Green Book Review

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Green Book review.

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank all hon. Members who have come today to talk about the Green Book. Our constituents all know that something is very clearly not right and has not been right for a very, very long time. They pay their taxes but they cannot see things getting any better. In Congleton, I cannot see any evidence of any significant infrastructure spending for many years, except for where it has been facilitated through house growth. Government money does not appear to have been involved in significant ways for a long time.

The previous Government talked a good game about levelling up the north, but actual investment never followed, which is why my constituents voted for change. In my area, I want to see the Middlewich bypass, the A50/A500 north midlands manufacturing corridor, massive investment in improving our electricity grid, and all kinds of other changes and improvements, but I can see very clearly that something is not right.

Total capital public spending per person in the north-west in 2022-23 was £13,297 per year; in London, it was £14,842. Something is being done to allocate money in that way. The Green Book is the guidance issued by His Majesty’s Treasury on how to appraise policies, programmes and projects. The five-case model is the required framework for considering the use of public resources. They must be used proportionately to the costs and risks involved, taking account of the context in which a decision is taken.

The five-case model involves a strategic dimension—what the case for change is, including the rationale for the intervention, the current situation, what is to be done and so forth. There is an economic dimension and a commercial dimension: can a realistic and credible commercial deal be struck, and who will manage which risks? There is a financial dimension and a management dimension—are there realistic and robust delivery demands, and can the proposal be delivered?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady led the charge in the 9.30 am debate, and she is doing the same at 4.30 pm—well done for both. I just want to back her up. Does she agree that the Green Book review has to have a view to each area of the United Kingdom, and must not simply point all roads to London and the south-east? We are all aware that, in other areas, UK policies and procedures that work well in London do not translate to rural local authorities, so we need a review of that. Is the hon. Lady saying exactly that?

[Mrs Russell]

I certainly agree.

We are pleased that the Treasury has initiated a review into the Green Book and we believe it is an opportunity to once and for all address a range of key issues that have undermined successive Governments’ attempts to rebalance our regional economies. We must grasp this opportunity. We believe that the review must be done with ambition and a willingness to challenge underlying customs and practices. In particular, it needs to learn from the successes and failures—largely failures, I would say—of previous Green Book reviews, in particular the 2020 review.

The review recommended that the locational effects be understood via place-based analysis, with the benefits of any intervention valued specifically for the area, hence enabling any transformational impacts to be properly recognised. But once again, those recommendations do not appear to be generally reflected in practice, particularly in the application of Department-level appraisal guidance. It is vital that the current review addresses that. I believe that considering options in the context of place and properly valuing the transformational impacts of interventions is crucial if we are to realise the potential of the north-west and all our regions.

We need to simplify and speed up our Green Book processes. The guidance is enormously long and incredibly complex. It has multiple supplementary documents adding up to thousands and thousands of pages. Its changes, subtleties and intent get lost within the complexity, and practice remains unchanged. That very complexity leads to a desire for a metric that cuts through, and that probably explains why the business case thresholds remain so dominant. That is probably how the weighting towards expenditure in London and the south-east continues to predominate.

There is a consultancy industry around the Green Book, and that raises the cost of developing a successful business case. It also makes it very difficult for smaller local authorities to successfully put together a business case because the complexity of doing so is absolutely mind boggling. Frankly, the whole thing is just a bunch of piffle—we need to make this very simple and outcomes driven. We need to really slim it down and for it to be in a format that our local and devolved mayoral authorities, as we acquire one in Cheshire and Warrington, will be able to actually use in a practical way.

We need a stronger focus on place. We need to really look properly at where money has been spent historically and where we therefore need investment. We need to weight that specifically towards areas that have not received investment so that we can redress the imbalance in which transport spending in London vastly outweighs that in the rest of the country.

When I moved to the north of England, I was so shocked when I first used the railway network; I was in my 20s and the Pacer trains were still being used. Those trains were fashioned out of bus chassis and carried on being used for 37 years. They were given a maximum lifespan of 20 years; they were supposed to be a very basic short-term thing to start with, and the level of shoddiness was just astonishing. That is what we are always given in the north-west. We are given the cast-offs, and then we are expected to make do, and then what we are expected to make do with is expected to continue way beyond its intended lifespan. That has been going on now for as long as anyone can remember, and our economy then reflects that very sad point.

I know the Labour Government are focused on improving the situation. I would really like us to work extensively together on that. I know that the Green Book review will be carried out at pace, and that the Government have announced these plans. That cost-benefit analysis needs to be fundamentally changed so that we can shift capital expenditure out to our regions at pace. By that, I do not mean demanding, as the last Government did, that local areas produce a shovel-ready project at the drop of a hat, so that they could rush spending through and make it look as if they were doing something for the north of England. I mean a fully considered set of proposals that enable regions to be fully developed through our devolved mayoral authorities, which I think are going to be a spectacular improvement for many areas of the north, and that will enable us to have proper economic development in the north of England.

