The comments made by Nick Thomas-Symonds, the Shadow Home Secretary, on 7 February 2021.
These revelations expose the fact that – as Labour warned – the UK Government’s quarantine measures will continue to leave us completely exposed to emerging strains of the virus.
Not only are the measures far too slow to begin – 50 days after the South African strain emerged – they are also dangerously inadequate. Tory incompetence is dangerous.
The comments made by Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, on 7 February 2021.
This Government has eroded not only our public services to the brink of collapse, but so much of what it means to be an honourable and transparent government.
While this Tory Government has denied key workers in our public services a pay rise, they paid 900 management consultants at Deloitte £1,000 a day to work on test and trace.
The beating heart of our country is the key workers who have kept us going through this last year. That’s why we applauded them. Children weren’t banging pots and pans for management consultants. They were clapping our key workers.
The public is also paying a high price for this Government’s mismanagement and waste. This current Tory Party is rife with conflicts of interest. It’s all cheques and no balances.
People expect all of us seeking government to spend their money with care and respect – and a Labour government will.
Labour will clean up government contracting by strengthening FOI, introducing a new Independent Anti-Corruption Commissioner, and an Integrity and Ethics Commission to make us a world leader in good governance and transparency.
The comments made by John Healey, the Shadow Defence Secretary, on 7 February 2021.
There is serious concern that Britain’s Armed Forces remain 10,000 below the total strength Ministers have said is needed and we believe there is cross-party support for making sure the MoD keeps our full-time forces up to strength and battle-ready.
The strength of our forces should rightly be set by a full assessment of the security threats we face and this is a central question the new Integrated Review must answer. Our adversaries will exploit continuing holes in our capability. The UK needs a proper defence strategy without further delay.
Labour also wants to ensure the Government’s Armed Forces Bill will deliver step-change improvements in work and living conditions for the forces, veterans and their families.
The speech made by Matt Western, the Labour MP for Warwick and Leamington, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
I welcome the Government’s interest and their recognition of the importance of Royal Leamington Spa to be a recipient of potentially £10 million. As an important sub-regional shopping centre, it is a vital part of the region’s economy and quality of life, so let me praise the council officers at Warwick District Council for the quality of their original submission and the work they have done since in refining the proposals against a reduced contribution proposed by the Government. That said, £10 million is a sound amount for them to work with, and I hope it can do much to address the air quality in the town, highlighted by the World Health Organisation as an issue, while revitalising the commercial centre more widely.
However, let me cut to the chase. Over the past decade the Government have cut £15 billion from local authorities across the UK, yet handed back just £3.6 billion to some towns which they invited to bid for moneys. Members will know that back in October I questioned the Prime Minister—did I have the guts, he asked me—about how it could be that the Secretary of State could approve tens of millions of pounds for his Minister and his constituency town of Darwen, while that Minister could return the favour and approve tens of millions of pounds for the Secretary of State’s constituency town of Newark—beyond belief. But how were the 101 towns selected in the first instance? Surely, if the Government were honest in their claim to level up, they would have allocated the moneys to the most deprived communities across England, but they have not. In the past year, we have heard many cases of the Government using algorithms, or more often malgorithms, but this is back-of-a-fag-packetithm. While Housing, Communities and Local Government officials may have recommended that the Government did one thing—namely, allocate funds to the most deserving communities—instead the Secretary of State and Ministers allocated moneys to towns in the lowest priority category.
It is also worth noting that the Government chose to allocate by region, not need, so the north and the midlands were disadvantaged by their political ploys. How else could Bournemouth benefit but, shockingly, South Shields be left off? Both are seaside towns, but I think I know which is in greater need of the funding. It is something Harry Redknapp would have appreciated more than most. I will not even go into Cheadle. While Big Ben no longer bongs, this Government bung, and they are doing it on an industrial scale. A simple analysis of the towns that have received moneys underlines the political tactics laid bare. Certainly the timing of the announcement, in the last few weeks before the last general election, might give us a clue. It was carefully targeted at marginal seats. Interestingly, the impartial cross-party Public Accounts Committee concluded in its investigation that the selection process was not impartial. It took evidence from Christopher Hanretty, a professor of politics at Royal Holloway, who said that
“the process by which towns were invited to bid for money from the Towns Fund was driven by party-political electoral advantage”,
riding roughshod over any pretence to be levelling up this country. Any section 151 officer in a council would be sacked if they acted like this.
