Black Country Day Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
Valerie Vaz
Main Page: Valerie Vaz (Labour - Walsall and Bloxwich)Department Debates - View all Valerie Vaz's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(4 days, 2 hours ago)
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Several hon. Members rose—
Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)
Order. I expect to call the first wind-up speech at 10.28 am.
Antonia Bance
Does the hon. Member recognise that a number of our Black Country local authorities have, over the past 15 years, lost hundreds of millions of pounds of local government funding, which has led to the diminution of local government services, the closure of libraries and Sure Starts, the creation of potholes across our road network and, frankly, the degradation of our public realm? That is not an occurrence of the last year, but of the last 15. One might hope that action will be taken in the review of local government finance to set that right.
David Simmonds
The hon. Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) did say in her introduction that she wanted to be a bit political.
It is important that we acknowledge—the Minister may wish to comment on this—that Sandwell council talked about a £19 million budget gap and the scrapping of weekly bin collections, which will have an impact on that subset of residents in the Black Country. That comes against a backdrop in which our economy is challenged and unemployment is rising. Jaguar Land Rover—mentioned by a number of hon. Members—has announced a further 500 redundancies because of the challenges that it faces.
We need to ensure that the momentum represented in some of the projects that I referred to, which has led to an improvement in the economic outlook and in the opportunities for people across the Black Country—the kind of economic opportunities that have been seized in the past and given rise to the proud industrial heritage that so many hon. Members have eloquently described—is not lost against the backdrop of a national picture of rising unemployment, increasing poverty and the loss of jobs in some of these key industries. That loss is gaining momentum. I am sure that the Minister will not just say a little about how he is proud of the heritage, but will want to tell us specifically what the Government are doing to address those issues.