Alistair Darling said:

“it isn’t just about pots of money or building the odd rail or extending a road. It’s about quality of life. It’s about making places that people want to go and live in, where they feel confident, they can live there, their children can grow up there, there’s opportunities there, and they don’t have to go somewhere else to get on, as it were. None of this is beyond us. Most other countries do it, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t either.”

That was quite some time ago, but it applies more than ever now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (North Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Mrs Russell) on calling this debate, and the nine other speakers on speaking with great passion about the potential of their constituents and their constituencies, as well as about the role that the Green Book review—a rather obscure topic—can play in seeking to unlock that potential. I note that they spared the blushes of the Chancellor. When she announced the review, to unlock the potential of which those hon. Members are so hopeful, she announced further growth measures in the south and south-east of the country. That shows the difficulties there are in achieving some of the objectives. The hon. Member for Mid Cheshire (Andrew Cooper) was kind enough to say that those objectives were the intention of the 2020 review: levelling up this country.

I am, perhaps, an ironic choice to respond in this debate. If I may stretch your tolerance, Mr Pritchard, I will mention some things about the area of the country that I represent, North Bedfordshire. To give hon. Members some sense of the disparities, let me enumerate some of the growth potential projects going on in my county: our housing growth rate is already two and a half times the national average; we have a proposal for a solar farm in my constituency, which will be seven times the size of the largest one in the country; we have the country’s largest road project at Black Cat roundabout on the A1; we have a proposal for a railway line, which will be the third largest railway construction project in the country; and we have the doubling of the capacity of Luton airport to bring people into the country. We are also awaiting, when the Treasury finally pulls its finger out, a potential £10 billion investment for Europe’s theme park from Universal Studios, which will then start a whole new range of investment potential in the south. The hon. Member for Congleton has the right person responding from the Opposition to answer some of her points—because frankly, that is too much for one area to take at one time.

The 2020 review mentions some points that have been repeated today, and the allegations were: systematic bias towards London and the south-east; the tyranny of benefit-cost ratios; overlooked unmonetised benefits; no allowance for transformation or other complex effects; and that guidance was responsible for strategic policy faults with no focus on where, or by whom, effects are felt. Those allegations have been echoed today, but I have to say to Members that the findings were that there were no systematic methodological biases in the process. However, there were significant problems in understanding of the Treasury’s five case model, leading to significant poor practice in the application of the Green Book, and some changes have been made as a result.

As I thought Members would raise the issue of disparities in expenditure, and whether those changes had any effect, I went to table 9.4b of the “Public Expenditure Statistical Analyses 2024”, which enumerates the public expenditure on services per head in real pounds between regions. It splits that between current expenditure and capital expenditure, which is the focus of today’s debate. I have to tell Members that, if we look at those statistics between the years 2018-19 to 2022-23, real capital per head went down by 3% in the east and by 5% in the south-east. Real capital per head did go up by 20% in London, but it also went up by 25% in both the north-west and the north-east, by 24% in the west midlands and by 22% in east midlands. That is not to say that everything is done, but it is important to build on the progress that is being made. There is a lot more commonality here than we perhaps think.

[Mrs Russell]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Richard Fuller]

I am afraid that I am very short on time. I would love to give way, but I know Mr Pritchard, and he will not give me any more time.

The view that focusing on the BCR as the answer is incorrect. East West Rail, which goes through my constituency, has a BCR of 0.3. It loses money, but the Treasury still wants to push ahead with it—that is another question for the Treasury. There is not sufficient quantification, so we do not understand what those benefits may be for people.

I have one final question for the Minister, as I have only a little time—I do have some other questions, which I will send to him. Can he look at the implementation of the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012? Getting that done is really hard for small businesses and social enterprises in particular.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Russell]

I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate. I absolutely accept that, underlyingly, we need a framework for evaluating projects. I am immensely looking forward to the 10-year infrastructure strategy, which is a real opportunity for the Government to grasp and fundamentally change how we are investing in the north of England; that is encapsulated by the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Sarah Hall). We need to stop our communities being seen as low-return risks rather than high-potential communities. I want growth to stop going to where growth already is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt) said; I want growth going where people are, in the north-west of England.

Question put and agreed to. 

Resolved, 

That this House has considered the Green Book review.

