MAYOR DAN JARVIS WESTMINSTER HALL DEBATE SPEECH

Published 11 November 2020 at 12:00am

Mr Chair, it’s a pleasure to serve under your chair ship.

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for the economy in the North of England.

Today’s debate takes place amid an unprecedented economic crisis affecting the whole country.

But COVID has only reinforced an argument that was already undeniable.

We need to level up the North. Not just a tinkering at the margins, but a full-scale transformation.

Not just for the sake of the North, but for the sake of the whole country.

The question is whether the government will make it happen.

COVID has hit the North hard. We have a disproportionate number of cases and hospitalisations. The pandemic has affected deprived areas more, and the North still has far too many of them.

Our economy has been equally exposed. In South Yorkshire, the level of people claiming unemployment-related benefits is now higher than any time since the mid 1990s, when we were in the aftermath of the pit closures.

We’re at risk of undoing a quarter of a century of painful progress.

The brutal reality is that the North is now on course for levelling down, not levelling up.

Meanwhile, the issues that made the case for levelling up in the first place have not gone away.

The UK has the worst regional inequality of any comparable nation,

unacceptably unequal educational and health outcomes,

and many Northern council areas are among the most left behind in the UK.

In the five years following the launch of the Northern Powerhouse, the number of our children living in poverty actually went up by a third, to 800,000.

Policy choices have made or threaten to make this worse.

Planned cuts to Universal Credit could leave one in three working age households in the North £1,000 a year worse off.

Under austerity, public spending fell £3.6 bn in the North even as it rose £4.7bn in the South East and the South West.

So the need for levelling up is clear. But there a flip side to all of this; the great potential and the strengths that make the positive argument for levelling up.

We’re still the heartland of British industry.

South Yorkshire for example has amazing companies like ITM Power,

helping build a hydrogen-fuelled clean energy revolution, and Magtec, developing contactless magnetic gears for wind turbines.

These enterprises reflect the North’s storied history of manufacturing prowess.

But we also have huge strengths in culture, in sport, in tourism.

We have incredible natural beauty. We have world class universities and fantastic strengths in research and skills.

Together, we really can create a better economy, not just for our region but for the whole of the UK, and help drive the transformations we so badly need.

And if we do rebalance national investment, it is estimated it could add £97bn to our economy by 2050.

But we’ve not just shown our potential: we’ve shown we can use it.

We can do our bit if we’re given the tools.

As the only MP with the unusual privilege of also being a Metro Mayor, I know that first hand.

Since I became Mayor in 2018, we’ve created or protected 15,000 jobs in South Yorkshire.

Our pioneering Working Win programme has helped 6,000 people with health conditions who want to get back in to work.

We’ve leveraged £319m of investment, and awarded more than £100m for regeneration and development.

We’ve just committed £5.5m of our own funds to kickstart nine flood prevention projects.

We’re putting our skin in the game and laying down a challenge for the government to do their part, rather than waiting for them to take the initiative.

I can safely say we stand ready to be levelled up. I know my counterparts across the North would say the same.

So we are not coming to this debate with a begging bowl.

Because we have the need, we have the potential, and we have shown we are ready.

Because the North, perhaps more than anywhere, is where we will do the job of building a better Britain for all of us.

What we are asking for, is the tools to get on with that job.

We’ve not had them yet.

We have been quite successful recently at attracting funds to South Yorkshire.

But none of it, apart from the £30m a year Gainshare we’re getting following our devolution deal, represents new resources specifically targeted to South Yorkshire, the North, or even disadvantaged areas more widely.

These are existing funds which have come under our control – like the Adult Education Budget – or a share of national funds we’ve been allocated or successfully bid for on the same basis as any other region – like the Transforming Cities Fund.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s hugely important this money is being spent under local control, and we’re grateful for it – but this is not levelling up.

It’s a similar picture across the North. There are a few exceptions – the Towns Fund is perhaps the most obvious.

