Liam Byrne
MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North · Labour · United Kingdom
“The loss of 4,000 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover is a body blow for workers, families and communities across the west midlands, so I commend Richard Parker, the Mayor of the West Midlands, for moving quickly on Monday to put £500,000 on the table to help ensure that everybody gets back to work.”
“I wholeheartedly welcome this well-rounded statement from the Foreign Secretary, and put on record my thanks to the new Prime Minister for the hard yards that I know he has put in over recent days and weeks.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, and I offer my warmest congratulations to her on her appointment to the role; she will be a brilliant Minister.”
“Let me start with a word of thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Chester North and Neston (Samantha Dixon), who is not in her place, who said quite rightly that an awful lot has changed since the Bill was first introduced to this House. Indeed, a lot has been revealed over the course of the summer.”
“The effect of new clause 34 would be to ban off-ramping, ban new forms of digital currency transactions and ban memecoins, which are exactly the kind of measures that Ministers now need to bring forward. If we want to take the crypto system out of political finance, this is what we need to do.”
“No doubt we will learn that Mr Cottrell was in fact on the electoral register when that money was passed. No doubt we will discover that his mother, Fiona Cottrell, declared and did not disguise the fact that the money had ultimately come from her son.”
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“Everyone in this House condemns the rocket attacks, but the Israeli defence force is firing the most dangerous of weapons in the most dense of communities, and it is very clear that Secretary Kerry and Ban Ki-moon think that not enough is being done to minimise civilian casualties. Does the Prime Minister accept that analysis? What we really want to know in this House is what he will do today, tomorrow and through the week in the Security Council to stop the slaughter of the innocents in Gaza and beyond.”
“The air strikes, the commando raids and the rocket attacks have got to stop before any more children are killed, but may I press the Foreign Secretary on resolution 1860, on which Britain led back in 2009 and which stated that justice required “sustained and regular flow of goods and people through…crossings”. Does the Foreign Secretary not agree that without progress restoring the normality of trade, jobs and growth, we risk trapping the Palestinian people in a cycle of not only violence but despair from which there is no escape?”
“My right hon. Friend is being characteristically modest in understating the influence he had on the announcement that was made yesterday. Is he as concerned as I am that the number of people who had the chance to study for foundation degrees, HNCs and HNDs in a full-time role has fallen by 40% since 2010?”
“Only in that way can we offer a future that is optimistic and ambitious. Only in that way can we be a country that is full of hope and not a country that is facing fear.”
“Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East. We need to offer our young people a chance, not an excuse and not a target. The hon. Members for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) and for Beverley and Holderness were among those who called for a new cross-party consensus. If we on the Labour Benches sound partisan, it is because we are passionate about transforming the life chances of the people whom we represent. We have a simple belief that the world around us is changing in a way that it has never changed before. There is a new competitive threat to this country from rising economies in the east. If we want to live better than others, we will have to be better than others, and that means giving us a skills system that gets everybody, not just some, to the very highest level of their potential.”
“We must raise the quality of further education across the board by introducing institutes of technical education. We must radically increase the number of apprenticeship opportunities, crucially using the power of public procurement to increase the number of opportunities. Finally, we must put more resources into the hands of employers so that, with universities and colleges, they are able to use that buying power to expand the opportunity to study technical degrees to the highest level of skill. This is a proposal that was pioneered by my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) when he was in office. It was a tragedy that the work force development programme was shut down. It was popular with employers, with students and with universities and colleges, too. I finish on the point underlined by my right hon.”
“There has been a 40% fall in the number of people studying for HNCs, HNDs or foundation degrees. That is not the way to empower apprentices and enable them to go on and study to degree-level skills, and it must change. We know that there is a big appetite among young people for a vocational path to the highest level of skill. That is why it is now harder to get an apprenticeship in this country than it is to get into university. It is now harder to get into BAE Systems’ apprenticeship programme than to get into Oxford. It is harder to get into Rolls-Royce than to get into Cambridge. These are brilliant programmes and if we are to create more chances like that, we must introduce the kind of proposals for a technical baccalaureate that have been discussed. We must give people the chance to study English and maths through to the age of 18.”
“The Minister for Skills and Enterprise should take great care in the changes that he proposes and he should listen hard to small and medium-sized enterprises up and down the country that say that putting apprenticeship funding wholesale into their hands through the PAYE system could be a disaster that sees apprenticeship numbers fall off a cliff. He needs to listen carefully to that. Earlier this week the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), announced the final stage of our proposals. It was not the Minister for Skills and Enterprise who introduced the chance for apprentices to go on and study at the highest level of skill. That was a change that was made many years ago, and it is not acceptable that just 2% of apprentices go on to study degree-level skills.”