Child Maintenance Service

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ian Sollom (St Neots and Mid Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

This evening I want to address a system that is failing thousands of families across our country: the Child Maintenance Service. In doing so, I hope that this House will send a clear message to every parent struggling with that system and every affected young person that their MPs are listening and that we are determined to act.

I am pleased to see that the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western), is responding for the Government, and I look forward to working with him to achieve the meaningful transformation that families desperately need.

Before my election last July, I confess that the Child Maintenance Service had not been on my radar as such an important issue. That changed almost immediately upon my taking office, as constituents came to me with accounts of their experiences with the CMS, and appeals for help. These were not isolated incidents or minor inconveniences; they revealed systemic failures, enforcement mechanisms that seem to exist in name only, loopholes exploited by those seeking to evade their responsibilities, inadequate protections for survivors of domestic abuse, and an impersonal bureaucracy that overwhelms those it should be there to help. Failures to correct even basic errors grind down those unfortunate enough to be let down by the system.

I want to share one constituent’s story that exemplifies those failings. For nearly two decades, dating back to the days of the old Child Support Agency, she has fought for what her child should have been entitled to. In all that time, her ex-partner has made consistent payments for just six months. After courageously leaving an abusive relationship, she had turned to the CMS for support. Instead, she encountered a system powerless to act when her ex-partner began gaming the system. He claimed to be unemployed while there was evidence that he was working. Missed payments would coincide with birthdays and Christmas, depriving her of the means to make those occasions special for her child. He refused to engage unless she contacted him directly, knowing full well how traumatic that would be given the history of abuse. Her mental health, understandably, deteriorated.

Yet in all her desperate calls to the CMS, rarely did she speak to the same person twice—someone familiar with her case and invested in its resolution. In her words, support consisted of someone

“who read from a screen, then said they will transfer me to someone who can help but really just put me back in the queue.”

She has spent years feeling that she is going around in circles, without receiving all the payment that she should have received for the care of her child. Madam Deputy Speaker, I hope that the Minister agrees that this falls well short of what vulnerable families deserve.

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Does he agree that we need more enforcement, more accurate assessment of non-resident parent income, and better joined-up working between His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions? Furthermore, if we saw that, it would help not just his constituents, to whom he has referred so passionately, but parents such as my constituent whose ex-partner is avoiding paying any ongoing child maintenance despite owning multiple properties.

[Ian Sollom]

I absolutely agree; that is exactly the sort of reform we need to see in the system, and I will come to those points later.

Furniture Poverty

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Chris Bloore (Redditch) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) on securing the debate. I will share my experience and reaffirm my incredible admiration for my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales): every time he tells the story of his upbringing and the challenges that he has faced, I am grateful to consider him a colleague in the House and grateful that he has shared his message with the Chamber.

I admit that I had a fortunate and comfortable childhood. I had a stable home with everything that I could ever need to do my homework, organise my things and get a good sleep—things that I shamelessly took for granted. It was not until I left primary school that I realised that many of my friends faced different challenges and experiences at home that I could not have even imagined at such a young age. It was then that I first understood the detrimental impact that furniture insecurity had on the lives of many of my friends. I remember visiting one of my closest friend’s houses for months, with the washing machine broken and their parents frantically hand-washing every evening while we played video games and ate pizza.

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

I want to raise a point about washer-dryers, as opposed to washing machines. As a mother of three, I spend a lot of time doing the washing. It sounds like a trivial point, but in north-west England it is incredibly difficult to get washing to dry—it starts raining in October and keeps going all year. It is all well and good if the household support fund provides washing machines, which are great and a good start, but that will not solve the whole problem. I implore the Minister to raise the point about dryers. Of course, there are other problems about affording the electricity to run them, but we will create damp in homes if people cannot dry clothes in them.

[Chris Bloore]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point.

At the time, I did not know that both my best friend’s parents had lost their job and had gone for months without work, which meant that their important savings were going towards keeping a roof above their head, rather than on a new washing machine. I remember suddenly not being able to visit my friend or to stay over. Later, I learned that that was because his bed was broken and he was too afraid to let me sleep over, as I would see him sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor. Only thanks to donations from family friends were the issues resolved. In those years, the economy was in a relatively good position. Now, in my constituency, almost 1,000 children will sleep without a bed.

I am trying to be quick, but I will mention NewStarts, a community reuse social enterprise that was based in my county council division in Bromsgrove and has now opened a second branch with partners in my constituency in Redditch. For more than a decade, the chief executive Marion Kenyon, her staff and team of volunteers have provided free furniture, emergency food and household supplies to families and individuals in the greatest need, whether they are on low incomes or in financial crisis. Their dedication and compassion are unmatched. I look forward to visiting the branch next week. Their work, however, shows that furniture poverty is not an acute but a chronic problem, often the canary in the coal mine alerting us to many of the problems facing households.