But it leaves out hundreds of very deprived towns in favour of some wealthier areas, and is only a one-off £3.6bn, spread across the whole country.

So I’d be grateful if the Minister could confirm how much new money the government has put into levelling up since it took office.

Even if I’ve missed a few things, the overall picture is one of tinkering, not transforming.

An indication of what we need is the UK 2070 Commission’s recommendation to triple the new Shared Prosperity Fund to £15bn a year for 20 years – a total of £200bn of new funding.

That’s for all deprived areas, but it shows the scale we should be talking about.

The moment to do this was the Comprehensive Spending Review.

In the current crisis, it’s understandable the government are carrying out a more modest one year review instead.

But that must not become an excuse to delay the transformative investment we need if ‘levelling up’ is to really mean something.

Already, over two thirds of Northerners believe the government will not follow through on levelling up.

It’s a concern that the 55 Conservative MPs who wrote to the Prime Minister last month seem to share.

We all have an interest in proving those fears wrong. Here’s where I think we need to start:

In the short term, we need better COVID emergency support – including adequate funding for hard-pressed local authorities.

But the key concern is that the reduced Spending Review retains real ambition.

First, it must extend the Local Growth Fund, which expires in March.

The LGF has been absolutely critical to generating jobs, investment and regeneration. Will the Minister commit to that today?

But LGF renewal is only enough for us to stand still. A transformation needs something more like a New Deal for the North.

In my patch we think that looks like our Renewal Action Plan, which calls for funding and powers to expand Kickstart and apprenticeship schemes,

begin a massive investment in infrastructure and decarbonisation, increase active travel, and plant millions of trees.

Could the Minister confirm what plans the Government has for investment at this transformational scale across the North?

Transport will be especially key. Northern Powerhouse Rail is often presented as the infrastructure at the heart of levelling up, but there are growing fears critical parts of it could be delayed along with the north-east leg of HS2.

It’s hard to overstate how damaging that would be for the levelling up agenda.

Lastly, the government should make some critical structural changes:

especially reforming the Green Book to reduce the inbuilt bias towards more affluent areas in government investment decisions,

and following through on proposals to move significant parts of the civil service. Perhaps the Minister could update us today?

Of course, beyond the Spending Review, the new Shared Prosperity Fund must also embed the same ambitions.

Like the EU funds it replaces, it must be based heavily on need.

It should be as devolved as practically possible.

All of this is not just about making the Northern economy bigger – it’s about making it better.

More high tech and high value. More sustainable. More equitable.

My ambition is for the North to be Stronger, Greener, and Fairer.

That should be our aim for the whole of the UK.

COVID is not an obstacle to doing this, but an opportunity.

There is a near consensus on the need for spending to protect our economy. The question is whether that spending will serve a greater purpose.

But crucially, this is not just about money. It is about power.

Both to be legitimate and to be effective, levelling up must be done with and by us, not to us.

We need much more flexibility over how we spend funds allocated to us. But we also need a more fundamental doubling down on devolution.

We’ve done a lot in South Yorkshire, but it’s been with very modest resources and powers.

We are still the most centralised large developed country in the world.

That must change, not just to help unleash our potential, but to help address the disillusionment and division that is growing across our country, and which threatens to break it up.

The polls showing a majority of Scots expressing support for leaving the Union are only the most alarming symptom of a wider crisis of faith also visible in the North.

For all our sakes, we must make levelling up part of a more ambitious vision for reform:

one that lets people feel they are taking back control, and that they have a country they can believe in.

Mr Chair, we are now at a moment of crisis, but also of opportunity.

There is an overwhelming case for us to rise to this moment with ambition.

Not just to give the North the means and the powers to rejuvenate our economy and our society,

but to do so as part a wider vision for a more prosperous, more equitable, more democratic United Kingdom

In the process, perhaps we can make this a transformative moment not just for the North, but for the whole country.