“Those lucky enough to graduate to a further education college confront colleges that have seen a £700 million fall in their funding. That has weighed heavily on those aged 18 studying in FE colleges. For those going on to study in further education beyond the age of 19, funding has fallen by 22%. The Minister for Skills and Enterprise made great play of apprenticeship numbers. He wanted to make the point that apprenticeship numbers have risen since 2010, and of course they have. But, like me, he will be worried that over the past year apprenticeship numbers for the under-25s have fallen by 11,400. He will be concerned about the fall in apprenticeship starts in his constituency, and so will the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss).”
“Let me tell him where I think he is getting a few things wrong. A new, stronger system must start in schools. I am sure that, like me, he is slightly worried that there has been a 16% rise in unqualified teachers in my children’s classrooms. I am sure that he is concerned, like me, that when we say that people should be able to study English and maths up to the age of 18, that is not the policy of the Education Secretary. The Minister gave us a new piece of information this afternoon about 1 million bits of careers advice being distributed to our children. I was not quite sure what that meant, but I do know that the CBI has said that the careers service is “on life support”. That is not a system fit for the future.”
“Friend the Member for Dudley North is absolutely right when he says that a better deal for vocational and technical education is crucial if we are to regenerate significant parts of our country. My right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East made a powerful speech and the point he drew our attention to is that we do not just owe it to the business community; we owe it to our constituents, too. Training up to degree-level skills unlocks a life in which people can earn over £100,000 more over the course of their career than if they had only two A-levels. If we want to transform life chances for everyone in our constituencies, we need to build a better system. I hope our motion today is the basis of that new consensus. [Interruption.] The Minister for Skills and Enterprise is chuntering away.”
“Mike Wright, the head of Jaguar Land Rover, said the following not too long ago: “We are not educating nearly enough skilled apprentices or graduates to replace those retiring from manufacturing roles.” Lord Adonis has said that skills are now the “single biggest impediment” to economic growth. The Migration Advisory Committee, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) referred to, made an important contribution to this debate yesterday. The MAC has added more than 100 different roles to the shortage occupation list over the past three or four years. Firms have had to sponsor in 282,000 people from abroad because they could not get the skills they need here in this country. So my hon.”
“I am sorry to say that instead we have the kind of chaos that means that at the age of 14 pupils can look forward to passing through systems regulated by Ofqual, Ofsted, the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, the Education Funding Agency, the Skills Funding Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council. It is a dog’s breakfast; it is a complicated situation that is not delivering the skills we need. That is what business is saying to us clearly. When I left business school in America, I was clear that the UK was the only country where I wanted to build my business. Thousands of firms want to bring work back to this country, but let me tell hon. Members what KPMG said a few weeks ago. It said that the ability of manufacturers to bring jobs back to Britain is being crippled by the lack of available skills.”
“Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) felt that there were errors made between 2000 and 2010—no doubt there were—because some awfully strong foundations were left, too. I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) put it well when he said we rescued the apprenticeship system from the state of complete collapse that we inherited in 1997, rebuilding schools and school standards, rebuilding further education colleges all over this country and rebuilding our university system. Labour Members are very proud of those achievements, and what we needed in this Parliament was a Government who were determined to build on those foundations and create a strong, new, wide path for vocational education from 14 through to 21 and above.”
“His Committee said that “the position of Great Britain as a leading industrial nation is being endangered by a failure to secure the fullest possible application of science to industry… and…this failure is partly due to deficiencies in education.” That was the position we found ourselves in again in the 1970s, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) pointed out, and we find ourselves there again today. So I am pleased that the Select Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), is going to look at this in detail. A new consensus is needed, and the business community is saying that to us loud and clear. Labour left this Government strong foundations. I am sorry that the hon.”
“The Chair of the Select Committee is not in his place, but we have heard some powerful calls today for a new cross-party consensus on the content of this debate, and I hope we can achieve that today. Therefore, I hope that the Minister for Skills and Enterprise, who is talking away from a sedentary position, will not divide the House today and that the motion will go through with full support, because that cross-party consensus, now and for the long term, is something this country desperately needs. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) started this debate with a candid admission that the problem we are talking about is decades old and decades deep. Indeed, Lord Percy reported to the Government shortly before the Education Act 1944.”
