Robert Jenrick
MP for Newark · Reform UK · United Kingdom
“Robert Steele was a beautiful four-year-old boy who died three weeks ago in Newark when he was thrown from an off-road bike that was being driven by a 24-year-old man. This is the culmination of a number of incidents in my town, and many others across the country, involving off-road bikes, e-bikes and e-scooters.”
“The Minister said that Governments are elected to lead. Most people would assume that means that Ministers are elected to lead, because they are accountable to Parliament and to the people.”
“There is an air of total unreality hanging over this debate. Successive Governments have run down our Royal Navy to its present enfeebled state, they have conspired to surrender other British sovereign territory and we have a Government who procrastinate about signing off a new oil field in the North sea—let alone about one in the south A…”
“I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position. I have known him for a long time—I wish him well. He has a huge task ahead of him. Earlier in the summer, the Prime Minister said that walking the streets of Makerfield lodged in his mind that so many working people want to see the personal allowance raised.”
“Imagine that you are a worker at JLR worried about your future, and you have the misfortune of watching the Chancellor’s speech, which contains searing economic insights like, “I want to see businesses make a profit.” There was nothing about scrapping electric vehicle mandates, bringing down energy costs by getting rid of net zero targets…”
“The sight of the Government escorting illegal migrants into Portsmouth harbour, the home of the Royal Navy, was a national humiliation. Sometimes I wonder whether Members of this House have no appreciation of the level of anger there is in the country at the rapes, the murders and the billions being wasted that should be being spent on th…”
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“I am very alive to this issue. The Government’s position has not changed and the law remains as it has been, but as I said in answer to a previous question, we have done two things this year that are significant: extending the derogation, which enables councils to support EEA nationals in this country who find themselves on the streets, and allowing councils to use the discretion they have under the law to support those where there is a risk to life. Many councils, I suspect the hon. Member’s among them, have used that discretion to support vulnerable rough sleepers who do not have recourse to public funds during the virus. Many of the 29,000 individuals we brought in off the streets under Everyone In were people who lacked recourse to public funds, and those people are by and large being supported by councils to this day.”
“Earlier in the year, I laid a written ministerial statement that set out the Government’s position with respect to local government reorganisation. It remains my view that, where there is local support, councils should consider further reorganisation to drive the sorts of efficiencies my hon. Friend speaks of, but there must be support for that within the local community. It is not the Government’s intention to impose it on parts of the country where it does not work for the character and nature of local government. We have taken forward three propositions—one in Cumbria, one in Somerset and one in North Yorkshire. Bids for those have been submitted to me, and my hon. Friend the Minister for Regional Growth and Local Government and I will be making decisions on that early in the new year.”
“We have provided exceptional resources both to the NHS and to local authorities over the course of the year, so the suggestion that public health has not been resourced this year is not correct. We have been providing huge sums of money to support the increasingly important role of directors of public health in local councils and the teams that are around them. With respect to Birmingham, we have provided £177 million of covid-19 expenditure funding already, much of which will have gone to support the sort of work that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, including through the infection control programmes.”
“It has benefited from the towns fund on two occasions, and I hope to support it in future.”
“The resettlement programme is resuming early in the new year after an understandable pause as a result of covid-19, and we will ensure that it is properly resourced so that it can continue to fulfil its important function. With respect to local councils, it is important that they apply for the funds that are made available to them. We have produced a number of schemes over the last couple of years, including the towns fund and the high streets fund. Next year, we will be bringing forward the £4 billion levelling-up fund, and it is my intention that we make the application and competition procedures as simple as possible so that local councils can succeed. My hon. Friend has a good council in his constituency, and I have worked closely with Damian Allen, its excellent chief executive.”
“The question that the hon. Lady asks is primarily for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, but what I would say, building on my remarks of a few moments ago, is that public health has been significantly invested in over the course of this year as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. The public health grant for local councils has to be viewed in the round, including the sums of money that we have been providing to directors of public health for infection control, for personal protective equipment and for support for care homes across the country. That includes her own local council, which has received £28 million of covid-19 expenditure already.”
“I look forward to receiving the proposals for my hon. Friend’s towns fund bid. We will be making further announcements on that early next year, and nothing would give me greater pleasure than to support the towns in her constituency.”
“That should bring those costs to an end, or at the very least significantly reduce them, and mean the beginning of the end of terrible rip-off practices that have put huge stress and anxiety on leaseholders. Virtual participation in proceedings concluded (Order, 4 June).”