Any impartial observer will see this for what it is, and certainly the public do. It is grubby government of the worst order.
The speech made by Sarah Olney, the Liberal Democrat MP for Richmond Park, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me an opportunity to speak in this debate. It has been fantastic to hear the stories of how the towns fund has helped individual town centres, and I am pleased for those communities that have seen a boost from the fund. Members will know that the National Audit Office and the Public Accounts Committee, of which I am a member, have expressed doubts about the transparency of the decision making relating to the fund’s distribution. I do not want to reiterate these concerns, as they have been expanded on by various Members in this debate, but I note that the approach of selecting certain town centres for funding while excluding others is bound to lead to inequalities. Town centres that could have benefited from funding will miss out. The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) made an excellent point about London suburbs, and obviously I, too represent one. There are lots of opportunities in London’s suburbs for levelling up, not least now that we are seeing less commuting, and lots of town centres will be looking for funds to revive, to help those who are working from home more often.
In the interim, our town centres have had to weather the unprecedented economic blow of the pandemic lockdown and a further decimation of the retail industry. Once the restrictions are lifted, there will be an urgent need to make a substantial economic offer to town centre businesses, not just to help revive them, but to provide jobs, and to deliver local goods and services, and, most importantly, public spaces, where local people can come together and meet each other. It is those informal meetings that we are all missing out on during lockdown. All our town centres will need assistance to bounce back from this crisis, so I call on the Government to take measures that will support all our communities, and abandon this winners and losers approach that we have seen with the allocation of funds from this towns fund.
The need to review our approach to business rates has been aired many times in this Chamber, and I hope we will hear more on it in due course, in order to level the playing field between physical and digital businesses. Similarly, I would like to see a change in the way in which commercial leases are granted and an abolition of upward-only rent reviews. I have heard that ask from many, many businesses in the past year. We should also reform local authority funding to give all councils more money to spend on investing in their own town centres. There are great opportunities for our retail and hospitality sectors, and our cultural organisations, once the lockdown restrictions are lifted, and they will bring new employment to every part of the UK. I urge the Government to put the investment necessary into those sectors to help them all recover from the current downturn.
The speech made by Charlotte Nichols, the Labour MP for Warrington North, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
Every one of us in this House wants to see investment in our constituents and our communities, particularly after a decade of Tory-imposed austerity, so I welcome the £22 million that has been allocated to Warrington from the fund. As part of the town deal board, I pay special thanks to all the stakeholders and officers of Warrington Borough Council for drawing together this successful bid. But—you knew that there would be a “but”, Mr Deputy Speaker—this is not a sustainable alternative to proper, long-term funding of our towns and their needs, and cannot and should not be sold as such by the Government.
As has already been mentioned, the past 10 years have seen core funding for local authorities cut by £15 billion, and our councils are struggling even more with the understandable impact of covid on their income streams and spending expectations, which the LGA estimates will be a further £2.6 billion. In comparison, the towns fund programme replaces only a fifth of the shortfall. We cannot expect our towns to thrive, as I would like to see, if our funding is stripped to the bone and sometimes the marrow, and we are left hoping for a special handout from Westminster once a decade. How does that assist long-term planning, or the development of sustainable local economies? We need a more holistic approach.
In Warrington, I want the certainty of a long-overdue new hospital Bill. I want assurances that there will be funding for the restoration and redevelopment of local leisure and library facilities, including Culcheth Community Campus and Padgate library. Above all, I want a guarantee that Warrington Borough Council will be reimbursed for the moneys it has had to spend because of the pandemic, or else all the work that has gone into this bid will be fatally undermined. I want towns such as mine to be self-sustaining and able to offer opportunities for young people and well-paid jobs so that they become hubs of prosperity, rather than being emptied out. We in Warrington benefit greatly from the high-skilled and highly rewarded employment opportunities provided by the nuclear industry. I want the Government to do more to deliver the next generation of new nuclear, which will provide more such quality prospects in Warrington and elsewhere, and to commit to an industrial strategy that makes levelling up the north-west about deeds, not words.
