Policy for Growth

Part of Bill Presented — European Union Bill – in the House of Commons at 3:42 pm on 11 November 2010.

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Photo of David Mowat David Mowat Conservative, Warrington South 3:42, 11 November 2010

One of the great pleasures of speaking in this place is occasionally hearing Members of the Opposition saying something that I agree with. I agree with both Mr Reed and Mr McFadden that we must ensure that growth is spread evenly across the country as the economy grows. Perhaps they should pause for thought, however, and consider the legacy that we have been left. The gross value added per person for the English regions that we have inherited is about half that for London and 20% less than that in the south-east. The fact that GVA in the regions is half that for the capital is staggering, and it is a situation that does not exist in any other OECD economy. We must fix that, and it behoves the Government to put into effect the policies that will stop that happening again.

I shall say it again: we have inherited a situation in which London has double the GVA per employee of the English regions, and that is not sustainable. The hon. Member for Copeland is right: it is a moral issue. Why has that happened? First, it has not happened simply because London is the capital. If that were the case, the same would happen in other countries, but it does not happen in the United States, in Germany or in Italy. In France, where Paris is dominant in the same way as London is dominant here, the disparity is not the same; it is not double. One small cause of the gap in the past few years has been the boom in financial services, which was unrestrained and went on for a couple of years. I should add that the widening of the gap accelerated during the last few years of the Labour Government.

That all happened here because we have a country that is very London and south-east focused. I spent 30 years in business constantly fighting initiatives to move functions to London, and fighting the idea, "This is important; we'll have to do it in London." That is a very tough thing to have to do, and it is like pushing water uphill all the time. Worse still, that attitude also exists in our civil service, in which London tends to be seen as the centre of everything. Another statistic that Opposition Members might like to consider is that capital spend per head under their Government was 50% higher in London than in the north-west. That is a terrible statistic, because capital spending at that level creates private sector jobs and all the good stuff that we need, and thereby creates affluence and prosperity.

We need growth in the regions, and as I have not heard a great deal from the Opposition about how to create that growth, other than by spending money on the regional development agencies, I shall make a number of suggestions. First, infrastructure matters more in the regions than in the south-east.