“I think the hon. Lady’s question is better directed to the Minister with responsibility for the fire service, who laid a written ministerial statement earlier today specifically with respect to the police and fire settlements. More broadly, I join her in thanking fire and rescue services across the country for the fantastic work they do day in, day out and have done throughout the pandemic, and the work they are doing with my Department with respect to building safety issues. I heard the hon. Lady’s question earlier to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House with respect to waking watch. She might like to know that earlier today we announced a £30 million fund, which will be available to those in any building faced with egregious waking watch costs, so they can pay for fire alarm systems to be installed.”
“All Members of the House will agree that places such as Blackpool, Barrow and Darlington need and deserve investment, and they will have it under this Government. The work of the towns fund is just beginning.”
“I am particularly excited by Blackpool’s plans to make its illuminations even more impressive and attract more visitors when they are back next year. Town deals are about more than simply investment. They are about the whole town coming together, to create and share a genuine vision for the future of that place. We have just offered Barrow-in-Furness a town deal that will help to address the skills gap, create better housing and support local businesses to grow and employ more people. I am hugely excited by these deals. They offer a chance to turn around the fortunes of many, many places. This is just the start. The Government are committed to levelling up all parts of the country. We want everyone, wherever they live, to benefit from increased economic growth and prosperity. Town deals are but one way to achieve that.”
“Up-front grants of up to £1 million are being spent in places such as Burton-on-Trent, on its new main shopping centre to allow greater access for pedestrians and cyclists, or on demolishing and rebuilding unloved buildings in places like Newcastle-under-Lyme. Many towns are repurposing empty shops into vibrant community and business spaces that will help them to bounce back when covid is done. Each town selected to bid for a town deal is eligible for an investment of up to £25 million. Of course, that is not guaranteed, and all proposals are rigorously assessed by officials in my Department. In exceptional circumstances, such as the nationally significant plans for the great town of Blackpool, we will invest more.”
“They are about providing investment and confidence at a crucial time for these communities. Through town deals, we are driving economic regeneration and growth, raising living standards and boosting productivity. We are investing in new uses for often derelict and unloved spaces. We are creating new cultural and economic assets that will benefit those communities not just today but for generations to come. We are connecting people through better infrastructure both digital and physical, such as the new walking and cycling routes planned for Torquay and the creation of the new digi-tech factory in Norwich. We have already made some investments as a rapid response to the effects of covid-19 where towns are particularly vulnerable.”
“The towns fund is one element of this Government’s mission to spread opportunity and to level up by investing in towns and smaller cities—places to support businesses and communities so that we can help them to thrive. Last year we announced that 101 places had been invited to develop proposals for a town deal as part of the £3.6 billion towns fund. These towns are spread across the country. Many are birthplaces of industry and centres of commerce. Others are bastions of the maritime economy or the pleasures of the English seaside. Others are great agricultural and market towns. They are all different. But what they do have in common is that they have been underinvested in and undervalued by central Government for too long as too much investment has been centred on our big cities. Town deals are about reversing that trend.”
“All of us on both sides of the House should be able to agree that this fund is important and that these places need investment. We are working very well with Labour councils in these places. The hon. Gentleman says that they are Conservative-voting places. I am afraid that it is not the towns fund that is responsible for the way people have voted in those communities—it is the fact that Labour MPs and successive Labour Governments have let down those communities for too long. More than 60% of the towns and smaller cities that we have invested in have Labour councils, and we are working extremely well with them, whether the council is in Wolverhampton or St Helens; I am sure we will hear other examples today. I look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House to continue to invest and level up.”
“We have learned in the past year that a degree of judgment and qualitative analysis is also useful. The officials advised just that. They said that in addition to those 40 places, we should use our judgment to select other places for inclusion from the list informed by the information and advice that they provided to us, because many of those places were quite finely balanced. That is entirely consistent, and is set out in the work that the Department has shared with the National Audit Office. I have seen the recommendations from the Public Accounts Committee and, in the usual way, the Department will respond. The permanent secretary of my Department has made it clear that Ministers followed a rigorous and robust procedure in full. That is quite right, and that is how we will approach the next round of funding.”
“I look forward to receiving a bid from Ellesmere Port in the competitive phase next year. It seems as if the hon. Gentleman wants more of the towns fund, not less, and we can all agree that this is an important investment opportunity for places throughout the country. A rigorous and robust procedure was put in place by the Department, before I or any other Minister set foot in the Department. That was then followed; we followed the advice of our excellent civil servants in the Department —it is a pity that the Opposition tried to cast aspersions on them—by selecting the 40 most highly ranked towns and smaller cities that their methodology drew up. It is surprising that the hon. Gentleman has such great enthusiasm for algorithm-based policy making.”
