Teesworks Joint Venture
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(2 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Sir Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
I am pleased that the report has been published today and thank the Minister for his statement. Teesworks is critical for my constituents and the whole of Teesside, and the report confirms that for every £1 of public money that has been invested, the taxpayer will receive £9.50 back, and that is on the basis that only 17% of the site has been developed.
As my hon. Friend the Minister said, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) alleged “industrial-scale corruption” in the House. He did so for overtly political reasons, which sadly Opposition Front-Bench Members have repeated today. Labour wants Teesworks to fail.
Sir Simon Clarke
Labour puts politics before people, and the furious denials of the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) do nothing to disguise the fact that he and his colleagues have connived in making malicious allegations that this afternoon have been fundamentally proven to be false. The independent review confirmed that no illegality occurred. Does my hon. Friend agree that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough ought to apologise to the House, and to all those who were named in the report and falsely accused by him? Does he also agree that the hon. Member for Middlesbrough should resign for acting against the interests of the constituency that he serves and, indeed, against the interest of the whole Tees Valley?
Teesworks: Accountability and Scrutiny
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
I am proud to speak today in support of Teesworks and our Tees Valley Mayor, Ben Houchen, as well as the process that the Government have put in place, of which more in a moment.
Teesside is being transformed, from our airport, saved after Labour let it drift to the brink of closure, to our town centres of Middlesbrough, Guisborough and Loftus benefiting from tens of millions of pounds of direct investment. We have the new mayoral development corporation to turbocharge the regeneration of Hartlepool. We have the Treasury’s northern campus in Darlington and we have the UK’s largest freeport on the Tees. Overshadowing, and indeed uniting, all of this is Teesworks, the largest brown-field remediation project in the country, and the beating heart of our industrial future. The site of the former Redcar steelworks was costing the taxpayer £1 a second as long as it stood idle. It is right that the Government and our Mayor have brought it back to life. Government investment of £246 million has been put in, but as we know, the cost of total remediation is some £482. 6 million, as independently assessed. That is the reason for the joint venture established with the private sector.
It is important to clarify exactly what has happened. The first point is that the site has never been a public asset. The private sector Teeswork partners brokered a deal to take back control of the land from the Thai banks. It brought the deal and the land to the South Tees Development Corporation, not the other way round. That is why the Opposition’s talk of no public tendering process having taken place is such a red herring.
The public-private partnership was agreed, moreover, by the TVCA cabinet, the STDC board, the Department for Business and the Treasury. Bob Cook, the Labour leader of Stockton council, voted in favour. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) stated on the BBC’s “Sunday Politics” that he understood the reasons for a 50:50 split. A lot of revisionism is going on now.
Alex Cunningham
I have spoken to the leader of Stockton borough council and he has had no part in any decision relating to the transfer of those assets from the public to the private sector. He is a member of the combined authority, not a member of the STDC board. It is important that the right hon. Member recognises that.
Mr Clarke
The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. Mr Cook voted for this structure and he cannot change that vote.
There is no credible suggestion that wrongdoing has occurred. Teesworks is double audited, first by Mazars and then by Azets, two separate auditors. There is then an audit committee for Teesworks. Here we come to the truly jaw-dropping fact that that audit committee is chaired by none other than Councillor Matthew Storey, the leader of Middlesbrough Council’s Labour group and the head of the parliamentary office of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough. He chairs that audit committee —what concerns has he raised? He is part of the audit structure that is now being cast into doubt.
It is noteworthy that in the speech by the shadow Secretary of State we heard nothing that amounted to a substantive allegation. We heard a series of inferences and questions that amount to nothing more than the same tittle-tattle that has characterised this process, with the exception of the allegation of industrial-scale corruption that has been made but never substantiated, because the hon. Member for Middlesbrough knows that he would be sued for libel if he repeated it.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Secrecy is a disease that is threatening a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the people of Teesside—an opportunity of thousands of high-quality jobs and a share of the dividend from hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. It is secrecy that drives the suspicions, questions and doubts about how the Tory Tees Valley Mayor, Ministers and their cronies do business not just at the Teesworks site, but at our publicly owned Teesside International airport, which continues to lose millions of pounds and has twice been bailed out to the tune of £10 million using taxpayers’ money.
