Local Enterprise Partnerships

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on securing this important debate and on the case she made, particularly for the value of LEPs. Many of her points about the role of LEPs in skills, business development and attracting inward investment were well made, but I particularly liked her point about their power in terms of convening. That is one value that has been harder to quantify, but it is absolutely important, and when the Minister closes, I hope he will talk about the need for greater certainty —I will make some points about that myself—because that is a clear message that is coming back to all of us. LEPs have shown the value of bringing business together and giving it the chance to help shape a place and the future of local economies. That has been a real success of the model.

I tried to keep pace with the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith). In the end, I wrote down “sheer volume” for the wonderful achievements in the Bucks LEP. I was struck by 55% of new starts being in the enterprise zones, which really shows the impact in that community. That relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) about getting things done, which is what our constituents want and what we all want for our communities. We talk about long-term projects, but we want to get things done, get the economy moving, get people in work and get them the right skills. Those points were well made.

The hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) sold himself short. My LEP is Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire—D2N2—and the hon. Gentleman was a founder director. It is widely accepted across the patch that it has done a very good job. Those things were very difficult at that time; looking back, it seems a lot easier. He made some points about geography, which was a contested issue in our part of the world at the time, as was the structure. The transition from regional development agencies to the LEP model was quite painful. The hon. Gentleman is widely considered to have done a very good job. That shows that, as well as the value of business in these bodies, there is still, and always will be, an important place for local politicians in shaping a place, whether that is leaders of councils or economic development leads on councils. We should always want them to be part of the work, because the value is in the rich partnership between the public and private sector. There is real opportunity in that.

I do not want to go past the point about geography and overlaps and underlaps, because we are going to go through that now—on steroids—as we move now into the next phase of the levelling-up White Paper and the different plans around devolution. There was some interest when it was about local economic partnerships, but in reality we knew that most of our constituents would not particularly connect with the issue. But they are going to when it starts being about mayoralties and combined authorities, and we are really going to have those conversations, so some of that insight and experience will be very welcome.

Local economic partnerships have been an important forum. In my own community, D2N2 covers 2 million people with an output of £45 billion, and it aims to add another £9 billion. That is the scale of the ambition. The LEP has brought real expertise, and a co-ordinating role, as the hon. Member for Stroud said. That has been particularly clear during the pandemic, where it has pulled the partners together to assist people back into work, to steer local investment and to support businesses to grow. We have been very lucky to have it.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the predecessor bodies. For us, that was the East Midlands Development Agency. In general, regional development agencies were good bodies. I know that the hon. Member for Northampton South does not like the ROI stats, but the evidence for RDAs was very good in that regard, and I feel that the changes were a false economy—a cost-cutting measure. I am not advocating a return to that system, but the governance model we have today, with a partnership between local politicians and local business, plus the heft of the support that RDAs had, might be a better way forward. I would be interested to hear what the Minister foresees.

We face significant challenges in our economy. We have had anaemic growth for a decade. We can have a big argument about why that is, but it is still the reality. When we look at wage growth, I do not even think it would qualify even as anaemic. The Bank of England is predicting economic growth to be as low as 1% by 2024. Whatever our economic plans, LEPs have to be there to jump-start our economy. There are elements of the levelling-up White Paper that start to address the situation, in concept and rhetoric, and there is lots that we would all agree with, but we now need to hear from Ministers about more than the concept, and about how we are going to tackle the failed model of over-centralisation and genuinely shift power from the centre—from Whitehall to town hall, and then from those town halls to communities themselves. We know that that is what communities want and that when people are treated well and are given the opportunity, they do well. I fear that, in the long journey between now and 2030, if we go on another trip around the deal-making process and the piecemeal model of devolution, it will be very slow and will frustrate progress. I think we can go faster and I hope the Minister might reflect on that.

The White Paper says that the Government are

“encouraging the integration of LEPs and their business boards into MCAs, the GLA and County Deals”.

Many LEPs have welcomed that but, very much in the spirit of the comments of the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye in opening the debate, they want to know more about that transition. The White Paper said that further detail would be provided in writing to LEPs, Will the Minister say when that happened or will happen?

I will finish with a couple of quick questions. We are moving into an age of more individual, personalised government. I have to say, that is not to my taste. I think the superman model of leadership is a dated and failed one—and they are virtually always men. I like a Cabinet Government; I think more heads are better together. The value in the LEPs was that they brought together a rich mix of partners. They are very busy people with very important day jobs, and they are going to need to know that their work is valued. If they are downgraded to a business sounding board for a Mayor, then that will be a challenging process. Otherwise, if we are putting all accountability on an individual personage, where will LEPs fit in to that? I am keen to hear what the Minister has to say about that.

The White Paper announced three new innovation accelerators. Can the Minister provide some detail on how LEPs and local government are expected to interact with those? Will they have genuine power and a say in them? Similarly, how will LEPs engage with the new levelling-up directors and the Levelling Up Advisory Council, and how will they provide feedback? We have seen a general sense of enthusiasm for sub-regional business and political leadership on important matters of developing the economy. Saying that sounds almost facile, but that is what we are all saying. We are now moving into a new context through the levelling-up programme. There are many questions that need to be answered, so I hope that we might start to hear answers from the Minister today.