“I think the rules of the towns fund allow for funding to be devoted to a project anywhere within the boundaries that are agreed between my Department and the city or town concerned. I encourage my hon. Friend or officials from City of Wolverhampton Council to get in touch with my officials to agree whether funding can be devoted to Wednesfield, because she makes a strong case for that. She made the point well that we are working extremely productively with local councils across the country of all political persuasions. I have spoken to the Labour leader of City of Wolverhampton Council a number of times over the last year. He and his fellow councillors of all party persuasions support the towns fund and are in the process of putting in some strong proposals, and I look forward to a successful result in due course.”
“The shadow Secretary of State cannot talk about local government, because his own Labour council has gone bankrupt with debts of £1.5 billion. He cannot talk about communities, because the committee on antisemitism has called him out, along with the majority of the members of the community team on the Labour Front Bench, for antisemitic incidents—quite how he can stay in position after that, I do not know. He cannot talk about housing, because he has said that his team has no housing policies, and it will be years before he produces any. He cannot talk about housing because we are building more homes than any Government have built for the past 30 years. We will keep on building homes, we will keep on levelling up, and we will keep on investing in the communities that need it.”
“There is absolutely no reason why a Minister should disadvantage their constituency. We are both Ministers and constituency MPs, which is one of the great virtues of our political system, but it is right that those decisions are not taken by that particular Minister and, in the usual way, the decision was taken by a colleague. With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s question about why I had said on the campaign trail that the fund’s future would be in question if there were a Labour Government, I think he has made that point for us today. He does not support the towns fund. The 101 places that are benefiting from it would be poorer if they had been under a Labour Government. The message from the Labour party is very clear today: while we want to level up, it wants to score pointless political points.”
“The Chair of the PAC asked to see the report and, in line with usual practice, the permanent secretary wrote a comprehensive summary of the advice. I have asked him once again to check that advice, and he says that the summary was comprehensive and covered all the points. The Chair of the PAC has all the information at her fingertips, as I suspect she knows perfectly well, because she is a highly experienced Member of this House. With respect to Newark, I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman shows such interest in my constituency. Perhaps he could come up and visit us, but he does not like to go north of the M25 very often. If he did, he would know that Newark was the 16th most highly ranked town in the east midlands to be a beneficiary of the fund, and we supported 19 places in the east midlands.”
“Once again, the hon. Gentleman seeks to sow discord where there is none. We followed a very clear and robust procedure. The permanent secretary of my Department made that very clear when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee. Again, I think it is disappointing that the hon. Gentleman chooses to cast aspersions upon distinguished civil servants. With respect to the accounting officer’s advice, such advice is not routinely published. That is a decision not for Ministers, but for civil servants. Once again, the hon. Gentleman is highly misleading in his remarks, because the accounting officer’s advice was shared in full with the National Audit Office when it produced its report for the PAC.”
“I have to say that I do not recall my hon. Friend’s predecessor coming to me to lobby for investment in his community. What a refreshing difference it is to have a Conservative MP in Ashfield who is fighting for investment for that community. I would be delighted to meet him and discuss his plans to take Ashfield forward.”
“I have already responded at departmental questions that the question of Barnettisation of the fund will be a matter for the spending review. The hon. Gentleman, I think, said erroneously at departmental questions that it had taken us a number of weeks or even months to respond to him. That was not the case; actually, we responded immediately to his question at the previous departmental questions. I am happy to resend him a copy of that if he seems to have mislaid it. With respect to the hon. Gentleman’s wider questions, I have already answered that we followed a robust procedure. That has been set out by the Department. My permanent secretary, in giving evidence to the Public Accounts Committee, made that abundantly clear.”
“My hon. Friend makes a good point. If we are looking to the shadow Secretary of State as the guardian of value for money and the Exchequer, I think the public will be sorely disappointed. It is probably about time that he spoke out about the activities of Croydon Council. Croydon Council’s mismanagement of public money has been, frankly, catastrophic and shocking. Who will lose out as a result? It will be the people of Croydon, who will see their services reduced and will have to deal for years to come with the toxic legacy of a Labour council that the shadow Secretary of State has fastidiously supported.”
“On Friday, I had the pleasure of joining a Zoom call with St Helens Council and the local community of St Helens, including its two Members of Parliament, to hear their brilliant proposals and to offer my support and that of my Department as they bring them forward to fruition.”