Furniture poverty is absolute. It is a heartbreaking indictment of how all of us in politics must do more to support those who need support the most. Many of the ways that we can support those people were listed by my hon. Friends the Members for North West Cambridgeshire, for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson) and for Uxbridge and South Ruislip.

I am happy to be a signpost. My excellent office team of Theresa Deakin and Monica Stringfellow are doing great work to link those who need support with existing organisations and funds, such as the household support fund, but that is not enough. I welcome the contents of the Renters’ Rights Bill, but it is time for a radical look at our welfare system and how we reward work and recognise when the system is not working. I am pleased that the Minister is present and that she has promised to reform our welfare system, but right now 10% of all adults live in furniture poverty. When I walk around my constituency, when I visit my schools and when I talk to careers advisers and teachers, it is the same children who are deeply affected by this issue. It is their life chances that we are talking about, and it is their dreams that have been broken by the fact that as a country we have not come to grips with this problem.

I implore the Minister to act. She has been a hero of mine for many years, outside this House, but the children who will staff our NHS, who will be the next generation of teachers, and who will rebuild this country and fix our foundations, are the children that need the Government’s support now.

International Investment Summit

Sarah Russell Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sarah Russell (Congleton) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech. When I drive around my Congleton constituency, I thank my lucky stars that I have the privilege of both living in and representing somewhere so very beautiful. It is made up of gorgeous rolling countryside, farmland, hedgerows and oak trees. The farmers work all hours to produce the food that we need. It has views of the giant radio telescope at Jodrell Bank and the natural beauty spot Bosley Cloud. It is Arcadia within commuting distance of Manchester, Crewe and Stoke, and I cannot tell the House how much I truly love it.

The constituency is a growing place, with around 5,000 extra houses in the last few years. The population is divided between the Cheshire market towns of Alsager, Sandbach and Congleton, alongside the larger village of Holmes Chapel, and many beautiful smaller villages, such as Rode Heath, Church Lawton and Goostrey. There can be few more idyllic spots in the country than sitting outside the Swettenham Arms next to the Lovell arboretum, overlooking St Peter’s, the archetypal village church.

Though each town and village has its own unique character and history, the joys and challenges experienced by the families who live there are often remarkably similar. They include families whose children have special educational needs and disabilities, who often face extensive challenges getting the diagnoses and support that they need. Those families need our help, and I will do everything that I can to assist them. I have been pleased to hear the Prime Minister referring repeatedly in this Chamber to those difficulties, and I am confident that he will help us too.

Families will also benefit from Labour’s review of shared parental leave. Some 54,000 women a year lose their job when they are pregnant or on maternity leave. Women actually out-earn men in their 20s. The gender pay gap is in many respects actually a motherhood penalty. Men taking longer periods of paternity leave is a way that we could normalise parental leave and potentially reduce those problems. I thank the Government for starting the consultation on this matter imminently. I pay tribute to campaign groups such as Pregnant then Screwed, Rights of Women, the Dad Shift, Parenting Out Loud, and the TUC and trade unions, which are all doing incredible things in this field.

Many homeowners in my constituency have been affected by leasehold and fleecehold problems, and will welcome our planned reforms on these issues, to which I intend to contribute. They include older people, often the backbone of our communities, who provide childcare for grandchildren, and often volunteer as well. Sometimes, however, they do so in avoidable pain while on NHS waiting lists that are too long. Those are just a few of the issues that I intend to apply myself to as MP for Congleton.

Let me take the House back to Congleton’s history. Congleton is known as Beartown, owing to a local story that in the 1600s the town saved up to buy a new Bible. Shortly before the summer fête, the village bear died, so the townsfolk agreed that rather than buy their Bible they would postpone the purchase and get a new bear with the money instead. Congleton is very entrepreneurial across the whole constituency, and many of our small businesses feature references to the bear. It is also in our local iconography everywhere. We have the Beartown Tap and Beartown beer. The bear features pretty much everywhere, as does our fantastic statue of Elizabeth Wolstenholme-Elmy, which was lobbied and fundraised for by local feminists. Elizabeth, who based herself in Congleton from 1874 until her death in 1918, played a significant role in the women’s suffrage movement, founding the Women’s Social and Political Union and campaigning for women’s education and voting rights. I hope that I shall think of her often in this place.

