Local Enterprise Partnerships

Lord Bilimoria Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

I thank the noble Lord for raising the point, not least because I was discussing it only this morning. My right honourable friend in the other place, Greg Clark, is planning to write to LEPs about diversity. On diversity, gender is important, but so is having small business as well as large business.

[Lord Bilimoria (CB)]

My Lords, in my role as chancellor of the University of Birmingham, I have heard that the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP has been a great success. A bold decision was taken to place the local enterprise zone right at the heart of the city. Is the Minister aware of this, and does she believe that it creates high-skilled jobs and has been replicated around the country? On the other hand, in the spirit of the Government’s own partnership, Vince Cable, the Secretary of State for Business, said he was sceptical about whether local enterprise partnerships had been successful at all. What does the Minister have to say about that?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Lord mentioned the Greater Birmingham and Solihull LEP, because the total that it is receiving under the growth deal is £379 million. We think that local enterprise partnerships have huge potential. What they did in the past I am not sure, but certainly for the future lots of funding is going into skills, enterprise, transport and housing. They are bringing in business funding as well, and there is local matching—following the report by my noble friend Lord Heseltine, which the Government welcomed.