Colleagues, I realise that we have not done things in person for a very long time, so everyone is rusty and not everyone will be aware of the procedures. This is not a pointed dig at the proposer of the debate, but please do ensure that you get here in good time. There are no longer any call lists; if you want to speak in a debate, drop the Chair a note beforehand. However, I will still call those who have not done so today. We are juggling with the time limits, but everyone will be called, so please do not be selfish and take other people’s time.
To return to my script, Members still have to wear masks when they are not speaking, I am afraid. That is still the rule. Members should send their speaking notes by email to Hansard at hansardnotes@parliament.uk.
That this House has considered the future of the East Midlands economy.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David, to be just on time and to bring this important debate to the House about the economy of the east midlands, which follows on from the Adjournment debate I held in July about devolution for our area. It has been a busy summer and lots of progress has been made on the proposals and on wider developments and major projects that I hope to put across to the Minister this morning.
It is clear that the east midlands has huge untapped potential and must be at the heart of the Government’s levelling-up plans in the spending review and the levelling-up White Paper this autumn. I hope to take the Minister through some of those developments this morning. As Members might imagine, as a Notts MP and the Nottinghamshire County Council leader, I will have more to say on Nottinghamshire, but I trust and hope that colleagues will chip in about the proposals and opportunities across their constituencies.
For context, the east midlands is home to over 5 million people and over 175,000 businesses. We have a diverse mix of counties and cities, with market towns, countryside, and distinct cultures and communities. It contains world-class business, innovation and manufacturing excellence, and the region’s economy of £99 billion has untapped potential for growth. Despite that critical mass and potential, the east midlands has received some of the lowest levels of Government investment and private investment over many years compared with other parts of the country.
Back in July, I met the Prime Minister and laid out four huge opportunities for the east midlands that can create jobs, unlock housing and growth, and get the region up to a level of support and investment that is in line with other parts of the country. Those major interventions are all coming together this autumn, with a number of key decisions on which the Government need to come down on the side of investment and development in our region.
First, the East Midlands Development Corporation—the devco—represents a major opportunity to regenerate and to create jobs and homes on key sites. It gives us the opportunity to masterplan our area to ensure that we are bringing forward the very best employment opportunities; that we are leading the way on green growth and environmental policy; and that we are offering investors a very attractive opportunity to simplify the planning process to get things done at pace. It currently sits over three sites, but in the future, with the right democratic oversight, it could be used to bring forward further sites across our region.
This development vehicle could be a major weapon in our armoury, with the right Government backing. If we can utilise it effectively into the future rather than continuing to adopt a piecemeal approach, with all sorts of different vehicles and delivery mechanisms popping up all over the place, we can take a long-term strategic approach to our region’s growth. Therefore, key decision No. 1 is to back the development corporation in the planning legislation this autumn, and give it the powers and guarantees it needs.
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He is making a powerful case about the need for investment, but that case is fundamentally undermined by the Government’s constant dithering on the eastern leg of HS2. I have never known a Government to spend so much money on a project so unenthusiastically. Over the summer, we have again seen the suggestion that the eastern leg will be cancelled. Does the fact that the Government will not once and for all commit to the eastern leg of HS2 not fundamentally undermine the case he is making?
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention; he has neatly predicted my next paragraph, which is about the integrated rail plan and Toton. All sorts of rumours have gone around over the summer. As the chair of the east midlands HS2 delivery board, I have had a lot of conversations with Ministers and officials about this matter and have pushed for the certainty that he asks for. HS2 is a major opportunity for the east midlands. I recognise that it is not universally popular, so I am not going to go on about the benefits of the eastern leg in full or the wider project, but this is a debate on the east midlands, so I will focus on the local part.
The key, for us, is that Toton is a major centre for our future growth. It is a site where we have invested almost a decade of work and planning, and tens of millions in infrastructure and preparation, including direct tram connections to Nottingham city, where there is huge interest in investing in skills, research and innovation, as well as in commercial and residential development. Success for Toton could unlock plans to the north, around Chesterfield and Bolsover, for a major engineering centre built around HS2, which has the potential to create 2,500 jobs in an area of north Nottinghamshire and north Derbyshire that should be at the heart of the levelling-up agenda. Those are former coalfield, post-industrial towns—the epitome of the kind of red wall areas that need support and to which we made big promises of support at the last election.
