Barry Sheerman
Main Page: Barry Sheerman (Labour (Co-op) - Huddersfield)Department Debates - View all Barry Sheerman's debates with the Cabinet Office
(9 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Greg Clark
My hon. Friend is right. I am delighted that the thaw has started in Buxton, although I am sure it looks even nicer under a covering of snow. From a rival spa town of Tunbridge Wells, I commend the attractiveness of the great town of Buxton and I hope to be able to visit it to see the impact of this investment.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister will know that Huddersfield is not a city but that the Kirklees local authority is one of the largest in the land. Nobody from my constituency would not welcome new money to the university of Huddersfield or our area, but may I put this in context? The research published last week by the Centre for Cities gives a very different picture of the way in which over the past five years power and resources have flowed to the richest parts of our country, particularly to London and the south-east. Is he aware of how much of a cut people in Kirklees have suffered in recent years and face in the future? Services are being cut at every level.
Greg Clark
The university of Huddersfield is a strong institution. I know that the hon. Gentleman takes a particular interest in its connections with business, so I hope he will welcome locally the investment that has gone in there. The Centre for Cities is a good and valued think-tank. It carried out a 10-year review of the performance of cities over that period. It did not split what happened before 2010 from what happened subsequently, but when one does that, the story is striking: most of the net new jobs before 2010 were in London and the south-east, whereas most now are outside London and the south-east. Strikingly, since 2010 the list of areas that have had the biggest fall in unemployment, as measured by the claimant count, is topped by Liverpool, followed by the black country, Birmingham, Teesside, Manchester, Coventry and Warwickshire, the Humber, and Stoke and Staffordshire. That is a picture of the revival of our local economy, which is due to the efforts of local leaders but backed by this Government.