Tomorrow will be the 13th anniversary of my maiden speech in this House. I was happy that day to tell the world how proud I was to be an adopted Teessider, and that remains very much the case today. We have a wealth of resources, from our people to our amazing cultural offer. We have our beautiful countryside, our coast and our amazing industrial base, which has created so much of our country’s wealth, but we deserve so much more.
My hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) and I have been consistent in demanding openness and comprehensive scrutiny of decisions and the use of hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money by the Tees Mayor and his close-knit band of supporters and partners. The fact that several national newspapers, led by Private Eye magazine, have made front-page news of how business is done on the mayoral projects on Teesside warrants a completely independent investigation not by a group appointed and favoured by the Secretary of State, but by the National Audit Office, which has confirmed that it could do one if given the green light by Ministers. The Tees Mayor is up for it; why are the Government not?
Similarly, I hope to see Ministers withdraw their opposition to the inquiry proposed by the Select Committee on Business and Trade, which would have the power to scrutinise in a way so far denied by all those concerned. It could also summon people here to give evidence. I have had all manner of concerns over the years as the Mayor has been aided and abetted by Ministers as senior as the Prime Minister himself, hiding not just the decisions made about the airport and the Teesworks site, but how those decisions were reached, who was involved and who was excluded.
I do not know whether you have heard of the Darwin’s bark spider, Mr Deputy Speaker. It weaves the largest and most dense webs in the world. They can be as large as 28,000 sq cm, but that spider has nothing on the Tees Mayor when it comes to creating dense webs of secrecy, with organisations, companies and even charities created in an attempt to dodge full and proper scrutiny of how he and his mates do business and spend public money on what is referred to as the UK’s biggest levelling-up project.
As has been alluded to, things came to a head last year when a record posted with Companies House showed that the once public asset that is the Teesworks site is now 90% owned by a small group of local businessmen, the shares having been transferred to them by the Tees Mayor and the board of the South Tees Development Corporation, but we still do not know why such a decision was taken and who exactly was party to it. For certain, it was not taken by the Tees Valley Combined Authority, made up of the elected Mayor and the elected leaders of the five local authorities. They were not even consulted, as far as I know.
The Mayor thinks he had to do business with two men in particular, Chris Musgrave and Martin Corney, because they owned what can only be described as a ransom strip of land on the Teesworks site and they would take on the liability of the hundreds of millions still needed to remediate the site. I have an issue with both his reasons, or perhaps “excuses” is a better word. The Tees Mayor took on the might of the Thai banks, which owned most of the site after SSI walked out on Teesside and ended over 100 years of steel production. He decided he would go as far as a compulsory purchase order, and to his credit, he acquired the site for the public. Why, then, did he not take similar action against the two local businessmen who were holding the public to ransom? He will not answer that question, but perhaps the Minister can help.
The Minister may also be able to help over the costs of the remediation of the site. The Government get no accolades for allowing the steel industry to die on Teesside, but I do give them credit for agreeing to fund the remediation of the site so it could be fully developed. During his short-lived tenure as the Government investment tsar for the Tees Valley, Lord Michael Heseltine—I am quoting him directly—said:
“The money to clean up the site will be what it costs. No-one knows what the condition of the site is and although there have been estimates, they are estimates based on guess work. So it is much better to make it clear”—
and I agree that it is much better to make it clear that—
“central government will pay the clean-up costs and underwrite them whatever the bill comes to.”
Successive promises were made by Government Minsters that the Treasury would fund that work, so there was never any need to find private capital.
We have heard the Tees Mayor claim that he may have been naive in some of his dealings, but never did anything illegal. That may well be the case, but that naivety has cost our communities on Teesside the chance to share the dividends from the site and the public money invested in it. Sadly, however, we go back to the word “secrecy”. Were other companies and organisations considered for partnering with the Teesworks site? Were other offers made for the land? I have heard of one, and that was increased. What were the criteria and business case for selecting partners? It is all very much a secret, and none of the decision-making bodies is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.
I do not want to repeat all the accusations laid at the doors of the Mayor and his friends by the FT, The Times, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, but I do hope we can get a fully independent investigation by the NAO into the wholesale transfer of assets, including the tens of millions of pounds of on-site scrap, to the private sector. That includes the Private Eye claim—a claim yet to be denied by the Mayor or anyone else—that Orion Kotrri, Mr Musgrave’s son-in-law, has been running the scrap operation. The South Tees Development Corporation has refused to say why he was selected for the role, who employs him or how he is paid. It is no secret that the business is being kept in the family.
