Closure of St Paul’s Place BIS Office (Sheffield) — House of Commons, 2016-01-29
Topic: Macroeconomics
Gordon Marsden (Labour, Centre-left): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) on her urgent question. Today’s announcement that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is scrapping its office in Sheffield, which has 247 jobs, is a hammer blow to the people there. It is also a huge worry and a warning to the 12 other BIS regional offices, six of which are in the north, that they are at risk from this so-called restructuring. What assurance can the Minister give us that there will be no compulsory redundancies in Sheffield, and will she tell the House what offers of relocation expenses or even relocation itself there will be The BIS press statement talked vaguely about six business centres, which the Minister also mentioned in her answer, but they are servicing a centralised headquarters in London. Will the Minister say precisely where those centres will be—we have been told that possibly five will be in the south, and one in the north—and how many people will work in them? Are they simply a hastily drafted afterthought? Will they be just fig leaves, ministerial post boxes or possibly even digital fig leaves The BIS statement also said that the closure would reduce operating costs, so will the Minister tell the House what savings there will be from this closure, which comes on the backs of the people of Sheffield? The union, Prospect, said yesterday, that it was given only 30 minutes’ notice of this announcement. What discussions did Ministers have with workers and trade unions before the announcement was made The announcement comes on the back of the latest Centre for Cities report, which places Sheffield in the low wage, high welfare economy—half of the UK’s biggest cities are in that report. The report underlines the stark north-south divide and undermines all the Chancellor’s spin and rhetoric about a rebalanced economy. It is no wonder that civil servants told Radio Sheffield that they felt betrayed In the light of the 100 jobs lost at Sheffield Forgemasters and HMRC’s November announcement, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley has already referred, I have to ask whether this is what the Tory industrial strategy amounts to—cutting and running. This is not a strategic approach; it is a kick in the teeth. The Financial Times said that 20% of civil service jobs had been lost in the regions since 2010 as opposed to only 9% in London. With infrastructure spending in the north standing at £539 a head and London’s at £3,386, BIS is shifting more jobs to the Chancellor’s Whitehall comfort zone and exposing the empty rhetoric of his northern powerhouse Did the Minister’s Department discuss the decision with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government who is busily promising devolution to local authorities while her officials are undermining it, and did the Minister’s Secretary of State discuss the closure with the Chancellor and did he approve it? Did BIS speak to council leaders in Sheffield and across West Yorkshire to see whether an alternative package could be put together? This Government need to tackle our skills emergency. [Interruption.] Perhaps the Minister should listen. The Government have dithered and missed opportunities—[Interruption.] Will the Minister stop chuntering from a sedentary position? They have missed opportunities to save our steel industry—[Interruption.]