Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask His Majesty's Government how many employees currently work in each UK freeport; and how many (1) full, and (2) part, time jobs have been created in existing freeports in the UK.

With the majority of English Freeports now fully up-and-running, we are starting to see them attract new investment to their regions. Following the construction of new facilities and infrastructure, this investment will deliver thousands of high-quality, long-term jobs for local communities. For example, SeAH Wind Ltd are investing £400 million in the Teesside Freeport to build an offshore wind manufacturing facility that will create around 1,500 jobs.

That is just one example: English Freeports expect to create 130,000 direct and over 80,000 indirect jobs. On top of this, we recently announced two new Green Freeports in Scotland, which estimate they will create over 75,000 new, high-skilled jobs. These forecasts will be reviewed through a baselining exercise in early 2023 and performance against them tracked and reported on as part of the UK Freeports Programme Annual Report (attached). The next Annual Report is due to be published towards the end of this year.