Pride in Place

Jon Trickett Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I think the hon. Gentleman is asking me to do the Chancellor’s job, which I shall not be able to do. We think that this is an exciting way of investing in our communities, and that there is a huge opportunity for us to leverage in additional investment. We are very keen to talk to social impact investors and philanthropists about how we can invest. There is also a lot of interest among the business community—local businesses and business improvement districts—in bringing this together. If we get this right and the funding in place leverages in additional funding, we will have shown that this is a way of operating that we can then roll out across the country.

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

The Featherstone people have great pride in their place, but they are also shrewd. They know that the Tories did austerity, trickle-down economics and cuts across the health service, so they will very much welcome this announcement. May I push the Minister a little bit further on the question of a new economic model? Top-down economics has failed. Treasury mandarins do not understand what is happening in a place like Featherstone, whereas Featherstone people do. Does she see this measure as a way of community wealth building from the bottom up, rather than economics from the top down?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

Absolutely. The Prime Minister spoke about grassroots growth, which is growth rooted in our communities and our places, where we build community wealth, which fundamentally changes and rewires the economic model and the economic settlement. We are very deliberate about the fact that we want to put communities at the heart of both driving change, and driving wealth and economic opportunity. That is how we drive up living standards.