In his response to today’s debate, I hope the Minister will set out how he will judge the success of the towns fund, and how he will ensure that continuous financial support for towns is restored, rather than acting as though we should be grateful for a chance to bid for funding in a once-in-a-decade competition.
The speech made by Alex Cunningham, the Labour MP for Stockton North, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
The towns fund might be a good idea, but the lack of transparency in decision making has led to understandable concerns about the impartiality of the process, and from what I have seen of it in the Tees valley, those concerns are well founded.
In December, I wrote to the Secretary of State about Billingham, soon to be the home of Novavax vaccine manufacture. The town is home to 35,000 proud Teessiders as well as the Billingham Forum, which is a huge sports and theatre venue including pools, gyms and an ice rink. The town is a cultural hub, but it desperately needs help to further develop. As the singer of Maxïmo Park, Billingham-born Paul Smith, sings, it is
“where industrial tunnels were our fairytale castles”.
In short, it is a town bursting with potential.
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council approached the Government to request that Billingham be included in the cohort of towns eligible to bid for funds, but it was refused. Back in October, Billingham councillors wrote to the Secretary of State asking why other Tees towns such as Thornaby in Stockton South, with a Tory MP, were fortunate enough to have been included in the selection of the first 100 towns for the fund when Billingham was not, even though it clearly fits the criteria every bit as well, if not more so, than Thornaby—although rest assured that we celebrate with the people of Thornaby that they do have the investment that they need. The decision led to confusion and concern locally that could have easily been put to bed if Ministers had responded to the request from the Billingham councillors to explain why their town had been passed over. Instead, the Minister fobbed off the councillors’ request for information and did not even engage with their concerns.
I followed up with my own letter, which was responded to, but with only slightly more information. It said that Billingham will get the chance to apply to the £300 million levelling-up fund, which has been designated for a towns fund competition. I personally find this quite astonishing. If the Government had sufficient information to select the first 100 towns that were eligible for a deal, why do we have to have more wasteful bidding processes that pit deprived communities against each other for scraps from the Government’s table? Why can the Government not use existing data and provide investment now—and cut out the middleman, saving our councils time and money in doing so?
It does not matter what money is being dished out these days by the Government: whether it is to the NHS, to councils or for town centres—Ministers are quite happy, and not even embarrassed, to pass over some areas and favour their own. It is time for fairness in the system; time for real, true levelling up and proper resources; and time for towns like Billingham to get the support that they need.
The speech made by Yvette Cooper, the Labour MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
Castleford has put in a bid to the towns fund, and I have been working with Wakefield Council, community organisations and local businesses to draw up plans for badly needed investment here in our town; to restore some of the cuts in investment and jobs we have had over the past 10 years; to regenerate our town centre and reconnect with our riverside; and to build on our community strengths and community pride.
We want not only to restore our riverside—the River Aire runs straight past the mill here and we want people to be able to enjoy it again—but to boost Henry Moore Square in the town centre; support local jobs; restore Kingdom Hall, one of the oldest buildings in the town centre; and invest in Queen’s Mill, where the old Allinson’s flour mill has been taken over by the Castleford Heritage Trust, a local community organisation that has made it the community hub, not only supporting residents during the covid crisis but growing small businesses as well as new jobs and opportunities.
We want to boost local skills, working with the Castleford Tigers Foundation to set up a new adult skills centre, because in our town the number of adults in training and education has halved over recent years as adult skills budgets have been cut. That is shocking when we need those skills to boost the jobs of the future. Too often, our industrial jobs and proud heritage have been hit and we have not had the investment for the new jobs of the future.
