Regeneration

Debate between Roberta Blackman-Woods and Jessica Lee

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Howarth, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon.

I apologise to all present for my late arrival for this debate. It was not without sending a note to the Chairman in advance to explain, and indeed the reason I was detained is entirely material to the speech that I will now make.

I was on the way to Downing street for an appointment at 2.30 pm to hand in a petition. It is a petition prepared by my local newspaper, the Ilkeston Advertiser, which has been running a campaign to reopen the train station in Ilkeston, one of the two towns in my constituency of Erewash. This is a long-running campaign by the newspaper; indeed, it has been a community campaign for many years. The reason it is relevant to this debate is that we have already heard about a number of different aspects of regeneration, but for me infrastructure is at the heart of regeneration and it is a key element of what we are trying to achieve around the country when we consider regeneration.

I will expand on that point about infrastructure and say why it is relevant to my constituency of Erewash. Ilkeston is now the largest town in the country without a train station and, as I have already said, it is one of the two towns in the constituency of Erewash. The lack of a train station in the town brings difficulties because it deprives people in my area, particularly young people, of the mobility to go out and seek extra training and new jobs. They could get to both Nottingham and Derby much more quickly if they had the mobility that a train service offers. Of course, a train service would also bring visitors, shoppers and new businesses into the town and, in my view, the resulting opportunities would be endless. Derbyshire county council, which is doing a great deal to try and press for this project, says that there would be 150,000 extra journeys if the project were successful, which would bring massive economic benefits to Ilkeston and indeed beyond. So I have started my speech by referring to what I regard as a key component of the whole concept of regeneration, which is mobility for people, and that mobility is achieved through infrastructure.

In many other ways, my constituency is quite blessed in terms of infrastructure. The M1 motorway runs right through the heart of my constituency and, as I have explained, we are near to both Nottingham and Derby, and we are also near to Sheffield. However, in terms of social mobility and particularly for young people, train travel is extremely important, and local rail services—along with longer-term and larger infrastructure projects such as High Speed 2—are key in achieving that social mobility. I will certainly continue to do all that I can to campaign for the train station in Ilkeston to reopen. I can tell all right hon. and hon. Members in Westminster Hall today that our campaign group has been lucky enough to have had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport on this matter, and we are waiting for a response from her. I look forward to receiving her response and I know that our campaign has backing from across the community in Erewash.

As I am not a member of the Select Committee, I have not been involved in producing the report on regeneration, but I have really enjoyed listening to the speeches from members of the Committee and I have been very well informed by them. For me, what is really required is the fusion of national vision and local implementation. I suspect that the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and I are probably not too far apart about where we want to get to, but my intervention on her earlier was to make the point that regeneration is about empowering people by setting them free and trusting local communities to make the decisions that are right for them. That is because the key components of regeneration vary greatly around the country.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I noted the point that the hon. Lady made in her earlier intervention. Does she accept that some previous schemes, in particular the housing renewal areas scheme, put local residents at the heart of the partnerships to regenerate their areas? Localism is not something that this Government invented.

[Jessica Lee]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but she may not be surprised when I say that she is tempting me down a path that I am afraid I will resist going down. That is because what is required is a broader approach, which I see being presented through a wider context such as the Localism Act 2011. The emphasis on infrastructure is also important, and I see the coalition Government proceeding with that and putting it in place throughout this year and next year. That is what I hope we can achieve in Erewash.