North will get a fair deal at last

SHADOW MINISTER SETS OUT PLAN TO CLOSE THE FUNDING GAP

LABOUR Shadow Business Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey says her personal experience of industrial decline and unemployment in the North of England has made her determined to ensure the North gets a fair deal at last.

She will set out plans to end the massive funding gap between London and the rest of the country when she speaks to Labour’s annual conference on Tuesday.

A future Labour Government would ensure the North received investment to pay for rail schemes and more, she said. And she told The Journal that her experience growing up in a working-class family near Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, meant she was determined to change Britain.

She said: “We have got the will to do it. For myself, coming from a Northern industrial background, my family have experienced the horrific effects of industrial decline in the 1980s. Coming from an area that was once renowned for its industry to suddenly worrying whether you can actually keep up with your mortgage payments, and having to move away from that area because there simply weren’t any jobs there for my father to take. We had to uproot the family and go off in search of work.”

Labour would invest in the North in order to give businesses “the tools they need” to succeed, she said. “We are the most regionally unequal country in Europe in terms of how productive regions are and the investment we receive. London and the South East receive vastly more in terms of investment per head than parts of the North.”

This had a direct impact on people’s lives, she said. “When it comes to insecure and low-paid work, if you drill down into the statistics you see that a lot of these insecure and low-paid workers tend to be in specific regions. And we need an industrial strategy and an economic model that makes sure all of our regions can maximise their potential.”

Labour is working on an industrial strategy which sets out how a future government will support each region, including how local transport will be improved and what sort of training will be provided to the workforce. Governments have to have a plan as to what they want to see in each region, what transport infrastructure they want to see in each region, what skills they want to specialise in, in each region.