The media and others are right that there are critical questions over how a bunch of local businessmen could already have extracted around £50 million in cash and assets from Britain’s biggest levelling-up project before a single business has begun operating on the site, and apparently without investing themselves. Perhaps all those concerned with the scrap should meet the challenge from The Northern Echo, which has said:
“There must be a ledger showing how much scrap has been sold which can put the facts in the open and enable people to judge whether there is any truth in the rumour”—
that is, the rumour of poor management.
Alex Cunningham
I will not.
Is the Minister aware of any such ledger of what are public assets, of where they have gone, and of what cost and value? Private Eye has established that decisions have been pushed through a board of the South Tees Development Corporation dominated by Houchen placemen and women in unrecorded discussions. Surely Ministers will recognise that they have some cleaning up to do. All we are seeking is for the truth to come to light. If the claims are not true, why is the Mayor not coming forward to publish all the relevant documents? Why is he not challenging, through the courts if necessary, all these media claims that he simply dismisses?
I would love to see the promises made by the Tees Mayor come to fruition. I want our communities to benefit from the jobs, but from much more than that too. Just as London boroughs benefit from the massive council tax base, those on Teesside could benefit from the dividends from Teesworks, and goodness knows we need it. Our community in the Tees Valley faces soaring levels of hardship compared with the national average. Research released on Monday by the End Child Poverty coalition showed that, in Stockton-on-Tees alone, over 40,000 children are living below the poverty line.
The picture is the same across all of the constituencies of Members from Teesside represented in the Chamber, but time and again we have seen the Mayor and his Government fail our area. They failed to do anything to retain steelmaking on Teesside. Despite claims of help on the way, they allowed our historic and world-leading Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Company to go to the wall, with the loss of hundreds of highly skilled jobs. When the Sirius mine got into cash-flow difficulties, the Mayor promised help, but his Government brokered a deal for a multinational company to take over, leaving thousands of local investors with very little. Many of them were former steelworkers who had invested their redundancy pay in the venture. Who knows what could have been done if business had been handled in a different way on Teesside, with public benefit being the focus.
We need assets on Teesside. We need investment. We need to know what is going on with people’s existing assets and how they are being disposed of. If there are huge profits to be made from Teesworks—the scrap alone is said to be worth £100 million—surely they should be going into our communities for development and quality services and not almost exclusively into the pockets of private companies. We need answers. We need openness and transparency. We need to see an end to this secrecy.
Cancer Outcomes: Tees Valley
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
I would like to open my remarks tonight by paying tribute to the late Professor Stephen Bonner, whose obituary features in The Times today. Professor Bonner delivered marvellous service to the people of Teesside in his various roles delivering critical care at James Cook University Hospital, including the major expansion in the number of our intensive care and high dependency beds and his astonishing success in making James Cook the best place for junior doctors and student nurses to train in intensive care in 2016. It is entirely fitting that in a debate on health services in the Tees Valley we should recognise his enormous contribution to our lives locally. So many of my constituents have reason to be grateful to him. Professor Bonner’s obituary tragically relates:
“With their sons growing up, Bonner and his wife planned for a gradual retirement, but just as he was about to put the plan into action he received a diagnosis of inoperable bowel cancer. Bonner had spent decades improving the system, but the bowel screening test that would have diagnosed the cancer early…had been cancelled during the pandemic.”
That brings me squarely back to the subject of this debate and the particular importance of cancer screening, because ultimately that is at the heart of making sure we improve cancer care nationally as well as locally on Teesside.
A cancer diagnosis is news none of us ever wants to receive, but the reality is that someone in the UK does every 90 seconds. One in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in our lives. Even those of us not directly affected will undoubtedly have family members and friends who are. Some of the most emotional conversations I have had with constituents have been about the struggles faced by loved ones supporting relatives in their final weeks.
The scale of the challenge posed by cancer is particularly acute in the Tees Valley. The north-east of England has the highest age standardised cancer rate of any English region for both men and women. The incidence rate for female patients is 15% higher than in London, which is the region with the lowest incidence. The difference for male patients who experience higher incidence rates overall is more than 8% higher than the best performing region. The Tees Valley’s industrial heritage is, I am afraid, yielding a grim harvest. There are particular challenges with regard to historic exposure to environmental carcinogens resulting in higher rates of lung cancer and myeloma in particular.
