Economic Development (North-East)

Debate between Sharon Hodgson and Nicholas Brown

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and for his kind remarks about my involvement as regional Minister. I was tremendously impressed by the work that is going on in Easington district, the exciting film projects that we visited together, the work of the coal board residual authority in his constituency, and the opportunities that there are, working with Durham county council, to bring to an end long-standing and intractable labour market problems in the eastern part of County Durham. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend and his predecessor, our friend John Cummings, for the enormous amount of work that has been done locally to try to give hope where at times it seemed that there was not much room for it. I felt that we were getting there, and it would be very sad if the ideas and projects that I am so enthusiastic about, and that I know my hon. Friend is so enthusiastic about, end up set back because of events in the region.

My key point is that the economic development agency was the principal agent of change and transition in north-east England. Far from being a burden on the taxpayer, it repaid its cost, in the region, several times over.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I echo the warm thanks of my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) to my right hon. Friend for his work as regional Minister. We all saw the benefits of that.

Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Nissan, which he mentioned earlier, on winning the European car of the year award for 2011, one of many awards that it has won for its Leaf electric vehicle? Does he agree with Nissan, especially in the light of the recent rise in unemployment figures, that that achievement and all the jobs it has created in the north-east would not have been possible without the grant for business investment scheme that the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has now scrapped along with the very successful RDA, One North East?

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that Nissan was able to take advantage of the support for industry that was in place under the previous Government. What it is doing is not just manufacture a new motor car, because, as its Leaf advertising says, it is much more than that. It is a completely different form of transport. It is a very exciting development and we all wish it well and are proud to have it in our region. I know that she is proud to be the constituency MP for it.

That project would not have happened had it not been for the active intervention of the then Labour Government in making grant support available. It was actually because of the intervention of the then Secretary of State and his willingness to champion development in the north-east of England. We had rivals and competitors in our friends in continental Europe, who were also bidding for the plant. It speaks really well for the work force at Nissan that they are so highly regarded within the Nissan family of companies that they were a contender for the project. The clincher, however, was the support that the Government gave and their willingness to stand by the region.

My fear is that public sector cuts will affect the north-east disproportionately. As well as the closures of the economic development agency and the regional office, there are redundancies in each of the local authorities and other public bodies and vulnerabilities at the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs complex at Longbenton in east Newcastle. If the Minister can say something reassuring about that site, which is the largest single concentration of public sector employees in the western world outside the Pentagon, it will be welcome.

Jobcentre Plus does a good job for us in the north-east. It has had to cope with major redundancy rounds at Atmel, Northern Rock, Nissan and Corus, and it has handled those difficult situations as well as anybody could. It is asking a lot of the labour market to absorb those redundancies and the ones brought about by public spending cuts. The effect of those cuts is cumulative, the more so because the people whose jobs are going have similar skill sets and career aspirations. The Government’s response is that an expanding private sector will take up those employees, but those who advocate that policy must say what private sector and where.