I have to confess that I am a little confused by the hon. Gentleman’s reaction to the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). Is he suggesting that the connectivity that the HS2 eastern leg would provide—not just a station at Toton, but the fast connections to Leeds, York, the north-east and Scotland, as well as the connection to the west midlands—somehow does not matter and is not essential to the future success of our region?
I thank the hon. Lady for that. She knows that that is not what I am suggesting, and she will no doubt have seen over the summer that few have been as vocal as I have been in their public advocacy for HS2 and the eastern leg. The key thing for the region is that, whatever HS2 looks like, it involves that key investment at our Toton site, unlocking opportunities for jobs and growth in the north of the county, and tying together our local transport network and connectivity across the east midlands to boost our economy. There is huge potential: I believe that the eastern leg in full would create enough jobs, investment and economic opportunity up the length of the route to pay for itself and to be of huge benefit to the country. I am just focusing on the key priorities for us from the east midlands perspective. Whatever the IRP looks like, those are things that must be in it to benefit our region.
Whatever anyone’s view on HS2 as a whole, given that the PM has committed to delivering it in some shape or form, the key for our region is Toton, and the surrounding plans and projects form a big part of the IRP decision. Whatever the Government decide and whatever form it ultimately takes, the Department for Transport and other Departments must work with us, the region, Midlands Connect and other local stakeholders to include the Toton plans and make the most of that investment.
I know that decisions on the IRP are to be taken soon. As the chair of the HS2 strategy board, I would welcome a conversation with the Secretary of State for Transport ahead of that decision about what is possible and about ensuring that key local priorities are part of that decision. I know the headlines will be about how much track is going down and whether HS2 goes from place A to place B, so there is a risk that our local requirements will be lost. That cannot be allowed to happen. For us, whether it is a win for the area and whether we can support the decision as local stakeholders ultimately depends on the details. Does it deliver growth, and where? What is the impact on our regional connectivity? Will it help to deliver projects like the Robin Hood line, access to Toton and the midlands rail hub? Those are key questions that need to be answered in the IRP. I trust that the Minister will pass on my request for that conversation with the DFT.
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful argument for more powers and more funding for the region. I know that there is an appetite for people to have more control over those sorts of investments, but this happens in a context of national policy. In his own constituency, more than 10,000 families will lose £20 a week when the universal credit cut kicks in next year. What impact does he think that will have on the local economy in his constituency, and what is he planning to do about it?
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. It is hugely important that we support people in my constituency and around the east midlands to meet their basic needs from day to day. Off the back of the covid recovery, we need to ensure that we put people in the best possible place. Vitally, we are helping people to get by and to get back into work. We are helping people to interact with our economy, to get out there and to overcome their fears. We are working with businesses to reopen and grow. At the county council, we are absolutely invested in supporting vulnerable people, as we have done successfully throughout the pandemic, and I pay tribute to the many thousands of staff who have been working incredibly hard to do that. Regardless of national decisions, we will work hard at the local level to support everyone across Mansfield and Nottinghamshire over the coming months and years.
The key point is that we need Government support on some key decisions this autumn in order to back the east midlands, which has consistently been bottom of the tables for public and private sector investment, and which should therefore be top of the levelling-up agenda. We have a package that already exists and that could boost our economy and improve the life chances of the local people whom the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned. I therefore call on the Minister and the Government to back the plans to make these four key decisions in favour of the east midlands this autumn.
Colleagues, if you want to make a speech, keep bobbing up and down as we once did. If you came here only to make an intervention, that is fine, but you must stay until the end of the debate at 11 o’clock. There is no Scottish National party contribution today. The Minister and the shadow Minister will take about 10 minutes each. We have worked out that if everyone speaks for four or five minutes, you will all have a say.
I apologise for having been slightly late into the room. The security door worked all too effectively: it kept me out.