My home area is now at the forefront of progress on much of what is good about the Government’s levelling-up programme under the leadership of Ben Houchen, but the legacy issues persist from our very challenging economic past and the deep deprivation our area continues to suffer from. Smoking and obesity rates are higher than the national average. That context at the very least contributes to Middlesbrough being ranked 140th out of 150 local authorities for premature cancer deaths by Public Health England.
The good news is that thanks to research, many more people are either beating cancer or living much longer with cancer. Macmillan estimates that in 2020, 3 million people across the UK were living with cancer. That is forecast to rise to some 5.3 million by 2040. Median cancer survival has improved hugely as a result of advances in diagnosis and treatment, but there is a lot further to go. We ought to pay tribute at this point to the fantastic effort of those individuals and community groups who are touched by this horrible disease and have decided to make a positive difference to the challenge they have faced. I refer here to Guisborough-raised jockey Bob Champion, who has done a huge amount through the Bob Champion Cancer Trust. He has raised some £12 million over the last 30 years.
On a smaller and more local scale, I pay particular tribute to Claire Starsmore and the amazing East Cleveland Pink Ladies, who have raised £131,000 for Cancer Research UK over the past decade in memory of their much-loved friend Jacqui Hampton. The annual Pink Ball is one of the highlights of the East Cleveland social calendar—I am very much looking forward to attending the 10th version in November, which is firmly in my diary. That kind of event makes the cancer fight very personal and very tangible.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I am pleased that another Tees MP is so engaged with the subject. I join the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to Professor Bonner for all his work for people in my constituency as well as in his own.
The right hon. Gentleman has already recognised the importance of the early diagnosis of cancer and other diseases to tackling health inequalities in his constituency and mine. Will he join me in congratulating North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust and Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council on their joint campaign over many years to secure a diagnostic centre for our new-look town centre, which was confirmed by the Minister earlier today?
Mr Clarke
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: this is a subject that crosses party boundaries and constituency boundaries. The contribution of everyone who has fought to ensure that we deliver the best possible cancer care across Teesside is undoubtedly to be applauded. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s remarks about what the Government’s pioneering work to deliver community diagnostic centres will bring to the Tees valley.
I referred a moment ago to the Pink Ball. On the same note, I pay tribute to Councillor Craig Holmes of Skelton West in my constituency, who has raised thousands of pounds for cancer charities through events including the annual Minersfest, an extraordinary music festival in East Cleveland, at which you would always be welcome, Mr Deputy Speaker. Such efforts are incredible tributes—in this case, a tribute to Craig’s mum Alison, who sadly lost her battle with cancer in 2013—and bring huge enjoyment to thousands of local people.
There is much more that we need to do to reduce the average of 460 deaths per day from cancer in the United Kingdom. One of the strongest predictors of cancer outcomes is how early a diagnosis is made and treatment is started. It is estimated that for every week earlier that the treatment of cancer commences, the chance of five-year survival increases by at least 1.5%, so it makes a material difference.
Household Energy Bills: VAT
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(2 years, 3 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Simon Clarke)
I am pleased to respond to this debate on behalf of the Government, although, as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) has said, the motion has clearly been put forward to seize control of parliamentary business, which we cannot and will not accept.
The Government recognise the pressure that people are facing in their household finances, including on their energy bills, and we have taken steps already to ease those pressures where and when we can, and will of course continue to look at other things we can do. The reality is that the higher inflation that we have seen is primarily due to global factors relating, to a large degree, to the fallout from the pandemic and a global spike in energy costs. This Government are never afraid to do what is right, or to take big decisions on behalf of this country, and the action we have taken during the pandemic is testament to that fact—£400 billion of direct support to the economy, protecting millions of jobs and livelihoods. We are also investing over £600 billion in gross public sector investment over this Parliament, investing in our health service, in our education system and in controlling our borders, bringing tangible improvements to the lives of millions.
Wholesale gas prices remain at very high levels. Some of the key drivers of the current price spike are the cold winter last year and wider international events that are driving demand. It is true, of course, that gas remains an important part of the wider energy transition that is under way. The current situation in the global gas market underscores the importance of diversifying our energy mix and accelerating the deployment of renewable energy in this country. The shift away from carbon-intensive generation is likely to help insulate the UK from global swings in the prices of commodities such as gas in the future, and indeed, precisely because we have invested in renewables and energy efficiency, UK demand for natural gas has fallen 26% since 2010, which has helped to reduce our exposure.
