Finance Bill — House of Commons, 2021-05-24
Topic: Mixed Topics
Abena Oppong-Asare (Labour, Centre-left): I rise to speak to new clause 25, tabled in my name, and those of the Leader of the Opposition and my hon. Friends. The new clause sets out a number of tests that we believe the Government must apply to each and every freeport created in the UK. Before I come to the detail of those tests, I will make a couple of brief points about the Government’s intentions behind freeports. As I said in Committee, Labour wants every area to succeed, whether or not it has a freeport. We want good new jobs to be created right across the country, and our great British industries to be protected and supported. We want to see the UK at the forefront of new green manufacturing and technology, and we want a genuine re-distribution of power and opportunity to places that have been denied that for so long The Government clearly believe that freeports are a silver bullet for solving regional inequalities, and I simply remind them that they have been in power for 11 years now. Let me repeat that: 11 years. They must own the choices they have made, such as abolishing regional development agencies, cutting local authority funding, and pulling opportunities away from young people in some of the most deprived regions of the UK. Just recently, they scrapped the industrial strategy altogether. We need a proper plan that creates jobs and opportunities for everyone, regardless of where they live I will now turn to the new clause, and to the tests against which we believe our freeports should be judged if they are to succeed. First, freeports must create jobs, not simply move them from elsewhere. Too often, attempts at regional rebalancing have simply shuffled jobs around rather than creating them in the places that need them. We must end the scandal of people being forced to move to the other end of the country to find a decent job. Our test will be this: if someone lives near a freeport, will new opportunities be opened to them that did not exist before? Conversely, if an area does not have a freeport, can we be confident that it will not lose jobs as a result of this policy? Of course, any new jobs must be secure and well paid, with trade union rights—the kind of jobs we have not seen anywhere near enough of over the last decade Secondly, freeports must deliver improvements in training and skills for local residents. As we begin to recover from the pandemic, the need for re-training will become even more acute. We need a genuine skills guarantee for everyone, and freeports must play their part in that. Labour will be looking to see how companies operating in freeports work with their local communities to provide skills and training opportunities. Rather than a race to the bottom, freeports should be helping to boost skills and open opportunities Thirdly, freeports must produce tangible transport and infrastructure improvements beyond the port itself. Too many places still lack basic transport infrastructure, and too many people still find it difficult to get around. The investment that the Government are making in freeports must go towards boosting connectivity for everyone in those areas. We want every community to benefit from affordable and reliable public transport.