Green Book Review

Phil Brickell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) for introducing this important debate.

I rise today to make the case for communities such as mine in Bolton West to be placed at the heart of the Green Book review. The Government’s laser-like focus on growth is welcome, but I know from talking to businesses in my constituency, such as Woodall Nicholson in Westhoughton, Scan Computers in Horwich and Cohens Chemist in Lostock, that they face real obstacles to expansion and job creation. Some of that is a result of a lack of central Government co-ordination. The Green Book has consistently reinforced an economic model that prioritises investment in parts of the country that are already more prosperous, such as the south-east, rather than constituencies like mine.

Despite the expensive self-congratulation from the previous Government, levelling up did not amount to all that much in Bolton West. Indeed, under the last Government, Bolton West simply did not get a fair deal on funding. Time and time again, our towns lost out—a situation played out across the north. The result is that inequality has become entrenched and high streets across the north-west have become ghost towns, with young people having to leave their communities to find work, just as many of my peers had to when I was growing up.

The review is the perfect opportunity to fix this fatal, regressive flaw and ensure that investment decisions consider the wider benefits to our communities: job creation, skills development, better transport and improved public services. Crucially, investment in Greater Manchester cannot just mean investment in Manchester city centre; it must mean investment in the towns and communities that make Manchester the innovative economic powerhouse it has become.

We are at the cutting edge of the cyber and digital industries in Greater Manchester, and Bolton is a key part of that, with a growth corridor that stretches out across to Wigan. Bolton and other surrounding towns, however, have yet to be given the tools to harness that immense opportunity. After years of the Conservatives failing to put their money where their mouths were, we now see more investment into connecting Bolton to these high-growth sectors through training, infrastructure and partnerships, which bring those opportunities to my constituents’ doorsteps.

In my constituency, despite having a number of brilliant small and medium-sized enterprises, including the pioneering Blackedge brewery around the corner from my office in Horwich, I worry that many smaller firms still struggle to access the finance they need to grow. Too often, our local businesses struggle to secure the funding they need to expand, innovate and compete. We must ensure that businesses across the UK, including those in Bolton West, can access the capital they need to succeed.

If we are serious about driving economic growth, Government must invest and build the appropriate infrastructure. We must also work with the private sector to empower our entrepreneurs and local businesses, and not leave them battling a system that is stacked against them. The Green Book review must lead to real, tangible change that rebalances our economy and puts regions like ours at the heart of national prosperity. Never again should we live in a country where people’s futures are too often determined by their postcodes.