Alex Cunningham
The Minister heard me speak earlier about Gillian Fish from my constituency, who has seen her dual-fuel bill jump from £39 to £94 a month, leaving her with just £33 for food and travel. What has he got to say to her? We have given the House our answer to the crisis; what is the Government’s answer to this crisis for Gillian?
Mr Clarke
Well, this is the Government who have introduced the £500 million household support fund, which is designed to help the most vulnerable households during the course of this winter. This is the Government who are making sure that we are delivering through our action on universal credit and on the national living wage, the rise in which will come into effect in April, and through the wider package of support, which I will come on to in a moment, including the warm home discount, cold weather payments—all the things that are designed to ensure that we give targeted support to people like Gillian who need it. I would remind the hon. Gentleman that Teesside is one of the best examples of levelling up that we have had anywhere in this country. One only needs to look at the response of the Teesside public to what is happening in our area to see the difference that a Conservative Government are making for our community.
Our record of investment in renewable energy is, of course, in great contrast to that of the last Labour Government. Labour’s 1997 manifesto specifically stated:
“We see no economic case for the building of any new nuclear power stations.”
The legacy of that is now seen today. While in government Labour failed to diversify our energy supply, with renewables making up just 7% of our energy mix, compared with 43% today.
While the up-front costs of certain technologies may be high in the early years of their deployment, they are falling over time. We have already seen the cost of offshore wind fall dramatically, together with that of solar panels and batteries. Our heat and buildings strategy set a clear ambition of working with industry to reduce heat pump costs by at least 25% to 50% by 2025, and to parity with gas boilers by 2030.
On the specifics of this debate, as I alluded to a moment ago, we have already introduced measures to support vulnerable households with the costs of energy, including increasing the warm home discount, winter fuel payments and cold weather payments, which together provided almost £2.5 billion in support to households last winter.
Working People’s Finances: Government Policy
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Clarke
I thank my hon. Friend for her point, and this is absolutely right. The furlough scheme has been absolutely essential to supporting the UK throughout this very difficult period. It has been an historic success, and we only need to consider how serious the employment situation would have been had we failed to intervene and failed to show the decisive leadership that this Government have shown.
Alex Cunningham
As a fellow Tees Member of Parliament, the Minister will be aware that at the height, just a few weeks ago, there were 12,000 more unemployed people across the Tees Valley than there were in March last year. How does he reconcile that with talking up the Tees Valley employment situation?
Mr Clarke
I do so quite readily when I look at the extraordinary potential of our local economy. We have all the new jobs coming in at the Teesworks site, the former Redcar steelworks site. We have the hope and potential of green industry, which the hon. Member champions, as I do, with all the jobs in carbon capture, utilisation and storage as well as hydrogen. There is the new GE Renewable Energy factory, which will employ 2,500 people. Its construction starts incredibly soon, and it will be fully operational by 2023. Those are the reasons for hope and optimism. Of course, I will never apologise for talking up Teesside, just as we should never apologise for talking up the UK economy. We have done an extraordinary thing in this country: we have got through the pandemic—we have weathered the storm—and now we can move on to the recovery.
Levelling-up Agenda: Tees Valley
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham
That is great news, but that is jam tomorrow. We definitely need jam today.
Mr Simon Clarke (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman realise that public procurement rules can change only after Brexit? This is a very good example of why the decision that he described moments ago as toxic, and which his own constituents overwhelmingly supported, was of course the right one.
Alex Cunningham
Again, we get jam tomorrow. It is all about jam tomorrow—something that is going to happen in three or five years’ time.
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend does not need an answer from me on that point. Why has our area lost out? Where was the Tees Tory Mayor when the orders were being handed out? He was nowhere to be seen.
No doubt some will claim that jobs have been boosted in the area, but it is going to take a few more media pictures of the Mayor in a hard hat to convince me of that. The cost per job created in the Tees Valley Combined Authority area is calculated at £96,093. That means that for every job created in the last three years, the Mayor has spent nearly a hundred grand. How on earth is an approach like that going to deliver the sustainable job growth our region so desperately needs? The figures are astronomical. We urgently need a fully independent audit of exactly where the millions of pounds of taxpayer money have gone.