Another of our most famous local figures, although quite different, is Harry Styles, whose hometown of Holmes Chapel is now a point of pilgrimage for his fans. I am sure that everyone is sorry to hear today of the death of his former bandmate Liam Payne—we all extend our condolences to his friends and family. Local people have set up a walking trail associated with Harry Styles. If anyone fancies it, I would strongly recommend following it, with a stop in any of our local independent businesses on Holmes Chapel high street. I would probably include a drink at the George and Dragon or the Bottle Bank, or both. I know that both publicans do a lot of voluntary work within our community.

People volunteering is common in my constituency, as I know it is in the constituencies of many other Members. Whether they are coaching football at Vale Juniors or any of the other community sports clubs—there are too many for me to list—planting trees and conserving and maintaining our woodland and footpaths, as the Sandbach Woodland and Wildlife Group does, and as a similar group does in Congleton; helping young people through uniformed groups such as scouts, guides and the various air cadets, some of which I have visited; running schemes to support men’s mental health, such as the Goostrey Community Shed, Holmes Chapel Men in Sheds, or the new Sandbach men walking and talking group; or even running a community energy power plant in Congleton Hydro, we have the most amazing set of citizens. I am so grateful for the fantastic contribution that they make to help others, support those who need it, and truly make my constituency the fantastic place that it is.

On the topic of contribution, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Fiona Bruce. Congleton has had three MPs in its history, all of them women: Ann Winterton, Fiona Bruce and now me. I know that many Christians in the constituency and beyond appreciated Fiona Bruce’s advocacy on behalf of the religious community, both in the UK and internationally, in her role as envoy for religious freedom. We have many active local church groups in our community, and they contribute a great deal of very varied support. Churches and secular volunteers and organisations, including food banks, food pantries and the Old Saw Mill, are all quietly providing much-needed food support within the community. They do this for a far larger number of adults and children than the apparent affluence of the area would superficially lead one to expect.

As a discrimination lawyer, and someone who went into politics because of the value that I place on equality and inclusion, I will continue to advocate for the rights and freedoms of all my constituents, and celebrate the diversity within our community. I recently attended the One World festival in Alsager, which was first established by Margaret Keeling 30 years ago. It celebrates the diversity of nationalities living within the Alsager community, with food, activities and lots of performances from local schoolchildren. It really is a delight—thank you, Margaret.

Another of the many achievements of the fantastic volunteers in my constituency is that we have regular Pride events. Congleton held its first Pride about five years ago. I pay tribute to Richard Walton, Ronan Clayton and all those who were involved in setting it up. It is now ably chaired by Malcolm Pope, who is taking it from strength to strength. The excellent curator Anna Maluk put on a Pride exhibition in Congleton Museum, hosting photos from those early events and featuring art from the local LGBTQIA+ community. Since then, more Pride events have grown in Sandbach, Alsager and, for the first time this summer, Holmes Chapel. At one of these events, it was suggested to me that these are really just a family fun day—a village fête, if you will. It is true that the events are fun, fabulous and family-friendly, but beyond the live music and bright clothing remains a serious message. The hard-working volunteers who make these Pride events happen do so in the face of repeated homophobic hate crimes.

Similarly, there is still a backdrop of fear attendant in many women’s daily lives. Women in my constituency have written or spoken to me about their experiences of sexual violence. I say to the young women who have talked to me—you know who you are—that I will fight for you, and all young people, in this place every day. That will include ensuring that, when embracing new technology and innovation, as we have done this week at the international investment summit, we find ways of protecting people from new threats—whether that be people looking at tractors on their smartphones in this workplace, or artificial intelligence baking in discriminatory decision making. Unfortunately, new technologies also bring the potential for harassment, discrimination and abuse, and we must not be caught off guard—we must get on the front foot on that.

My constituency has a long history of developing new technologies. The constituency boundary bisects the site of Jodrell Bank, the amazing radio telescope. Sandbach was the proud home of ERF and Foden trucks. The first Foden traction engine was built in Sandbach in 1881, and that was followed by the production of heavy goods vehicles for 150 years. The history and heritage of Foden still runs through the blood of the town, with the annual transport festival and its incredible parade of vintage trucks, wagons, classic cars and even the odd plane on the common. My constituency is also home to one of the world’s leading brass bands, Foden’s Band, which was born out of the works in 1902 and has twice won, and twice been runner-up, in the national brass band championships of Great Britain. I will work across this House to stand up for the incredible, entrepreneurial and community-minded people and businesses of the beautiful place that is the Congleton constituency.

Lastly, I want to say some thank yous. I thank the volunteers who helped me to get here and continue to support me, to whom I am very grateful. That includes those from the Labour party, and I make special mention of the Fabian Women’s Network mentoring scheme. I thank my adored family, who are in the Public Gallery today. When I am in Westminster, I miss you so much. I hope I do all of you proud.