“This has been an excellent debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) made the first Back-Bench contribution to it and said that the debate was urgent and important. I could not agree more with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman), who said that we do not spend enough time in this House debating the subject of today’s motion. It has been an important debate because it has revealed that, on the future of vocational education and on the basic question of how our constituents are going to learn what they need to earn their way out of today’s cost of living crisis, there is no long-term plan. There is nothing long-term and nothing short-term; there does not appear to be much of a plan at all.”
“The Minister gives way with characteristic generosity. I know she will be concerned by the fall in apprenticeship starts in her constituency—apprenticeship starts were down by 150 between 2011-12 and 2012-13. Is she as worried as I am that small and medium-sized enterprises, no doubt in her constituency, are concerned about some of her colleague’s proposed changes?”
“The debate should not have been today; it should have been in the early part of the year before the proposals were drawn up. If modernisation is needed, let us hear the arguments. If there are savings to be had, let us hear the targets, but we will not stand by while disabled students are given a bunch of proposals and told to like it or lump it. Disabled students demand and deserve much better than that.”
“Lord Addington has told the other place that guidance for April is being drawn up. All of us wanted to be part of any changes that needed to be introduced. That is what we got when the DWP proposed to change the DLA and introduce the personal independence payment. It is the approach that we saw when the DWP wanted to introduce universal credit. Those were big and important changes, and Opposition Front Benchers were invited to the Department to discuss them. We may have disagreed with the conclusions, but at least we had the chance to flag up a few warnings, make a few suggestions and ensure that the debate was had in public, not in secret. I think the Minister is a good man who will want to think again about the proposals.”
“We should have been debating them long ago—in January, February or March—before the ministerial statement appeared. Opposition Members are worried, as I am sure the hon. Member for Cambridge is too, that organisations such as the National Deaf Children’s Society felt they were not given a real chance to put their points of view in meetings that were simply cut short. That is not a standard of consultation that we are prepared to see, because the issue is simply too important. If there is a need for modernisation, let us hear it. The Minister is a good man and a good Minister. He should be up front with us about how much he is seeking to save. He should be debating with us what extra safeguards need to be put in place to protect the rights and opportunities for disabled students in the years to come. The need is urgent.”
“The worst-case scenario, we are told, is grim indeed. I was concerned, as I know the Minister was, when I read the briefing from people who are expert in supporting disabled students, which stated that the worst-case scenario could see 60% to 70% of DSA eliminated. That is an enormous bill. The Minister accepts there is a problem with supporting disabled students at university, which is why he is not proposing the abolition of DSA. The fact that DSA is to continue is an acceptance of the principle that extra central Government support is needed. We are not being told what the real objectives of the reform will look like. By how much does the Minister seek to cut the bill? How big will the cost shunt be? They are not the sort of questions we should be debating here this afternoon.”
“This is a cost shunt to universities—let us call it what it is—but it is a cost shunt without any safeguards to go with it, and that is why so many of us are worried. I think the Minister will acknowledge that that is one heck of a gamble with the futures of disabled students in our country. It is certainly not a gamble that we want to see. My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) made an important point when she underlined how the risk of a postcode lottery in the way disabled students are supported will mean that people’s choices will be damaged. They will not be able to pursue the choices that they want. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) pointed out, it will be the most inclusive universities that are most damaged by the proposal.”
“That is true, but in the last year for which figures are available it has gone down by £5 million, while the number of disabled students who are supported has gone up, so each of them is actually getting much less. That is why we are so worried about a kind of carte blanche shunt of responsibilities to universities. We have heard very clearly today the warnings from experienced people in this House about what happens when responsibility is shunted over. The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) put the case powerfully. There is too much ambiguity in an Act as high level as the Equality Act, important though that is. We should be honest about what is going on.”
“Members have made that point today. The proposal would damage the chances of people on STEM courses in particular, which is why the changes are such bad news. In this House we are always happy to hear the case for reform. When pressed by hon. Members at oral questions the other day, the Minister said that no student would be worse off. That is a very big promise. Let us be honest: most of us here would like to believe him, but when my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister on 26 June about the extent to which DSA would be supported in future, answer came there none. The question was dodged, and that is why so many of us in this House have such serious concerns. The Minister will no doubt want to remind us that the bill for DSA has gone up.”