Alex Cunningham
I will not at the moment. Even if we put aside the costs, the number of jobs that have been announced barely scrape the sides of the black hole of unemployment in the Tees Valley. For every job announced in the last three years, five have been lost in the last seven months. Sadly, we cannot even get the Mayor to tell us whether those jobs are being filled, or even where they are.
The Tees Valley’s gross value added per hour worked, an indicator of productivity, continues to lag 9.1% behind the UK average. On top of that, research by iwoca has shown that businesses in the north-east have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. As a result, the region is forecast to lose 11.7% gross value added in 2020. That will wipe out all the economic growth in the north-east since 2004. We will be back to where we were 16 years ago.
Opportunities presented by the possibilities of carbon capture and storage, a freeport and civil service relocation may be part of the answer, but they are simply not enough. I welcome incentivising businesses to come to the Tees Valley, but it will not be much comfort to local businesses that fall outside the free port area and are anxious about the potential loss of EU trade and new tariffs.
This is not just about jobs. While I am all for planning for the Tees Valley’s future, the impact of Brexit and the pandemic is felt by our communities now. A 10-year plan is no good to my constituents, who contact me worried about how they are going to pay their bills this month. Last month, statistics released by the End Child Poverty coalition showed that the north-east has seen the biggest rise in child poverty in the UK. In my constituency, the proportion of children living in poverty has risen to 34%; in others in the Tees Valley, the figure is higher still. It is a tragedy and a scandal.
In Stockton North, 3,109 families with children received universal credit in May 2020, and 1,700 families with children received working tax credit. Behind those numbers, there are thousands of living, breathing children, plunged below the breadline as a result of having poorly paid jobs—or no jobs at all in their family. I am deeply disappointed that today the Chancellor has not listened to calls to retain the increases in universal credit and working tax credit, so that families with children could keep that small but vital economic support. Across the Tees Valley, 79,000 families are affected. This is a Government who would rather spend millions on the festival of Brexit than bring children out of poverty by retaining even small benefit increases, or than feed them during all school holidays. This is not levelling up; it is grinding down.
We all know that where economic inequality thrives, so do health inequalities. Stockton-on-Tees is often used as a case study to highlight health inequalities in the UK. Men who live in the town centre are expected to live 18 years fewer than their peers just a couple of miles down the road. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard Tory Ministers promise to tackle these worrying inequalities, but nothing has happened. The people of Stockton were promised a new hospital building, but 10 years later, it is yet to materialise. We just get occasional scraps that do nothing to plug the gap.
The Health Secretary visited the University Hospital of North Tees recently. I prayed he was going to announce its replacement, as I knew a statement was coming up within a few days. The statement came, but North Tees was not on the Health Secretary’s list. Surely any commitment to levelling up the Tees Valley must have addressing health inequalities at the core of its mission, and a new hospital has a major role to play in that.
A proper levelling-up agenda would be such a boon for Teessiders, but while the Tories claim that that agenda is already under way in the Tees Valley, there are serious obstacles that will prevent its delivery. Just last week, the think-tank Demos published a new report, “Achieving Levelling-Up: The Structures and Processes Needed”. It concludes that while levelling up is possible,
“there is zero chance of achieving it without…changes to the current system”
of devolved politics. One barrier it identifies is that the work of local enterprise partnerships and combined authorities is largely invisible, making real accountability to the public impossible.
The situation in the Tees Valley Combined Authority area is much more concerning than that, because the Tory Administration are not just invisible in terms of accountability, but are actively obstructing proper scrutiny. The Mayor has created a web of different companies and organisations through which he spends public money, but is shielded from vital public scrutiny. There are even reports that donors to his campaign have been appointed to significant positions in those companies and organisations. Decisions are often made outside formal meetings, through a complex network of political and business relationships and friendships, informed by advice from expensive consultants.
Alex Cunningham
I will not at the moment. This is a chumocracy on a local scale that mirrors the widespread and despicable cronyism we have seen play out on the national stage in the Government’s constant privatisation of the response to the pandemic. It is shameful cronyism that I am worried will bear more fruit in the administration of any Tory levelling-up fund. If the management of the £3.6 billion towns fund is anything to go by, we have serious reason for concern. Billingham, in my constituency, was deemed more in need of support than towns in Tory MPs’ patches, including a town in the Secretary of State’s constituency, which was 270th on the list, but Billingham missed out and the Secretary of State’s constituency did not.
