Nandy on ‘levelling up’: Tories have given more to fraudsters than the North

Below is the response to Michael Gove’s statement on levelling up delivered by Shadow Levelling Up, Communities and Housing Secretary Lisa Nandy today.

Mr Speaker, after all the delays, all the slogans, all the big promises. Is this it? The sum total of ambition for our proud industrial and coastal towns, our villages and our great cities is a history lesson on the rise of the Roman Empire. A minister scurrying around Whitehall shuffling the deckchairs, cobbling together a shopping list of recycled policies and fiddling the figures.

For some of us, this is personal. We’ve lived these failures every single day. We’ve watched good jobs go, high streets boarded up, young people having to get out to get on. The system is completely broken, and he’s given us more of the same. This was meant to be the Prime Minister’s defining mission of government. I’m not surprised he was too embarrassed to come here and defend it himself.

They tell us to wait till 2030. But where have they been for the last 12 years? I’ll tell him where. In Whitehall, turbocharging the decline of our communities. Cutting off choices and chances for a generation of young people. He talks about 12 missions. This is 12 admissions of failure. Let’s take one of them: only two thirds of children leave primary school with the basic skills to get on. Forgive me if I’m missed something, but wasn’t he the Education Secretary for four years? What about this? They want to tackle crime, but on their watch fewer than one in ten crimes are solved, and nearly all rapes go unprosecuted. Anyone would think he hadn’t been in charge of the justice department.

This is a government in freefall – out of ideas, out of energy. None of this is new. In fact, some of it’s so old that one of the better announcements was actually made in 2008, by Gordon Brown, and has been running ever since. Across our hometowns, we’ve seen good jobs disappear and far too many young people that have to get out to get on. This does nothing to address it. Our high streets are struggling because the local economy is struggling. People don’t have money to spend in our shops, our businesses, our high streets. This does nothing to address it.

What we needed was a plan – to connect our towns and villages to jobs, opportunities, our family and our friends. But they’ve halved the funding for buses, scrapped rail promises to the north and where is the digital Britain we were promised? You don’t need to look to Rome, Jericho or Renaissance Florence for inspiration. In Preston, Wigan and Grimsby people are delivering real change for themselves – not because of their government, but despite it.

Imagine what we could do if they got out of the way and gave us back the power to make decisions for ourselves. It’s absurd that we still have to go cap in hand to Westminster to do things we know will work for us. We asked for powers and we got a process. Where are the powers we were promised? Seriously, Mr Speaker, the arrogance of a Chancellor sitting in Whitehall drawing lines on a map, choosing which of us have earned the right to have some say over the decisions that affect our lives, our families, our communities.

He talks about London-style regeneration. Not every part of the country wants to be the same. We have our own identities, we’re proud of our places. We believe in our communities and our people – and we deserve a government that backs us. But they’ve given more to fraudsters than they’ve given to the North. For every £13 they’ve taken off us they’re given just £1 back. We get a partial refund and they expect us to be grateful. It’s not their money, it’s ours, and we want it back.

Imagine what could be achieved if we had a government with an ambition for Britain that matched the ambition of the people in it. We could build good jobs in every community, there’s a global race to create these jobs and we will invest to bring them here. So that young people in our coastal and industrial towns can power us through the next generation like their parents and grandparents powered us through the last.

In every corner of our country, people know we can do so much better than this. Well-paid jobs that put money back into people’s pockets to genuinely transform our high streets and town centres. Reformed business rates that back our bricks and mortar businesses. A plan to buy, make and sell more in Britain and an education recovery plan that stands as a testament to our commitment to the young people who make this country. This is our mission Mr Speaker. Today we’ve learnt one crucial thing – for all the spin and the gloss – they won’t do it. We will.