Contributions
1,336 recent contributions in Hansard
HANSARDFreeports: Economic ImpactWe will certainly look at that. Of course there is intense competition for the freeports, which will create huge benefits not only for the local area, but for all of Scotland.29 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)There is a continuity between those two things. We might get rid of something and replace it with something that is in the same space. The subsections just give a clear framework…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)Let me start by addressing some of the wider and important points made by the hon. Member for South Shields and then move on to the narrower issue of the amendment. The hon.…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)I gave an example earlier of the R&D mission, which is specific to this spending review. It says we will increase R&D spending by a third over the spending review period. That…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)The purpose of giving the Government the ability to discontinue a mission is to allow for policy to adapt to changing circumstances, not to avoid scrutiny. If our purpose was to…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)I have a mix of bad and good news for the hon. Member for Nottingham North. The bad news is that we will resist the amendment. The good news is that he can, even within this…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)Move formally.28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)I hope that I can make the hon. Member for Nottingham North happy—that is my main goal in life—but I do have to point out that there is a tension at the heart of the amendment. On…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)The PAC reported on the levelling-up fund. Are there any particular levelling-up fund bids that we are funding that the hon. Gentleman would like to say represent bad value for…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)There is some confusion on the Opposition Benches.28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)We are the Government who are creating—literally, through the Bill and the clauses we are debating this very morning—a mission to close the gap in healthy life expectancy between…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)I agree completely with the spirit behind the amendment, and we are actively working to bring about what Opposition Members want. However, we do not think the amendment works, and…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)indicated dissent .28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)We are going to have to make progress this morning, I am afraid, because we have a lot of clauses to get through. The Opposition amendments are well intentioned—given who the…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)That is an extremely good and useful question. Everyone remembers the backstory about why we created the OBR. As Chancellor, Gordon Brown changed the assumption about how fast the…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)The hon. Lady raises a really important point. The last Labour Government had a statutory child poverty target; that target was literally locked into legislation. Was it hit? It…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Fifth sitting)It is a pleasure to begin line-by-line scrutiny of this important Bill with you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. We have a very distinguished Committee and I look forward to some…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)The Bill already provides for significant parliamentary oversight. This is the first time in any regional policy that the Government have set clear long-term missions in this way.…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)The clause provides the ability to amend the methodology and metrics that support the levelling-up missions, or to amend the target dates for delivery in between the normal…28 Jun 2022HANSARDLevelling-up and Regeneration Bill (Sixth sitting)A point to bring out is that it is not merely about the resources of Government to pull together the information; a lot of the ONS data that Opposition Members want to see will…28 Jun 2022