It is clear from the Chancellor’s announcement today that the Government are not going to invest the money that the Tees Valley needs to overcome the destabilising impact of Brexit and the pandemic on our communities and industries. While he splurges on whizzy defence gadgets and Brexit festival guff, public sector pay and benefits are largely frozen. These freezes will actively discourage the growth that we need in the Tees Valley, and they will level down, not up.
Locally, the Tory combined authority is the one public body in the Tees Valley with money to spend, but despite that, there is no comprehensive support package for our constituents. Instead, there is the £1 million Houchen gate—£1 million of taxpayers’ money that could have done so much good, wasted on a gate. The Mayor bought the loss-making airport for about £80 million, but he has secured a few flights; some people will be grateful for that. I heard one person say today, “What use is it being able to get on a flight to Alicante when local people still can’t get a bus home after 7pm?”.
Mr Clarke
Clearly, the Labour party opposed the rescue of Teesside international airport; it is probably the only example I can recall of the Labour party opposing taking something into public ownership. Is the hon. Gentleman still saying today that it was the wrong decision? I think people across Teesside would be amazed by that.
Alex Cunningham
Personally, I am still a little surprised that it ever happened. Labour-led authorities at that time supported the purchase of the airport. The Mayor was elected on the promise that he would buy the airport; it was in his manifesto and others facilitated his doing it. He is the person who will have to bear the brunt of the problems that we will face in the future, including the many millions of pounds that we are going to lose, year on year.
Alex Cunningham
Most certainly. I cannot understand why anybody wants to hide where the public money has been spent. I know that there are different people involved in all these different companies. I would like to know what their agenda is. Is it the agenda of the people of the Tees Valley?
The failure of the Government, both nationally and locally, angers and saddens me. The Tees Valley is fit to burst with potential. We are ripe and ready to be levelled up; we are calling out for it. We have the potential to exploit the amazing opportunities for green industry, including carbon capture and storage. We have a high skill base, tight-knit communities and local authorities that, despite political changes, have a track record of working together, and achieving great things when they do. Sometimes, local Tories try to claim that Labour politicians are talking down Teesside.
Alex Cunningham
I almost have to laugh. Talking down Teesside? It is the greatest honour of my life to represent the amazing and diverse citizens of Stockton North, and to champion the vibrant history and culture of the Tees Valley. The real problem is that for the past 10 years, the Tories have been booting down Teesside. Their mind-boggling incompetence in handling the covid crisis is yet another catastrophic kick to the region. Pointing out the heartbreaking inequalities that affect our constituents is not talking down our area. It is standing up for our area in the face of a national Conservative Government who have neglected the north-east for years. The Tees economy is on the cliff edge of a hard Brexit, and the lack of investment and post-pandemic rebuilding will push it into the abyss.
The North East England chamber of commerce policy director, Jonathan Walker, got it exactly right when he said:
“The human, social and economic cost of this is appalling. Levelling up has to mean more than just shiny projects. It must mean giving young people in our region the same life chances as they’d get in other parts of the country.”
He came out with another statement today; he said that the Chancellor’s announcement today was a missed opportunity:
“On the face of it a levelling-up fund sounds good but it is far too small in scale and ambition to be effective.”
I want our young people to get the benefits, but sadly I see no prospect of them getting the support they need. There are plenty of these shiny projects, but the absence of substance breaks my heart, because they could have so much more. Our constituents deserve better than this. They need better than this.
I appeal to the Minister to stress to his colleagues the need for true levelling up; for help sustaining jobs and creating new ones; to be open, honest and transparent when dealing with public money; to end the health inequalities that continue to blight our communities; and, perhaps above all, to give our young people real hope that they can have the careers they want and a future they can look forward to. Let us make the expression “levelling up” more than a cliché. Let us make it a demonstration of action.
Mr Clarke
We do, actually, and we have defended the lowest paid in today’s statement, but it is very important to note that in the end we need to have sustainable private sector-led growth in the Tees Valley and that was not what was delivered under the last Labour Government. What we need to see is growth, and how will that growth be delivered? There are five key aspects to that.
The first is the regeneration of the former SSI steelworks site at Redcar, supported by £233 million from the Government. It is the largest redevelopment project in the United Kingdom. What will go there? In February, I had the pleasure of speaking at the launch of Net Zero Teesside at the Riverside stadium. As we heard last week, carbon capture, usage and storage will be at the heart of the Government’s green industrial revolution. It is backed by £1 billion of Government investment, and the Tees and the Humber CCS clusters—
Mr Clarke
I will not, because of lack of time.