“My hon. Friend has been a champion of this for some time, and his brilliant report published earlier in the year made the case once again. One of the ideas behind the town deal is, exactly as he describes, not just for central Government to work directly with a particular local council—although, as I say, relations with local councils have been uniformly excellent in this process—but to broaden it out by bringing in members of the business community, members of civil society and Members of Parliament of all political persuasions. That is happening across the country.”
“I welcome the fact that Workington has the opportunity to bid for the funding. It will make a difference. The communities that my hon. Friend represents are exactly the sorts of places that we set out to support when we created the towns fund and the future high streets fund. These are places that have not routinely received substantial amounts of Government funding, and that extra investment for skills, for culture, for digital and transport infrastructure and for the revitalisation of places and high streets will be really welcomed by local people. As I have said to other colleagues, I very much look forward to seeing the plans come to fruition if Workington is successful.”
“I know that the hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House, but I do not think he understands what accounting officer’s advice is and how it corresponds with advice from the permanent secretary before the Public Accounts Committee. The permanent secretary is— [ Interruption. ] Well, I’m afraid that says it all. A member of the Committee himself does not know. The permanent secretary is the accounting officer. The permanent secretary at the time wrote the advice. The permanent secretary gave evidence before the hon. Gentleman’s Committee and shared a summary of the accounting officer’s advice with the Committee that the hon. Gentleman is a member of, so I am rather confused about what his point is.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I had the pleasure of visiting Telford recently, and I met the chief executive of Telford and Wrekin Council and members of the town board, who showed me some of their exciting proposals, including the beautiful new bridge linking Telford railway station with the town centre and the science and technology section of the town that they are hoping to build adjacent to the shopping centre. That seemed a very strong proposal to me, but of course I look forward to receiving all the proposals in due course.”
“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I shall try to be swift. As I said in an earlier answer, the question of Barnettisation will be settled at the spending review, and hon. Members do not have very long to wait for the answers there. On the hon. Gentleman’s broader point, he is absolutely right. The challenges facing smaller cities and towns are consistent across the whole of the United Kingdom. That is the reason we set up the towns fund, and that is why we having been doing town and city deals in all parts of the UK, including a large number in Scotland.”
“I thank my hon. Friend, who has been a fantastic champion for her constituency since she was elected just a short time ago. As she says, it is a reflection on the Labour party—at least in Westminster—that it wants to pour cold water on a fund that is doing so much good work in communities across the country. Fortunately, that is quite a different picture from what we are seeing from local councils of all political persuasions elsewhere, which really want to get on board and make a huge success of these proposals. We will be doing a competitive phase next year, and I look forward to an application from the other parts of my hon. Friend’s constituency.”
“Well, I did not detect a question there, other than a whole series of pointless innuendos. We are going to keep focusing on what the public want us to do, which is investing and levelling up in the communities that need it the most despite all the challenges of covid, and that is exactly what this fund does.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the shared prosperity fund will be a great opportunity for the whole United Kingdom to come together; for us to be doing work not dissimilar to the activities of the towns fund and the high streets fund, investing in skills, transport, technology and places in a way we simply have not been able to do while those funds have been directed through the bureaucracy and regulation of the European Union. As we design the UK’s shared prosperity fund and bring it to fruition in the early part of next year, I will certainly be listening to my hon. Friend and his colleagues in Wales.”
“I think I have already answered that point: the accounting officer’s advice is not routinely published within Whitehall. That is a matter for the Department and the civil service more generally. However, it has been shared with the Public Accounts Committee, and I am pleased to see that at least one member of the Committee actually bothered to read it, unlike others present in the Chamber. It is a fair summary, and my permanent secretary has attested to that.”
“We will give what support we can, working with Mayors, city council leaders and the GLA to provide further support for the renewal and adaptation of those places.”
“We have actually included communities within larger cities in both the towns fund and the future high streets fund, because my hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that there can be a world of difference between Birmingham city centre and the high street in Brierley Hill, and we want to support those places as well. There were beneficiaries of the future high streets fund in London, for example: I recall Putney putting in a bid that will now be considered by the Department, and it is absolutely right that we do that. Covid has of course brought profound challenges even to some of our most robust city centres, including London, Manchester and Birmingham, so it will be a focus of my Department’s work in the weeks and months ahead.”
“My hon. Friend and I have discussed this previously. The criteria designed by the Department for the towns fund placed an upper limit on the size of communities that were able to benefit from it, because it was supposed to support towns and smaller cities. I appreciate that the circumstances of Stoke are unusual because, although a city, it is a collection of historical towns, buyt if could not be considered as part of the process. When we design the criteria for the competitive phase, we will take into consideration her view that collections of towns, even within a broader city, might be eligible.”