I am mindful of your remarks, Sir David, and I want to leave enough time for everybody else. I have slightly mixed feelings about taking part in the debate, because I agree with much of what the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) said, to a degree. For example, he talked about the freeport, which I think most of us support and hope will be successful. However, I must admit that I am a little sceptical. We have had freeports before, without their bringing about a massive transformation. As he rightly identified, it will all depend on whether the Government are enthusiastic and willing to come forward with investment. When looking at any of the statistics about the east midlands, one thing that is crystal clear is how frequently we are at the bottom of the heap for Government investment, particularly in transport.
I want to pick up on something that the hon. Member for Mansfield said about prosperity and the wellbeing of families. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) identified the number of people who are in financial difficulty and who will be affected worse if the Chancellor follows through and withdraws the universal credit uplift. I notice how often Conservative Members talk about the best way out of poverty. Whenever they talk about people who are in poverty or who are having difficulties—not necessarily those in dire poverty—they say that the way out of poverty is through work. That is true, but only if the work is sufficiently well paid to enable people to survive, to put food on the table and to support their families. Something like 76,000 people in the east midlands are in zero-hours contract jobs.
I actually agree with that. The projects that I have talked about today represent a huge opportunity, because the joy of master planning and things such as the development corporation and the freeport is that we as public stakeholders can interact with business and the market. We can lay out the kinds of jobs and sectors that we would like to see, and ensure that those jobs are better paid than those that already exist. Rather than having logistics sheds on the side of the M1, we can get jobs in clean tech and green energy and ensure that there are better opportunities for people in our communities.
I am certainly in favour of all those things and very much hope to see them happen.
However, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) put his finger on a very real difficulty. I have been involved with the business community in a variety of ways for many years, and one thing I know above anything else is that what the business community values above everything is stability and certainty. My hon. Friend referred to the uncertainty that continues to hang around the HS2 project. Whatever the degree of enthusiasm for it, I think most of us here today support it and feel that, if it is going to happen, we certainly do not want the east midlands to be left out, or the eastern leg not to be continued, or the Toton project to fall through, because of all the potential opportunities that would be created by those developments. I therefore accept the value of what the hon. Member for Mansfield says could happen; it is just that, as I have already said, I have a degree of scepticism about whether, under this Government, it actually will happen. It is delivery that matters, as he himself said in his closing remarks.
I am very conscious of the need to leave enough time for the many colleagues who are here to contribute; indeed, I am pleased to see how many are here to participate in this debate. I am extremely fortunate, in that some of the industrial jewels of the east midlands are not only in my city of Derby but in my constituency—Rolls-Royce and Alstom, to name but two, with Toyota just outside the city. We are blessed in having world-beating manufacturing success and world-beating opportunity. Nevertheless, like the rest of the east midlands, we are bedevilled by insufficient investment, training and skills. So often, what the business community complains about more than almost anything else is insufficient skills—well, it is a lack of certainty, usually followed by a lack of skills, that it complains about most. I am therefore mindful of the difficulties and the way in which the east midlands needs Government investment and support in order to prosper.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.
I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate. It is great to be both back in the Chamber and able to speak about the east midlands, which is a region that we do not speak of enough in this place. I look forward to the Minister getting a clear message from all of us here about how important a focus on the east midlands will be in the coming months and years.
Although those of us here today will probably not agree on absolutely everything—I am sorry to say to the right hon. Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) that in a moment I may just pick up on one or two points she made—in general, the combined and aggregate view of the people in this room, and indeed in the east midlands, is that we of course want to see our area doing better, and we also want Government support for it in the right places and having the right, effective outcomes. Overall, that will help us all across the east midlands, from the very north, where I am, to the very south, where some of my colleagues in this debate are.
We have much to celebrate. It is important to understand the achievements that we have made, or are in the process of making, to recognise the importance of where we need to go forward. I was pleased to see the freeport, which I am sure colleagues will talk about in a moment. It will be transformational for the region, especially for particular parts of it, but even those of us who are a little further away from it are glad that it has come.
There are also the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) talked about—the longer-term and more strategic issues that we need to tackle in the east midlands. They are also positive. I look forward to working with him and other colleagues on those in the years ahead.
Everyone in the next hour will make the case for individual areas, I am sure, and I want to make the case for my area. We have already achieved good progress on broadband, which is hugely important for rural areas in particular, in constituencies such as mine on the edge of the Peak, in places such as Barlow and Spinkhill.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) on securing this debate. I am pleased to see that so many colleagues wish to take part. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) was disappointed not to be available this morning, because he is serving on a Bill Committee.