This is an important part of that piece. CCS will sit alongside other clean energy projects, including the national hydrogen transport hub and the offshore wind industry. The hon. Gentleman said that there is no good coming to the area from it. An application is being made for the new £90 million quay at South Bank, which will create hundreds of jobs. It is all set to be built next year.
The second feature of our vision for Teesside is, of course, a freeport. Despite Labour doing everything it could to stop Brexit—which is the reason why Teesside is now represented by more Government than Labour MPs—we will leave the transition period and regain full national independence on 1 January. Freeports are one of the best examples of how we can drive growth and jobs. [Interruption.] Some of my colleagues are having to self-isolate, but if Members look at the electoral geography of Teesside, they may notice that it has changed.
The third aspect of our plan is, of course, an infrastructure revolution. It cannot be overstated how important it is that the Mayor saved our airport in the teeth of the hon. Gentleman’s opposition and that of his colleagues. We have had the announcement today of the new flights to Alicante and Majorca—something that both his constituents and mine will enjoy next summer. That is on top of the new service to London Heathrow, the UK’s global transport hub, and the multimillion-pound regeneration of Middlesbrough station and Darlington station.
Of course, the fourth strand of levelling up comes in the form of skills. The Government have already committed £450 million to the Tees Valley Combined Authority’s plans to give young people access to skills training, introduce high-quality broadband and overcome barriers to work. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s kickstart scheme, part of the emergency response to coronavirus, has already surpassed 500 jobs for local 16 to 24-year-olds, with applications still open.
The fifth and final element of levelling up is, of course, direct investment through the £3.6 billion towns fund. Middlesbrough, Redcar, Thornaby and Hartlepool are all awaiting the outcome of their bids. Darlington has already had £22.7 million from the fund. And that comes on top of bids to the future high streets fund, which I hope will benefit both Middlesbrough and Loftus.
We all know that levelling up is the task of at least a decade. None of this will be achieved easily. None of it comes simply. But it is happening precisely because we have confidence in Teesside, in the people of Teesside and in the future of Teesside. Rather than talking it down, we talk it up, and that is being rewarded for the people of the area, who see hope, growth, jobs and optimism. They see that from the Government side of the House, from the Conservatives, and long may it continue.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Simon Clarke and Alex Cunningham(3 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mr Simon Clarke)
Our engagement with councils has enabled us to understand pressures at a national and local level across England. To date, we have announced £4.3 billion-worth of additional resource to councils, including £3.7 billion of unring-fenced funding. We have also announced the sales fees and charges co-payment scheme to compensate for irrecoverable income loss that is designed to flex according to the extent of the losses as they crystallise. We will also extend the period over which councils must manage shortfalls in local tax income relating to this financial year from one year to three years. All those measures are intended to prevent councils from having to make difficult in-year decisions. I reiterate the message that I have now sent out countless times to individual authorities: any authority facing an unmanageable situation should make contact with my officials.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mr Simon Clarke)
My Department has been working closely with the Joint Biosecurity Centre and the Department of Health and Social Care to develop a framework for the local management of further outbreaks of coronavirus, and councils will play a crucial role in this process. All upper-tier local authorities have published their local outbreak control plans. I am in regular contact with my counterparts at DHSC. We gave new powers to councils to control local outbreaks of covid-19 that came into effect only this Saturday.
Alex Cunningham
Eighteen of 55 patients who tested positive for coronavirus were transferred from North Tees University Hospital into local care homes between 1 March and 15 April. That was directly in line with the Government advice that a negative test was not required before discharge. A further 266 were transferred without a test. The policy changed on 16 April, but does the Minister accept that many deaths on Teesside, and perhaps thousands across the country, could have been prevented if the Government had got it right in the first place?
Mr Clarke
I pay enormous tribute to the care workers on Teesside and of course to our local NHS, which we share as Teesside MPs. This has been a constantly evolving and very complex situation, as Governments around the world, including our own, have obviously learned as matters have progressed. We have acted consistently and in good faith throughout. We have worked very hard with the care sector to protect patients. The £600 million infection control fund that we have instigated is designed to ensure that the care sector is safe, with a strong measure of containment against the disease for patients going forward.