“She said that when she was making her university choices the availability of DSA was key to her getting into university and changing her life. In the background briefing for this debate we have heard argument after argument for protecting, preserving and enhancing DSA. The Campaign for Science and Engineering makes the interesting point that if we care about the supply line of science, technology, engineering and maths skills in our economy, we should care about the future of DSA: “One of the most worrying developments for STEM is the removal of…‘higher specification and/or higher cost computers…because of the way in which a course is delivered’”. CASE continues: “DSA funding will… only be provided for ‘the most specialist non-medical help (NMH) support.’ The definition of… ‘specialist’ is not clear.” Many hon.”
“The National Union of Students has collected similar stories, such as the story of Lucia, who said that university “wasn’t easy.” She knows that “without the validation and…support from DSA I wouldn’t have kept going… I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get my first class honours degree, and I would have been lucky to finish.” There are stories such as Suzanna’s. She said: “I get DSA for dyslexia. I expect I am one of those David Willetts would class as having ‘mild difficulties’. My study…advisor is a godsend.” She now wants to finish neuroscience and cure Parkinson’s disease. She said: “Without DSA I would probably still be a waitress. A bad waitress at that.” There are stories like Charlotte’s.”
“That is why DSA is so important to students across the country. Today’s debate has been particularly powerful. My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) told her own story, but we have also heard stories from my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) about people they represent who have serious worries.”
“We have heard powerful arguments this afternoon about the success of DSA, how the proposed changes are slipshod and why it was wrong to develop these proposals not in the open but in secret. We have heard powerful arguments about why DSA is so successful. We do not give disabled students enough help to change their lives by going to university, and we have to hold on to that basic fact in this debate. I congratulate the National Union of Students on its work to expose how important DSA is to thousands of students. Some 60% of disabled students are terribly worried about the cost of living, which is a much higher proportion than for most students. More than half of disabled students have thought about dropping out of their course, which is a much higher proportion than for most students.”
“It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood. I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) on securing this debate. I have a simple argument to put to the Minister: the proposals are flawed, they need to be dropped and they need to be dropped now. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that the Minister is a good Minister and a good man. He has been put in a difficult position, and I hope that in today’s excellent debate he sees a consensus that stretches across the House. We are here with him to help him win the argument and to put the proposals where they need to be, which is in the bin.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way with characteristic generosity. Can he help hon. Members? He has made an eloquent argument for the need to rebalance responsibilities between central Government and independent universities, saying that we need to do so because it is a long time since we have considered the matter. By how much is he seeking to reduce the DSA budget over the next financial year and the one after? He must know, because he has a list of specific measures.”
“In the run-up to the election, it is important that we try to maximise consensus across the House on science policy. To help the debate, we launched our Green Paper on science on Tuesday, and I welcome the Royal Society’s report today. It is important to be honest about where we are, though. Life science investment has fallen, according to the Library, by almost £500 million since 2010. In the last year for which data are available, total R and D spending in the UK is down by nearly £1 billion. We are now 23rd out of 33 for R and D spending in the OECD. Why does the Minister think that is? I am sure he will agree that this is not the way to win a race to the top.”
“It brings with it the promise of thousands of extra jobs across the west midlands and gives us vital capacity, but there is now a cross-party alliance of Members of Parliament saying to the Minister that we do not want High Speed 2 to be good for just some; we demand that it be good for all.”
“If HS2 is not prepared to budge, and we are not prepared to adopt plan B for the site, I want to see big ambition for jobs growth in east Birmingham. I do not want vague promises that “We will do our best.” I want a number. I want to know what the Department for Transport’s ambition is, to the nearest hundred, for the number of jobs that will be created in east Birmingham, and I want to know when HS2 and the Department for Transport want to see those jobs go on offer. I want local labour market agreements to go alongside any new plans to develop the Curzon street terminus in east Birmingham. I want to know what promises will be made and fulfilled for extra skills and training. The point is really very simple: High Speed 2 should be a big positive for our city.”
“Youth unemployment in my constituency is the highest in the country. I very much welcome the support that she is giving as part of a cross-party alliance of Birmingham MPs calling on HS2 and the Government to think again, and to do so quickly. I want to conclude with some thoughts on what the Minister should do next. I would obviously like the yard to be moved elsewhere. If the decision is taken not to move it elsewhere, I would like the Minister to show me, in pounds and pence, how the deal makes sense. I want him to take into account the opportunity cost—the potential for a reduction in the dole bills in east Birmingham, and the potential for extra business rates to flow into the coffers of Birmingham city council.”
