Regional Growth

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

Of course, the announcement today is on funding for combined authority mayors, which is why the west of England combined authority mayor has received two-thirds of £1 billion of transport investment for areas that are part of that boundary. We are still committed to investing in each and every part of Britain, and the details of that will come out in the spending review next Wednesday. I remind the right hon. Gentleman that the Government have said to other parts of the country that if they can get together and agree on a combined authority mayoralty, we will continue to support it in the same way that we support the existing mayors in the UK. It will be for local leaders in the region that he and I come from to decide how best to collaborate on these issues going forward.

[Jon Trickett (Normanton and Hemsworth) (Lab)]

It is more than 30 years since I was the leader of Leeds city council and made the first proposal for a rapid transit system in that area of West Yorkshire, so I welcome today’s announcement, although it will be a couple of years before the building starts. During the 14 years of Tory Government, the average amount of money per head spent in London was three times larger than the amount of money spent per head on transport in Yorkshire. Of course we want a successful capital city, but that has left the coalfield communities that I represent in real difficulty, with low investment and low productivity. Our wages and salaries are £12,500 per head less than those received on average in the north of London. Will the Minister assure the House that we will look again at funding the regeneration of coalfield communities in the near future?

[Darren Jones]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question and his campaigning over many years. As the Chancellor set out today in her speech on the funding for city regions, and as was set out in our review of the Green Book, we are purposefully tilting funding towards the north and the midlands after many, many years of those areas losing out, with a tendency for money to come more into London and the south-east. London and the south-east are still important, but we recognise the historical injustice in the distribution of investment across the country, whether it is low ratios in the east midlands, low funding in the south-west or decades of being overlooked in the north. That is why this announcement is really important. I reassure my hon. Friend that I understand from the mayor that work will begin on the projects announced today in 2028, with an ambition for the first services to be available from the mid-2030s.