Over the past 18 months, my constituents—all our constituents—have faced the most incredible challenges as a result of the pandemic. Far too many people have lost their lives, or lost loved ones, and many people have lost incomes, jobs and businesses. No one knew that we would face a pandemic, but some of the weaknesses in our economy, which covid has only made deeper, were known. I am afraid that the Government have consistently failed to address those and, more than that, have wilfully made them worse. They have failed to take the action that we all know is necessary to ensure that the east midlands can grow strongly in the future.
For many people in my constituency and our region, making ends meet, keeping a roof over their head and putting food on the table is a constant worry. That is not news; for far too many constituents, economic insecurity has become the norm. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) highlighted, 76,000 workers are on zero-hour contracts. If they get sick, they do not get paid. If they challenge their employer, they face losing their job. They cannot plan for the future, and they cannot imagine how they could ever own their own home.
Even those with regular employment feel uncertain about the future. That insecurity has taken its toll. Over the last decade, wages in the east midlands have fallen by more than £10 per week in real terms. Homelessness has increased by 55% since 2010. In 2019-20, before the pandemic hit, there were 101,534 food bank referrals in our region.
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Secondly, there is the east midlands freeport. Colleagues lobbied hard last year to secure the east midlands as one of the key sites for a freeport to take advantage of our post-Brexit trading opportunities and to boost business and jobs in our region with a unique proposition: the only inland freeport in the UK, built around an airport rather than on the coast. This has the potential to act as a hub and as the heart of the wider freeport network, as well as the logistical centre of the UK, with its key geographical location and proximity to major road, rail and air connections.
The outline business case will be submitted this week. Once again, I and MPs across the region call on the Government to back us to help deliver this freeport, along with the council and business partners; to support our vision to level up the east midlands; to create jobs and opportunities for people in our region; and to maximise the potential of this package of projects I am going through today. The whole will be bigger than the sum of the parts if these actions can be taken in unison.
It is worth saying that these sites—Toton and the related freeport—could all benefit from partnership with the devco, combining the existing opportunities and incentives with a master-planning element and simplified processes for the development corporation to deliver bigger, better and faster. It is important that it has the right oversight, and I will get on to that, but bringing key sites together under this delivery mechanism could supercharge the whole package. As I said, the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. This is a package of interventions, with key decisions to be taken in the coming months.
Point No. 4 is about devolution. I held an Adjournment debate on this topic in the summer before we went into recess, in which I laid out the potential benefit of devolved powers for our region and the impact we could make on our communities if we could make bespoke local interventions. We could improve our skills offer, intervene where there are health inequalities, improve and join up our transport network, boost economic development, collaborate more effectively across different authorities, and plan for housing in a more strategic and joined-up way. There is a lot we could do with the right powers and budget devolved to a local level. The Government have asked for proposals, and in Nottinghamshire at least—clearly, I cannot speak for other areas—we are extremely interested in that conversation. We have spoken with Ministers and officials. We have a clear idea of what we want to achieve and we want to be out there, leading the way.
Following all those conversations with local and national stakeholders in Notts, we agree with the Government that the best way to deliver devolution in areas such as ours is through the mechanism of county deals. We want to bring forward deals for Nottinghamshire and Nottingham, using our existing legal framework for collaboration—our economic prosperity committee—to manage a joined-up approach to delivery, working with our districts and boroughs. In return, we are offering a package of local public service reform, bringing both tiers together under the EPC to deliver more efficient and effective local services. We have agreed to that across all the Nottinghamshire local authorities; we have done much of the work and planning in the background already; and my chief executive and I will camp on the lawn outside the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government until we get the thing done. The Minister just needs to say the word and set us up a pitch in an appropriate place.
Although I am not party to all the local discussions, I hope that colleagues across the region will be able to put forward similar deals for Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire in due course, giving us all access to the huge potential of those devolved powers and offering us the opportunity to work together across the region on delivery. That could also give us the ability to work together on the oversight of these projects—the development corporation, the freeport, HS2 and others—and allow us to steer the ship for future sites and projects. I recognise from the Prime Minister’s speech that he clearly sees devolution as a mechanism for delivering the levelling-up agenda. We want to be at the heart of that; I certainly want Nottinghamshire to lead the way, and to be among the early adopters of this project.