“She says that High Speed 2 “is founded on the fundamental principles of regeneration and enhancing the economic prospects of the UK and specifically those communities located near to the lines and terminals. The irony therefore is not lost on me or indeed other colleagues from across all the main parties…when one considers the social and economic desecration that siting a Rolling Stock Maintenance Depot at Washwood Heath would have on that local community. As someone who is a supporter of HS2 and in particular has taken a keen interest” in the decision to locate the depot at Washwood Heath, “I very much welcome the chance to debate this issue, an issue which for too long has been left unresolved.” Like me, the hon. Lady draws attention to the very high unemployment levels in the area. They are double the national average.”
“They are increasingly frustrated and they are haggling and arguing with a normally non-communicative HS2, because they now have to close down, so we will lose 850 jobs in the worst unemployment hot spot in the country during the next couple of years. Why? For the prize of perhaps 500 or 550 jobs in 10 years’ time. The scenario that we are confronting could not be worse. The Minister will forgive me for saying that this is a thoroughly misguided decision. It would be a misguided decision anywhere, but in the worst unemployment hot spot in the entire United Kingdom, the decision should not be taken lightly. As I said, the hon. Member for Solihull would very much have liked to have been here this morning, but is recovering from surgery. She would, in the ceremonial nature of these things, congratulate us on having the debate.”
“I am not saying that the Minister should lay it out for us this morning, but I know that he will want to write to me after the debate with those calculations, because I know that, like me, he wants taxpayers to know the full facts and the full truth. Unless the plans change, we are confronting the most grim of scenarios, because we are set to lose not only the great prizes that I think are there for the taking, but hundreds of job in the short term. As the Minister knows, the site is not completely empty. It is home to the great Business Post, to Cemex, which makes most of the railway sleepers that our country needs, and to other great businesses, such as Taroni’s. In fact, by my calculations, there are some 850 jobs on the site today, but those businesses are closing.”
“No one has been able to give me that sum, so in a way I am here to speak for taxpayers, and to say that taxpayers are funding High Speed 2, the unemployment bills and the shortfalls in Birmingham city council’s budget. We want to know holistically how these sums add up. The Minister is a Transport Minister who speaks for the Department for Transport. I know from my experience in Whitehall that sometimes Whitehall fails to join things up, but in a decision of this economic consequence, what the taxpayer is owed is one sum that brings together on one piece of paper the cost to the Department for Work and Pensions, Birmingham city council, the Department for Transport and HS2. We need to have that sum.”
“During the past two or three years, we have heard an increasingly dull account of why it was not possible to develop those sites as a marshalling yard. What we get is references to “operational issues”, but no one—not the Minister’s predecessor, not the Secretary of State and not David Higgins, the head of HS2—has been able to tell me in any detail what on earth those operational issues are. I have yet to see one analysis that brings together any extra cost of putting a marshalling yard elsewhere, netted against the value of the opportunity that we know exists. That includes the savings on the dole bill, the increases in business rates and some of the other economic advantages that we know we could secure.”
“For those who are interested, the bill that the taxpayer picks up for those unemployed citizens—our residents—is £73.8 million a year. If we developed the site to its full potential, as set out by the master planners at Birmingham city council, we could halve that bill. We could save the taxpayer £35 million of unemployment benefit if we put jobs, not sheds, on the site. That is why we have been making this argument for the past couple of years. I know that High Speed 2 needs a marshalling yard. We are supporters of High Speed 2 and we want it to be a success. We want it to happen fast. We very much welcome the work that David Higgins has done to take cost out of the equation. However, we must think more laterally about where the alternative sites might be. The Minister knows as well as I do that alternative sites are available.”
“However, the last Conservative-Liberal administration in the city appears to have overlooked a great jewel, and to have not made sufficiently robust arguments to HS2 about a different way forward. This is a great prize for any city, and particularly for us in east Birmingham, because of the high unemployment with which we are cursed. The Library tells us that in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington, 3,917 people are on jobseeker’s allowance. In Ladywood, 7,363 people are out of work. In my constituency, the figure is 5,379. There are 16,500 people claiming jobseeker’s allowance in our three constituencies; that is out of a city total of just over 37,000, so 44% of those on jobseeker’s allowance live in our three constituencies—the constituencies that surround this great industrial space.”
