Asked by: Lord Triesman (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to develop the M5 as a growth corridor; and whether they have asked the National Infrastructure Commission to consider such a proposal.
Answered by Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist - Opposition Whip (Lords)
Government has no plans at present to develop the M5 as a growth corridor. However, this strategic corridor is important for the economies of the Midlands Engine and the Western Gateway.
We have supported growth through a number of key projects which include: the recent announcement of £219million Housing Infrastructure Fund to improve Junction 10 in Gloucestershire; £12.19million Local Growth Funding to improve the junction 25 at Taunton; and also the creation of 2 Enterprise Zones, Gravity at junction 23 near Bridgwater and at the Exeter and East Devon Enterprise Zone at junction 29.
Asked by: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to the Prime Minister's oral statement on Transport Infrastructure and oral contribution of 11 February 2020, Official Report, column 723, whether High Speed Two will include the establishment of Sheffield rail links; and if Northern Powerhouse Rail improvements will include the establishment of rail links from Manchester to (a) Sheffield and (b) Leeds.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The government has made clear its commitment to delivering HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail. We will develop an integrated rail plan to ensure that HS2, Northern Powerhouse Rail and Midlands Engine Rail bring benefits to the North and Midlands as quickly and efficiently as possible. The Department for Transport will continue to work with Transport for the North and local leaders, to develop NPR plans for the Leeds to Manchester corridor alongside options for lines serving Sheffield, Liverpool, Tees Valley, Hull and Newcastle.
Asked by: Henry Smith (Conservative - Crawley)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps he is taking to encourage local growth in (a) Crawley and (b) the UK.
Answered by Luke Hall
The Government is committed to levelling up the entire country and giving towns, cities and communities across the UK real power and investment to drive the growth of the future and unleash their full potential.
We have taken action to encourage local growth in Crawley that includes:
Across the UK the Government is supporting local partners to deliver local economic growth and prosperity through:
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what fiscal steps he is taking to grow the digital economy in the Midlands.
Answered by Simon Clarke
The government is committed to making the UK the best place to start and grow a digital business, and to ensuring the benefits of digital are felt across the country.
The Midlands is well-placed to make the most of the digital revolution, with its leading universities and strengths in advanced manufacturing and engineering. It is already home to more than 20,000 digital technology businesses.
We are driving further growth in the region’s digital economy through:
The region is also benefitting from:
Asked by: Lord Myners (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to address the regional disparities in small business lending, as reported in The Times on 21 January.
Answered by Lord Duncan of Springbank
The Government is committed to levelling up across the whole country so that businesses can access the funding they need to thrive wherever they are.
The British Business Bank (BBB) is a government-owned economic development bank which helps to drive economic growth by making finance markets work better for small businesses, enabling them to prosper and grow. Since BBB was established in 2014, it has supported over £7 billion of finance to over 91,000 SMEs across the UK (as at June 2019) and continues to grow. The stock of finance supported by the bank grew by 31% year on year (from June 2018 to June 2019).
BBB’s Start Up Loans programme has so far provided 69,201 loans worth over £558m to small businesses (at end-December 2019) and has delivered loans in every parliamentary constituency in the UK.
BBB has introduced specific funds and activities to help address regional disparities in access to finance, which are having an increasingly significant impact. These have equity and debt finance components, with the balance of debt to equity set according to the specific needs of the businesses in those regions.
The funds include:
For equity investment, the BBB also has a £100m Regional Angels Programme, which is designed to help reduce regional imbalances in access to early stage equity finance for smaller businesses across the UK (launched in October 2018 by British Business Investments, a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank). In September 2019, the first £10m commitment through the programme was made to one of the largest business angel networks in the North of England which primarily operates in the North West, Yorkshire and the North East with more commitments to be announced in the coming year.
The UK Network, established in early 2019 by the British Business Bank is a UK-wide network of relationship managers which will continue to enhance and further build BBB’s relationships with key SME access to finance stakeholders across the UK and thereby help tackle regional imbalances in access to finance, including for smaller businesses seeking debt finance at all stages of their development.
Asked by: Andrew Mitchell (Conservative - Sutton Coldfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps her Department is taking to support small business growth in (a) Sutton Coldfield and (b) the West Midlands.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
We are committed to ensuring all small businesses have access to the advice and support they need to start, grow, and scale up their businesses.
The Government-backed British Business Bank (BBB) is there to make finance markets work better for small businesses at all stages of their development. The Bank’s programmes are currently supporting over £6.6bn of finance to over 89,000 smaller businesses. The BBB’s Start-Up Loans programme provides loans to entrepreneurs seeking to start and grow their own businesses. Since 2012, the Programme has delivered over 67,000 loans, worth over £534m and 99 of these, totalling £857,912 went to small businesses in Sutton Coldfield constituency.