As you can see, Sir David, the four projects as a package are linked and interdependent, and if delivered together could be much more than the sum of their parts. As a region, the east midlands does come together already, so we have strong foundations on which to build. Under the leadership of Sir John Peace, chairman of the midlands engine, public and private sector partners from across the region have been working on HS2, the development corporation and our freeport ambitions. That has led to a strong sense of trust and confidence among senior stakeholders, and we know that we have the good will and the momentum to do more. Currently, we are working with Sir John on plans to capitalise on that good will by strengthening our regional partnership. We call that partnership the alchemy board, and I am confident that it can provide us with an effective east midlands partnership umbrella, so that local devolution efforts have a place to share and develop significant opportunities on a regional level. There is work to do to make changes to bring that together, but we have the building blocks in place, and I think it is an attractive proposition.
I hope it is clear that on a regional level, we have some key projects and a vision for the future that can create wealth across the east midlands. Those four things are already under way and are coming together this autumn for decisions. With Government support, they can create tens of thousands of jobs and thousands of homes, and change the life chances of people in the east midlands. If the Government deliver the powers for the devco in their planning legislation; if they back our freeport bid and support us through the full business case to reach delivery stage; if they ensure that whatever the bigger picture on HS2, Toton forms a big part of the IRP, and that our local connectivity and economic growth also form a big part of that plan; and if they agree to get us on track for early devolution packages, in line with their own policy goals to be announced in the White Paper this autumn, we will be well placed to level up the east midlands and to deliver on the Government’s own promises. All of this is already under way, and all of it fits with the Government’s own plans and priorities, so we should get on with it. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some positive soundings on that today.
We can add to that list a ton of other projects, including growth corridors, midlands engine rail, the midlands rail hub, Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production fusion energy, Space Park Leicester and Infinity Park Derby. My colleagues will no doubt add many more projects to that list, but it is an exciting time in the east midlands, and this autumn is a particularly exciting time, with key things coming together.
I will pick out—I suspect that the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) will wish to do the same—the project that is potentially available. One of the many other ways in which the east midlands has lost out is in—I am not quite sure what to call it—this contest for Government Departments or agencies that are being dispersed from London or set up afresh. As you will know, Sir David, there is in the pipeline a new headquarters for the future of Great British rail, and all of us in Derby, across the parties and universally across the business community and other communities, absolutely believe that the best possible place for that investment—apologies to anybody who has a competing interest—would be Derby.
In Derby, there remains a tremendous concentration of rail companies and other companies associated with the rail supply chain and so on, which we believe is the greatest such concentration anywhere in the world. We believe that to be true, and as nobody has ever contradicted us or found another example of such concentration, we are fairly confident in that assertion.
I share the hopes and aspirations of the hon. Member for Mansfield for the east midlands and its future, and I passionately hope that some of the promises that the Government are making will indeed be delivered. However, I share the doubts expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield, which I suspect will be expressed by other Labour Members, about how much faith we can place in the prospect of the Government really delivering on their promises. I very much hope that the Minister will say enthusiastic things about such expensive and comprehensive projects that I will be satisfied, and I look forward to hearing his speech.
We have successfully convinced the Government to spend a lot of money in Staveley and in Clay Cross through the town deals. We are one of only a handful of places to get two town deals in close proximity, and we are very grateful for that. It is now the responsibility of the local councils, which we are working well with, to ensure that the money is delivered effectively into projects that change our area for the long term.
Only a few months ago, we had the very good news that we were going to get a new free school in our area on the old Avenue regeneration site. That is another example of where, after a decade of aspirations but being unable to deliver them, we are now plugging the gaps in funding and finding ways to deliver the things we need for local communities.
