Comprehensive Spending Review

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Danny Alexander]

I do not accept that analysis. Of course, it will be for individual police forces in due course to make their own decisions—[Interruption]—but given the potential for police forces to become more efficient, we think that there is no reason why those savings should have any impact at all on the presence of police on the front line in communities.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

On the policy to give two-year-olds 15 hours of education based on free school meal eligibility, what mechanism will be used and how much will it cost to ensure that that happens, given that there is no information about two-year-olds receiving free school meals? I have asked Ministers that question twice, but I still have not had an answer.

[Danny Alexander]

That is a very good question. I imagine that the hon. Gentleman intended to preface his question by saying that he welcomed the commitment to additional nursery education for the poorest two-year-olds. There are many mechanisms available, for example within the Sure Start system, that can target those pupils, and the Secretary of State for Education will no doubt make announcements in due course.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I echo the views of my colleagues who have already spoken. I concur with them about the impact that the CSR will have on the poorest people, as evidenced by the recent BBC-Experian poll placing my area and the surrounding area in Teesside and East Cleveland at the bottom of that list—evidence that my proud people who struggle so hard are in the least resilient position to deal with the Government’s harsh cuts.

Let us take the Government’s threatened public sector sackings, such as those of 180 firefighters in Cleveland fire authority, which not only affects the local economy in terms of spending and welfare, undermining the average man in the street’s confidence in the economy, but exposes the local population, massive processing sites, and the manufacturing, steel and petrochemical industries of Teesside to hugely increased fire risk and in turn only deters further future inward investment in that area. The result of such a policy will be increased unmanaged industrial risk, which will only increase the insurance costs of manufacturing industry in my area.

Inward investment for manufacturing is of real concern, from wherever it may come. Teesside is not fussy; it just wants the investment. However, on Wednesday 20 October, during Prime Minister’s questions, following a question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman), the Prime Minister could not come up with one inward investment or new company in the north-east that had come to the region without public funds leading to and attracting private inward investment.

When the Prime Minister, at the recent CBI conference, made assurances of £60 million to the north-east as “new” money, he was being wholly disingenuous. These moneys were set aside by Labour as a result of the Prime Minister's fiscal friend Kirby Adams’s attempt to be a second MacGregor. The Prime Minister’s mate, Kirby Adams, tried to destroy steelmaking on Teesside. That £60 million was originally set aside by Labour to aid a green regeneration on Teesside; it is not new ConDem cash, as any union official on site whom I worked alongside at Teesside Cast Products will tell you.

The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills confirmed in a Select Committee hearing on Tuesday that LEPs would receive no Government funding and would have to rely on local authorities or businesses for their funds. If that is the case, LEPs are merely powerless, toothless, fundless talking shops. In Teesside, that is even more the case, as the back-up service to any potential Tees valley LEP will be reliant on the Tees Valley Unlimited staff and logistical support. However, that too has had £7 million of its £9 million budget slashed.

The regional growth fund will be expected to cover crucial areas such as roads and housing renewal, leaving little in terms of a funding pot for business to apply for. In any case, any would-be small business would have to make a submission for a bid of at least £l million, a sum most small businesses do not require, cutting out crucial small business growth.

I am also concerned at the delay in the green investment bank. The CSR referred, in small print, to the fact that the green bank will not be set up until 2013-14, missing the crucial 12 to 18-month window that we are currently in to take advantage of wind farm production and maintenance off our coastal ports, such as the port of the Tyne, the Wear and Teesport. I am also concerned that changes to the carbon reduction commitment scheme, which amounts to a £l billion tax, will delay green investment and hurt small downstream industry which aids steel production in the UK.

Only yesterday, steel producer Lakshmi Mittal called for more stimulus measures from all Governments to speed growth in the steel industry. I would impress upon the Government the need not to disturb the Thai Sahaviriya Steel Industries ongoing bid. The probable new owners of Tees Cast Products may well begin to doubt the coalition’s commitment to the ambitious investment plans, on which I have been seeking a definitive answer since May. I and other Members were promised that immediately following the CSR by the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills when he visited the north-east and made his magical mystery tour of the Beam mill at Redcar—a site totally separate from the TCP site.

In conclusion, I draw the House’s attention to another economic critic of the Chancellor. According with Chris Giles in the Financial Times, in all Departments other than Health and International Development, a 19% real-terms cut is being implemented, compared with the 12% cuts planned by the previous Labour Government. That was down to the fact that the Chancellor played fast and loose with an inconsistent definition of “unprotected”. What is clear is that the people of the north-east, and in particular Teesside and East Cleveland, have been left totally unprotected by this Government. I again agree with Chris Giles, as well as other esteemed and documented economic critics, that the Chancellor’s comparison in his oration was simply “bogus”.