Business and the Economy

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers). I am not sure whether he was saying that his constituency was better off under the Labour Government, but I think he should have done.

[Martin Vickers]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am sorry, I will not, because we are really short of time.

Despite a few reasonable measures, the overriding sense is that the Gracious Speech delivers priorities that are out of sync with those of my constituents and the rest of the country. It was more notable for what was left out than for what was included. The first line promised that the legislative programme would focus on

“economic growth, justice and constitutional reform”,

but in fact there was a complete lack of legislation to boost the economy in the north-east or anywhere else, or to address the concerns of people in my constituency and the region as a whole.

We need a plan for jobs and growth. The north-east has the highest unemployment rate in the country, with 11.6% of people of working age being without a job. Particularly worrying is the number of unemployed 16 to 24-year-olds. In County Durham, 8.6% of people in that age group are claiming benefits, and in my constituency long-term youth unemployment is up by a massive 129% on this time last year. Without strong Government action, we risk creating a generation of young people who will never experience stable employment and an economy that will take a worryingly long time to recover. It is no wonder then that business has slammed the content of the Queen’s Speech. This March, an Experian report showed that County Durham was in the top 20 areas for export potential and that businesses in the north-east, the north-west and Yorkshire and the Humber—the areas most likely to be hit by this new made-in-Downing-street recession—are doing the most to drive export growth.

Improving our infrastructure and links between the north and south is vital not only for the regions but for the British economy as a whole. Areas such as Durham are key to our international competitiveness and long-term economic success. It is therefore essential that I ask why so little Government attention has been paid to improving infrastructure in the north-east. The Government talk a lot about supporting manufacturing but where are the policies to back it up? The only thing that this coalition has manufactured is the double-dip recession. The recent welcome investment programmes in the north-east by Hitachi and Nissan were actually started under the previous Labour Government.

We saw last week that the regional growth fund is expected to deliver only 41,000 jobs—well below the 500,000 claimed by the Deputy Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg). What is more, those jobs cost an average of £33,000 each to create, compared with the £6,500 average under Labour’s future jobs fund. The shambles is partly due to the Government’s decision to do away with regional development agencies, which promoted and defended the interests of the regions, as One North East did so well. In particular, they should not have got rid of the RDAs without putting in place a viable alternative.

The loss of One North East has been keenly felt across the region. For instance, the announcement recently that more than 300 jobs will move to Ireland following the closure of the Kerry foods factory in my constituency is a disaster for many of my constituents, but it is only one of several closures of food processing factories in the north-east this year alone. There is no regional body to pick up this issue, to think about what can be done to improve the competitiveness of the food processing sector and, critically, to maintain and grow these jobs in the north-east, so we are seeing the loss of private sector jobs in addition to the huge loss of public sector jobs

There is no strategy either for innovation. One North East put universities at the heart of its plan for growing the north-east economy, and we needed that innovation, but it is now extremely difficult for universities to engage with economic development because of the fragmentation: we have two local enterprise partnerships, two enterprise zones, 12 local authorities, the regional growth fund, “BIS local” and further bids in several constituencies. As a result, there is no clear way for universities to engage. The Government would say that they created LEPs to take on that role, but in practice local government is bearing the brunt of the austerity measures, which means that it simply does not have the resources to create the much-needed jobs in my area and elsewhere.