts are located outside central London. Work requires to be undertaken to make us more transparent and effective in how we deliver for all parts of the UK. As I said to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), we are doing more to use data and digital tools to make transparent the work of Government.

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

    As was discussed in the blue collar Conservative session in Sedgefield, opportunities for UK growth post-covid and Brexit are aligned by doing everything that we can to support Made in Britain. Will my right hon. Friend support that agenda and encourage HS2 in particular to do so rather than placing orders for steel and bridges overseas? We have great companies in Sedgefield such as Ebac, Cleveland Bridge, Hitachi and indeed Roman showers, of which David Osborne, one of the joint chairs of Made in Britain, is the managing director. I invite my right hon. Friend to come with me to visit Roman and others to see for himself the passion behind a Made in Britain agenda?

[Michael Gove]

Hon. Members for Sedgefield have always been powerful advocates for the north-east, but none more so than my hon. Friend the current Member. He is absolutely right that Teesside, with Sedgefield in particular and County Durham as well, is at the beating heart of the economic future of this country. We need to invest in the next generation of manufacturing excellence; it is the young men and women of his constituency who will be at the cutting edge of that revolution, and they have no better advocate for manufacturing, for growth and for smarter government than him.