I urge Ministers to support not only Castleford’s bid but all our towns, because the problem with the Government’s approach is that the towns fund simply does not go far enough. I have been calling for investment in our towns for many years, as part of the Labour towns campaign, because over the past 10 years the rate of jobs growth in our towns has been half the rate in our cites, the rate of business growth in our towns has been half the rate in our cities, and austerity has hit our towns much harder than our cities. We have lost more public services and seen more services shrink back under 10 years of Conservative Government austerity.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, 16 towns were chosen for the towns fund. The first eight were those that ranked most strongly against independent criteria on skills need, investment need and deprivation. Rightly, Castleford was chosen in that top eight, but Knottingley was ninth on the list and was left out. Instead, the Government chose to invest in towns that did not have the same level of skills need or deprivation and that had not seen the same scale of cuts—Knottingley has been one of the hardest hit by austerity over the past 10 years, losing its library, sports centre and investment in our town. We need a chance for Knottingley to gets its share of investment, and for Normanton and Pontefract to get their share too. We need a comprehensive approach, not just a towns fund.
The speech made by Robert Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
I welcome this debate and thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) and the Government for supporting the town fund and Harlow. Harlow has been my home for 20 years. It is a town of achievement, aspiration, community and opportunity. Although Harlow may not yet have enormous reserves of economic capital, it has enough social and cultural capital to fill any vault in any bank.
I wish to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the Government for the recent investments in our town. Harlow has received £50 million for the M11 junction 7A, hundreds of millions for our new Harlow hospital, and major investment for our enterprise zone. I am proud to note that Harlow College is one of the finest colleges in the country, and Harlow is on its way to becoming the skills capital of the east of England, following a recent £3 million upgrade for T-level delivery and the construction of the £12 million advanced manufacturing centre. I welcome the fact that the Government have already committed £300 million to the creation of Public Health England’s science campus in Harlow, in anticipation of PHE’s expected move. I look forward to the Government confirming the funding for the project in the next spending statement.
Despite all that, Harlow remains the second most-deprived area in Essex. It is essential that that is recognised in the Government’s levelling-up agenda. Part of the town centre is in a real state of disrepair, plagued by antisocial behaviour. Our neighbourhood centres are in desperate need of regeneration. Harlow’s towns fund bid sets out to remedy such problems and address the challenges posed by ageing infrastructure, through town centre improvements; the redevelopment of Staple Tye neighbourhood centre; measures to increase connectivity at the enterprise zone; and investment in a new institute of technology.
Sadly, we lost out on £10.4 million from the future high streets fund because the Government procurement letter stated that Harlow Council’s bid
“did not meet stringent criteria on value for money for the taxpayer”.
The towns fund bid is a chance to make up for that loss. It will be the thread that ties together all the Government’s recent investments in Harlow. The town centre must be fit for purpose to support economic growth and social capital and make Harlow a place that offers community, security and prosperity for all our citizens—a town that aspirational people want to move to and live in.
I give special thanks to the Minister, who is responsible for the towns fund, all members of the Harlow growth board, the chief executive of Harlow Council and the senior officers who are working day and night to make sure the bid succeeds. I hope that, this time, our bid will be a success and our town will get the much needed funding that it deserves.
The speech made by Ian Levy, the Conservative MP for Blyth Valley, in the House of Commons on 4 February 2021.
As the first Conservative MP for Blyth Valley, I have been given the opportunity to help breathe life into my hometown, which has been neglected for many decades. Having lived in Blyth all my life, I have seen at first hand the decay and abandonment that the town centre has experienced, despite its great potential. I was delighted when the town centre was awarded £11.12 million of funding from the future high streets fund, to allow for much-needed investment and improvement.
The towns fund provides limitless opportunities for regions across the country to unleash their full potential, while delivering on the Government’s agenda to level up. Such investment has the capacity to dramatically improve, regenerate and unite towns and communities across this wonderful country of ours. In Blyth, the funding will support the revitalisation of Blyth marketplace and Bridge Street by providing new leisure and cultural facilities at the heart of the town centre. As part of the recovery from the pandemic, the announcement on 25 September that shovel-ready projects in the constituency will be given a £750,000 boost was particularly welcome. I am extremely pleased that major work will start soon on improving Bowes Street, which will immediately make a real difference to the town.
In addition, the £1.5 million of funding confirmed for the reopening of the Northumberland rail line will transform the town centre into a flourishing, prosperous and vibrant one. This allocation of funding is a great testament to those at the heart of the community who show great resolve and overcome the challenges we face, working together, and I am confident that Blyth will have a bright and prosperous future for generations to come.