North of England: Infrastructure Spending

Paul Howell Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Paul Howell (Sedgefield) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gradually. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall.

I and my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Richard Holden) represent the north of the north in this debate, and we would like to make sure that we are all holistic in our consideration of where investment goes in the north. When we think of infrastructure spending, what comes to mind are roads, bridges and trains, but it is also about research and development, social infrastructure and social capital, and about allowing money to be channelled into not only buildings and equipment but the day-to-day needs of public services.

The Government’s promise of levelling up is extremely welcome in the north, and particularly in my constituency. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southport said in his introduction, London has received significantly more public spending per capita than the north has. Looking at the 2003 Treasury Green Book updated by the then Labour Government, that is hardly a surprise. The north and particularly the north-east have suffered since 2003, when these disastrous funding decisions were put in place as a direct result of the Green Book and its skewed investment criteria. The north is clearly disadvantaged, and reform is urgently required to give it stronger weight. The Green Book needs to be ripped up, and investment should go where it is needed in the north.

December 2019 showed that the north had had enough and wanted change. The question is: how do we set about doing that? First, new transport spending in the north should focus on connectivity and capacity. The north does not have the same issues as the south, and what will level up the north is connecting the north’s forgotten and left-behind towns, villages and communities to employment centres and cities. That will connect people across the north to well-paying jobs and will allow people access to better education, being an enabler to lift people up.

Another part of this approach would obviously be the introduction of things such as freeports in Teesside and using the assets of the state to move Government Departments, as well as pump-priming and stimulating private investment. That would also boost companies supplying infrastructure, such as Hitachi and Cleveland Bridge, as well as smaller infrastructure companies such as Finley Structures in Newton Aycliffe.

In my constituency, Ferryhill station has the east coast main line and the Stillington spur running through it. Those lines are active and connect to major conurbations, but the Stillington spur is for freight only, and the fantastic Azumas just whisk straight on through. At one point, it was one of the busiest stations in Europe. The Beeching reversal fund, launched by the DFT, offered the opportunity for MPs to apply for funding to reopen stations. I have made an application for Ferryhill station, and I hope to hear about that shortly.

A key dynamic of this Beeching rail reversal fund is the need for MPs to lead. MPs have a unique perspective on the communities that we represent; we often look at our communities from a hyper-local perspective, allowing us to see the issues and possible solutions, and how small changes can make a big difference. I suggest that the Government create a similar funding pot, open to applications from MPs, to allow funding for particularly rural infrastructure projects that have been overlooked or ignored by councils or mayors. That should be at the level of sorting out a dangerous crossroads or getting broadband into a small village—the things that are too small for national attention, but never seem to quite make the list of local councils or mayors. I am certain that every hon. Member in this debate from a non-urban-centre seat could name a potential infrastructure project in their constituency that has been overlooked, but that would make a huge difference in their community if it was to happen.

To level up infrastructure spending in the north of England, we must look to our communities, and at both macro-connectivity and hyper-local interventions, to see what can be done to level up locally and regionally, with equal importance. Our communities need to see both serious, big schemes and immediate, community-level initiatives, and they must believe that, in the future, the decision-making field will be level.

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[Mr Holden]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, but I do not want to create further division; I am trying to bring us all together.

North West Durham is a unique constituency, in that it has no dual carriageway and no railway line or stations. Local people, feeling rather fed up with being particularly left behind, last year voted for change, and for the first time elected a Conservative MP. On the Prime Minister’s promise to level up the country properly, I remember visiting the cricket club in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Paul Howell) with the Prime Minister after the election, and he doubled down on that pledge.

I hope that today’s spending review and future Budgets will see some cash flow through. I agree with several hon. Friends that levelling up is not just about infrastructure; it is about something broader than that. It is about providing opportunity—the opportunity for a person to get on, provide for their family, help lift an entire community, employ people and do the right thing. That is what many people in my community would like to see.

[Paul Howell]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is important to have some small projects now, some planned projects, and visions for the future? This is a journey that starts now.