“I hope that the significant amounts of money that we are investing and spending in Ellesmere Port are making a difference and regenerating its high street.”
“I have been very clear that, on the advice of civil servants, we gave the opportunity to bid for a town deal to the 40 most highly ranked. Then, in accordance with the advice of civil servants, we applied a qualitative judgment in coming to conclusions on the others. As the civil servants made clear, some of those communities were very finely balanced, and it was important to take a geographical spread and a spread of different types of community, whether ex-coalfield, seaside, market towns, or sub-high streets and communities within great cities. With respect to Ellesmere Port, I look forward to receiving a bid in the competitive phase to come. I point out that the Department chose Ellesmere Port to be one of the 14 pilots for our high streets taskforce.”
“I had a very enjoyable visit to Holmfirth, one of the most special places in Yorkshire. I will be delighted to consider proposals from the town in the future. We will be bringing forward a competitive phase next year, as I said. From comments across the House today, we have heard loud and clear that there is great support for the towns fund. Colleagues of all political persuasions want to see more towns benefiting from it, so I will be taking that message to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.”
“I hope that they will be a shot in the arm—a boost of confidence—for communities as they begin to recover from the covid pandemic, and that they will help them to adapt and evolve, turning empty shops into homes, and beautiful buildings back to the uses that they were made for.”
“I should say, just to clarify my answer to the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg), because he seemed confused by it, that the point I was making was that absolutely, his bid will be treated with all fairness and I hope it is successful. With respect to my hon. Friend’s question, Newcastle-under-Lyme is a town that I know very well and I can see the great proposals coming forward there. He makes the same important point that a number of colleagues have made today—namely, that covid will accelerate market forces in our towns and city centres. It will make investment of this kind more important than ever and even more prescient than when these funds were created.”
“Well, it is not a terribly good look for the Labour party to say that it does not want investment to go into Cheadle. I think that the good people of Cheadle will welcome the fact that they are part of the town deal, and I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mary Robinson) will be working very hard with her town board to put forward exciting proposals for the place. We are working extremely well with Labour councils and MPs throughout the north-west, though perhaps not with the hon. Gentleman, to bring forward proposals, and we have just heard from one in Cheshire.”
“I thank my hon. Friend and will bear that in mind when we come to the competitive phase of the process. He makes the broader point very powerfully—namely, that from what we have heard this afternoon, Labour Front Benchers are now explicitly opposed to investment in these 100 places. He can take back to the people of Shipley and Bradford the message that, if there were a Labour Government, this funding would certainly not be flowing to their communities.”
“From memory, the fund the hon. Gentleman is referring to was established by the Secretary of State at the Department for International Trade, but I will take his representations to my right hon. Friend and ensure that he gets a full answer as quickly as possible.”
“We have made a manifesto commitment that I have repeated many times in this place that we will be bringing forward a UK shared prosperity fund. Further details on that will be set out at the spending review. It will ensure that all the nations of the United Kingdom receive the same level of funding in this Parliament as they received from the EU structural funds that we are moving away from.”
“My hon. Friend makes a strong case for Burnley. As I say, we will begin that competitive phase early next year, and before the end of this year, I hope to be announcing the successful bidders for the future high streets fund, where by we will be ensuring that up to £25 million of investment flows to dozens of communities across the country. It is another fund designed before covid, but it will be ever more important as we see the pressures wreaked on our high streets by the pandemic.”
“As I have already said, a fair and robust procedure was used to determine the places, and many places adjacent to the hon. Lady’s constituency have benefited. I think of Blyth, for example—a community that needed investment. It saw very little of it under the last Labour Government and will now, I hope, be benefiting. She represents a great city. That was not the primary focus of the towns fund, as the name rather suggests. With the UK shared prosperity fund, we will be ensuring that each of the nations of the United Kingdom receives the same funding as it did under the EU structural funds. We fundamentally believe that we can design better, more outcomes-focused funding streams than the European Union was ever able to do during our long years of membership. We will provide more details on that very soon.”
“As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee and a former Treasury Minister, I hold our colleagues at the National Audit Office in the highest esteem. They prepared a report that informed the hearing that was held by the Public Accounts Committee. At the Committee hearing, the permanent secretary of my Department gave evidence, answered questions and made it very clear that, in his opinion, a robust procedure had been followed. In my opinion, it was disappointing that the Chair of the Committee chose to give comments even before she had held that hearing, as that rather suggested that her approach was more partisan than one would expect from the Chair of that Committee.”