All businesses can access core services, information and guidance on starting up and running a business, as well as their statutory rights and obligations, on our GOV.UK websites, and our Business Support Helpline forms a key part of the government’s offer to SMEs in England, providing trusted and joined-up information and sign-posting businesses to relevant sources of support. In 2018, it helped 31,500 businesses, of which 65% were entrepreneurs and start-ups.
There are 38 Growth Hubs, one in each Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) area providing a free and impartial, local single point of contact to all businesses, no matter their size or sector, to access advice and support from across the public and private sectors. The 6 Growth Hubs that encompass the wider West Midlands region have self-reported that in 2018-2019 they helped in excess of 10,864 businesses.
Through three rounds of competitive Growth Deals, Government has invested over £9bn of funding, boosting national productivity and growth.
The LEPs in the West Midlands region have been awarded Growth Deal funding totalling £1,080.2m and City Deal funding of £59.8m to invest in projects that benefit the local area and economy. This includes projects such as Universities@IBC where Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP has invested £2.49m to provide additional state-of-the-art enterprise space, extending the existing Faraday Wharf business incubation building at the Innovation Birmingham Campus.
SME’s in the West Midlands will also benefit from The Midlands Engine Investment Fund, which is providing a huge investment of over £250 million. It will support small businesses in the Midlands to start and grow, it has now invested nearly £50 million into over 140 SMEs.
We will continue to work to make small business owners more aware of the wide range of advice and support available to them.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps she is taking to ensure that the Midlands Engine policy focuses on the densely populated areas that surround big cities.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
As part of levelling up the regions the government is committed to a Midlands Engine Strategy to stimulate growth and increase productivity across the whole of the Midlands Engine region including densely populated areas that surround big cities. For example, we made commitments in the 2017 Midlands Engine Strategy to launch 5G tests beds to enhance digital connectivity in the region, including a Worcestershire test bed; to support the eight Enterprise Zones across the Midlands, including the Ceramic Valley Enterprise Zone in Staffordshire; and to allocate £392m of Local Growth Fund funding which is supporting a wide range of projects including £8.5 million for first phase improvements to the Hanley-Bentilee link road, and £6.9 million to support the formation of an Advanced Manufacturing Hub in Stoke and Staffordshire.
Asked by: Lord Greaves (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they intend to take in response to their statistics and reports on the English Indices of Deprivation 2019, published on 26 September.
Answered by Viscount Younger of Leckie - Shadow Minister (Work and Pensions)
The Government is committed to levelling up every part of the UK - unemployment is down 1.2 million since 2010 while wages continue to rise at their fastest in over a decade. We’re supporting families with their cost of living and providing more support to the most deprived authorities, which now have a spending power 16% higher per home than the least deprived. For those who need extra support, the UK Government spends over £95 billion a year, including for those who are on a low income.
Following our departure from the EU, we will create the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), a programme of investment designed to tackle inequalities between communities by raising productivity.
The Government recently announced 100 places which will be invited to develop proposals for our £3.6 billion Towns Fund - 45 of these places are in the Northern Powerhouse and 30 in the Midlands Engine, demonstrating our commitment to the whole country. The fund will deliver transformative investment in transport, digital, skills and culture in order to boost productivity and sustainably raise living standards in towns across the country.
The Chancellor confirmed in August that the National Infrastructure Strategy will be published in Autumn 2019. The Strategy will set out the Government’s plans to deliver a step change in infrastructure investment to support the UK economy, as well as providing a formal response to the NIC’s National Infrastructure Assessment. As part of his Spending Round speech, the Chancellor set out his ambitions to deliver an infrastructure revolution, which included a commitment to use increased infrastructure investment to support growth and productivity across the whole of the UK.
Asked by: Catherine McKinnell (Labour - Newcastle upon Tyne North)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with reference to section 2.26 of the print version of the Spending Round 2019 document, whether additional funding will be made available to the (a) Northern Powerhouse and (b) Midlands Engine.
Answered by Simon Clarke
Every place in the UK has a role to play in driving growth and we are committed to levelling up opportunities across towns, cities and communities across the country. As part of this, the recent Spending Round confirmed funding to extend a wide range of programmes into 2020/21, including for the Midlands Engine and the Northern Powerhouse.
Asked by: Ben Bradley (Conservative - Mansfield)
Question to the Department for International Trade:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Trade, what steps he has taken to support job creation from foreign direct investment in the East Midlands.
Answered by Graham Stuart
In 2016 the Department for International Trade established the Midlands Engine Investment Hub which has developed several sector-based investment propositions for the Foreign Direct Investment offer in key Midlands sectors, including the East Midlands. These are now promoted widely within DIT’s International network.
There were 69 investment projects that landed in the East Midlands in tax year 2018-2019, with 1,823 associated new jobs.
On 30 July the first East Midlands proposition within DIT’s High Potential Opportunities programme was launched. This showcases the Leicester Space Park offer and will be promoted to a targeted list of overseas investors.