The Levelling Up White Paper was published with a great fanfare in February last year and since then we have had two new Prime Ministers and three new Chancellors. MHCLG has become DLUHC and Michael Gove is back at its helm.
As a member of the APPG for Left Behind Areas and the first Conservative MP for Blyth Valley I passionately believe in the Levelling Up Agenda. There’s no doubt that Governments of all colours have not delivered for areas like ours in recent decades. We now at least have an acknowledgment that ‘levelling up’ is necessary but it’s going to take a generation or two to deliver it.
So, what would I like to see from the Government to deliver Levelling up in Blyth Valley? More of the same please. Much more. To me, Levelling Up starts with infrastructure investment, delivers better skills and education and supports communities to be ambitious and help themselves.
The process has started in Blyth Valley. The Northumberland Line is being reopened to passenger services after Beeching closed it in the 1960s which means that people here can get to jobs in nearby Tyneside and it also means that inward investment in the renewables sector on the Blyth Estuary is more attractive for companies with global ambitions. We still need to see investment in road improvements for moving goods and for those people who won’t be able to take the new trains.
There remains a lot of uncertainty about the future of proposed British Volt electric vehicle battery giga factory. I am calling on Government to show the same investment commitment made from the Automotive Transformation Fund to new investors. Generally, I’m not in favour of direct support for individual companies but if a sector is of strategic national importance, as this is, we need to do everything we can.
As the jobs arrive our schools need to equip young people with the skills they need, to make pupils aware of the opportunities and give them exposure to industry and the wider world of work at a young age. Schools like Bede Academy are embracing this opportunity wholeheartedly, but they need the space and the facilities to do this, and they need flexibility in how they structure their educational pathways. 2023 will see me chasing Ministers in the Department of Education down the corridors of Westminster.
Next Friday we are hosting the second Blyth Valley Apprenticeships Fair with over 30 employers offering training and jobs opportunity. You can get a free ticket here - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/apprenticeship-fair-tickets-507485251047.