We have great opportunities, some of which I share with the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins). I look forward to, and will continue to support, opportunities such as the long-awaited Staveley bypass, which is now moving to the next level, which is positive; the work on the A61, which is being led by Derbyshire County Council, to try to secure long-term improvements there; the possibility of reopening rail along the Barrow Hill line; regeneration for towns such as Dronfield, Killamarsh and Eckington in my patch; and the actual physicality of what the integrated rail plan—when we see it—does for my constituency. Everyone, whatever their view of High Speed 2 or other aspects of train policy, wants to see an outcome to the integrated rail plan and what it means for individual constituencies.
In the couple of seconds I have left, I want to say one thing. Infrastructure is vital to our area, just as it is to every other area around the country. However, infrastructure is not everything. That does not mean that the primary message from this debate to the Government and the Minister should not be that we want more infrastructure—we want the ability to build a more successful east midlands over the long term—but there are many other elements of Government policy where the state can help that we also need to consider.
We need to ensure that we are levelling up across education. One of the things that I completely agree with the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) about is the need to level up on skills. We also need to level up on aspiration, opportunities and ensuring that people in our areas know that they can achieve things in a way that, when I came out of school in Chesterfield 20 years ago, we did not used to be sure of. If we do that, combined with the infrastructure improvements that I am sure will be talked about for the next hour and have already been articulated, we will have a great case to make for our region in the coming decades.
We can do better and be better—we all want that—but it requires Government action: not words about addressing regional imbalance, not promises about new investment, but action. We need promises to be kept and we need investment to be delivered.
I want to say more about the action needed, but first I will talk about what is not needed: next month’s proposed cut to universal credit. More than 9,500 households in my constituency face losing more than £1,000 a year as a result of the Government’s plan to make the biggest ever overnight cut to social security. Not only will it be devastating for the families who need that £20 per week; it will be very bad news for our local economy—the local shops and businesses where they spend that money. Taking £20 a week away from almost 40,000 families in Nottingham is taking millions of pounds away from Nottingham businesses and struggling high streets. It comes in the middle of a jobs crisis and threatens our economic recovery.
That is not just an issue in Nottingham; across the east midlands region, 389,680 families will be hit by the cut to universal credit. A quick bit of maths: that is £400 million a year out of the east midlands economy. As has been highlighted, 40% of those low-income families in receipt of universal credit are working families. Cutting the incomes of those who are unemployed or on low pay is shocking. Cutting their spending power is economic madness. I hope MPs on all sides will stand up to the Government and do the right thing for their constituents and the east midlands economy. There will be an opportunity to do that tomorrow, I believe.
Government do not just need to avoid doing the wrong things; they need to start doing the right things. The east midlands has consistently lost out on Government investment, which has had a huge impact on our success. GDP growth in the east midlands over 20 years has been below the UK average. Productivity has remained below the UK average over the same period; indeed, it has been in relative decline. Doing something to turn that around and make our region more productive is essential, yet the east midlands receives the lowest public expenditure on economic affairs, on services per head, and on transport in total and per head.
Transport spend in our region declined to just 58% of the UK average in 2019-20. If it was funded at the UK average, we would have £1 billion per year to invest in improving transport networks. That really matters, because it is about investing in the future and making us a more productive region. No single issue is more important in transport investment than building the HS2 eastern leg in full, as the Government have repeatedly promised. That will benefit millions of people in our communities—even those who never set foot on a high-speed train. It will create thousands of apprenticeships for young people and skilled jobs for talented employees, and will regenerate our area, particularly around Toton. It will act as the catalyst for private sector investment to turn our great ambitions for our regions into a reality.
Of course, there are transport benefits, too. It is absolutely essential that we get more people and freight travelling on our railways if we are to hit our zero carbon target. It is essential that we improve our connectivity east to west—east midlands to west midlands—and to the north: to Sheffield, Chesterfield, Leeds and further north still. We must give people a real alternative to travelling by car.
The Government have repeatedly promised investment in the east midlands transport networks and have repeatedly broken those promises. I feel like a broken record on this issue, but I have been campaigning for the electrification of the midland main line for more than a decade. It was paused, then delayed, then scrapped, in direct contravention of promises made to my and all hon. Members’ constituents in 2015, 2017 and 2019. Now I fear that exactly the same thing will happen with HS2. Well, we cannot stand for that to happen, and I hope the Minister will take the message back to the Government that the east midlands deserves better than to be left at the bottom of the pile. He must listen, and the Government must change their view.