Ian Lavery
MP for Blyth and Ashington · Labour · United Kingdom
“Dr Anirban Bhattacharyya is a resident in my constituency. He has lived there for 60 years. He travelled to Kolkata only a couple of weeks ago, and it appears that he has been caught up in the horrendous flooding in Nepal. There have been numerous attempts to contact him, but they have been unsuccessful.”
“It has been nearly two years since the contaminated blood inquiry report was published. People think that the matter is finished, but it is not: some 18,000 infected and affected individuals still have not begun their claims. Will my right hon.”
“Q10. With tech billionaires driving the deployment of artificial intelligence, many of my constituents are concerned about job losses, misinformation and the infrastructure needed to support the technology.”
“I refer Members to my declaration of interests; I am secretary of the trade union group of Labour MPs, Mr Stringer. Does my hon. Friend recognise that these union-busting firms in America—Amazon, for example—paid up to $14.2 million to bust unions and refuse union access?”
“Before saying anything more than a sentence, people from Ashington, Blyth, Bedlington, Newbiggin-by-the-Sea, Choppington and Stakeford are judged. The people in my patch refuse to compromise their dialects, but they are judged every single day for them, and we have to tackle that.”
“That is very kind of the hon. Gentleman. My youngest son Liam speaks with a much harsher dialect than me, but he speaks five times faster than the hon. Gentleman. Imagine the problems that causes us when we travel abroad, or even to Yorkshire, for example.”
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“That is pretty offensive to people in held-back communities. Bedlington in my constituency got about £8 million to build new cycling lanes, although the bid was somewhat ironically designed with getting workers to the new Britishvolt factory in mind. Although every penny given to Bedlington is welcome, many are already questioning whether new cycle lanes are all that levelling up will amount to, given how starved the town has been, like many in my constituency, of crucial infrastructure funding for so long. The levelling-up fund has proved itself to be time-consuming, expensive, divisive and unable to meet the needs of held-back towns in the north-east.”
“The income from the new well-paid local jobs would have supported thousands of families across our communities, and might well have helped to kick-start a new era of manufacturing in industrial work that could have reignited the economy in the towns and villages close by. There was a good deal of reluctant optimism about announcements of new developments in transport and infrastructure, alongside the announcements about the factory and the possibility of money from the Government’s new towns fund and levelling-up fund, but bit by bit, drip by drip, that has ebbed away. Only last week a bid from Ashington, in my constituency, for levelling-up money to transform the crumbling town centre was rejected, while Richmond, in the Prime Minister’s Yorkshire constituency, received a cosy £19 million.”
“Towns and villages across south-east Northumberland and in the north-east as a whole, including my constituency, have been held back for decades. Once thriving industrial communities, they have had their economic and social fabric swept from under them with nothing to replace it. More than a decade of brutal austerity has hollowed out our public services and civic spaces and left us battling high levels of unemployment, low pay, poverty, crime, and addiction problems. The jobs that were promised to come with the gigafactory had the potential to be the first step in changing the fortunes of our region.”
“By this point, the Government’s attitude towards the company seems to have cooled considerably since the previous January, when they were singing its praises from every rooftop they could find. The pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have been harsh reminders of the need for national self-reliance, particularly in key strategic industries. Simply assembling the batteries in the UK is not enough; as we enter a new phase of globalisation, we must take control of our own destiny—and of battery manufacturing—if we want our car industry to survive. We still do not have a single fully functioning gigafactory, although, as was mentioned earlier, predictions suggest that we will need anywhere between eight and 10 by 2040. All this has real consequences at an individual human level.”
“The Government have repeatedly made the point that they need to act responsibly with taxpayers’ money. I agree with that, and I am sure no one disagrees with it, but it seems to me that £30 million for a company that says the money will allow it to stay in business and create 8,000 jobs in a region that has been held back for so long, keeping it afloat, is a worthwhile investment. That £30 million is a mere drop in the ocean of the money lost so carelessly during the pandemic, which went into the coffers of those with close ties to senior members of the Government, but when it might be spent on benefiting held-back towns in the north-east, it is held under very tight wraps.”
“How can this country—how can we, as a manufacturing nation—expect to be competitive while Governments across Europe and beyond are offering real incentives for the manufacture of batteries, far greater than those offered by our Government? We have to pull our socks up. We have to get on to the pitch. We have to start playing the game, for the sake of this nation. In the autumn, when Britishvolt was facing financial difficulties, it asked for £30 million of the £100 million grant that had been agreed by the Government. The company asked for this to be released early because it had cashflow problems, arguing that the money would help keep it afloat and attract the private investment that it needed to reach the other milestones set by the Government.”
“CATL in Germany has received grant and loans from the state of €750 million, or 22.8% of the total build costs; Northvolt in Sweden has had €505 million, or 17.1%; and in North America General Motors has had $2.5 billion, or 36.2%, Stellantis has had $l billion, or 35.7%, Tesla has had $1.3 billion and Ford has had $884 million—the list is nearly endless. Compare that with Britishvolt, which was promised just £100 million by the Government, and guess what percentage that was of build costs—only 2.3%. That is absolutely disgraceful. Moreover, the £100 million was heavily caveated, to the point where the company never had a penny of Government support.”
“We have hundreds of thousands of workers producing parts for vehicles that will not be required, with no clear plan on how those workers will transition and be reskilled in a rapidly changing industry. That is part of the wider issue of a chronic skills shortage that needs to be addressed by having the proper training available for our young people leaving schools and paying them a proper living wage to do well-paid skilled jobs. We are being rapidly overtaken by European competitors who have support from the European Commission and the member states themselves, and we are also being stymied by the strength of the US and, in particular, China, which has a near dominance in the supply of cells, cathodes and anodes, as well as the base materials for their manufacture.”
“I will come on to that point later in my speech, but my hon. Friend makes a very valid and strong point. On the issue of competitive energy sources, the UK’s industrial energy pricing is far from competitive and drives investment away, while our green energy infrastructure is nowhere near able to guarantee a supply of energy via the national grid. In December 2022, the UK cost per megawatt-hour was £580, while in Germany it was £225, in Italy £259, in France £238, and in Sweden £206. If we are ever going to reach our targets and support the automotive industry, that disparity must be addressed without any further delay. That is just a drop in the ocean of the wider strategic issues that have been allowed to develop in the industry.”