“I was of course immediately taken with the potential of developing the site holistically for the first time in a century, so in 2011 and 2012 I asked the master planners at Birmingham city council to give us a sense of the jobs potential of creating an holistic plan for developing a site the size of 105 football pitches. I was pretty shocked by the answer that I got: having done some detailed work, they told us that between 5,000 and 7,000 jobs could be created on the site if it was developed holistically, with new access routes to the north and the east. A site with that power, with that number of jobs, would of course not only have an enormous impact on unemployment in the east of the city, but bring into the coffers of Birmingham city council £5 million in new business rates every year.”
“St Modwen’s site on its own, on the west end of this great industrial land, has only the narrowest of roads connecting it to the outside world, and it goes through a number of residential seats. It is the worst possible access imaginable to an industrial site. In putting this great jigsaw puzzle back together, the possibility is opening of putting big new roads in, leading straight on to the M6, if we so choose. It becomes, for the first time, not just a site where new access roads are possible, but where those access roads could connect to the great backbone of the M6.”
“Crucially, it became possible to develop the site holistically and put in place new access routes that were impossible in the past. In the early part of our discussions with HS2 Ltd, we listened with increasing irritation to the idea that just because one owner of part of the site—St Modwen, which owned the western part of the site—had had planning permission, but was unable to get the site developed, somehow the site was not developable. I hope that that argument does not feature in the Minister’s remarks today. If those pages are in his speech, I hope he rips them out, screws them up and puts them on the floor. They are irrelevant to the argument. Only when the site came together for the first time in a century was it possible to put through the site access routes from the east and to the north of the site.”
“Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood), and I am afraid to say, to an extent in Erdington—we have very high and unacceptable levels of unemployment. Indeed, 45% of those who are out of work in the great city of Birmingham are in Ladywood, Hodge Hill and Erdington. There are 10 constituencies in our city, and 45% of the city’s unemployed are in just three of them. With the liquidation of LDV and the ill-judged liquidation of Advantage West Midlands after the 2010 election, something different became possible. For the first time in literally 100 years, it was possible to stitch back together a site that is the size of 105 football pitches. It is the greatest single site pretty much anywhere in the west midlands.”
“Around that great site in east Birmingham, the last great entrepreneur of east Birmingham—not an industrial entrepreneur, but a civic entrepreneur—C.B. Adderley, the late Lord Norton, laid out the streets of Saltley, and that is the community that we are talking about today. The de-industrialisation of the ’80s and ’90s hit our community very hard. First, what had become Metro Cammell closed down. Then, sadly, despite our best efforts and despite the offer of support at the time from my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), LDV finally went into liquidation around the time of the last election. What emerged was a great wasteland in east Birmingham, and partly as a result of the de-industrialisation, in east Birmingham—in my constituency of Hodge Hill, in the constituency of my neighbour, my hon.”
“In the 1880s and 1890s, Britain began sending billions of pounds around the world to build the world’s railway systems; many of the locomotives that ran on the new railway tracks in India and other parts of the empire were, as often as not, built in Joseph Wright’s great Metropolitan coachworks. As the years went by, Joseph Wright was joined by the second great entrepreneur of east Birmingham, Herbert Austin, who founded Morris cars, and who, in the early part of the 20th century, built up the great Nuffield Organisation. In due course, he built the site that was to become the great LDV site next door to the Metropolitan coachworks. At its peak in the 1920s, 4,000 manufacturing workers were employed on the site.”
“He is a good Minister who knows and is on top of his brief. He understands the background to this debate, and I know that he will provide us with full answers this morning. The site that we are talking about—a third of the industrial land in the city of Birmingham—is old. It was brought into industrial use as the country passed through the high noon of the Victorian age, towards the end of the 19th century. One of the greatest entrepreneurs in Birmingham’s history, the great Joseph Wright, created what was then called the Metropolitan locomotive works on an enormous site. Over the course of 10 or 20 years, a huge industry was built up, manufacturing locomotives that were shipped all the way around the world.”
“I say that not to criticise, but simply to understand. We are dealing with HS2 Ltd, not with an organisation that has been designed according to some celestial blueprint. It is a human institution, and in all human institutions—even those appended to the Department for Transport—sometimes imperfections creep in. A big imperfection and a big mistake has crept into these plans. That big mistake is the notion that we should destroy a third of the industrial land in the great city of Birmingham and put a marshalling yard on it, just to create a few hundred jobs in a decade’s time at the cost of creating 7,000 jobs in the short term. With your permission, Mr Robertson, I would like to acquaint the Chamber with a bit of the site’s history. I want to set out its economic potential and then conclude by putting some questions to the Minister.”