'I am excited by plans to reignite our economy '

MP for Ellesmere Port

THE longer I am involved in politics, the more convinced I have become that power bases have to be spread across the UK if ever we are succeed in making our people more prosperous.

For far too long we have lived in a London-based system that benefits large parts of the capital city, the Home Counties and the South East to the detriment of huge swathes of the rest of the country including Cheshire.

I have no doubt that we punch above our weight in our part of the North West but we could do so much better still if we had the power to make important infrastructure decisions on a region by region basis.

That is why I welcome wholeheartedly Labour’s plan for prosperity featuring bold and exciting proposals to spread power, wealth and opportunity to all parts of the UK.

Our report A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and Rebuilding our Economy Report of the Commission on the UK’s Future, painstakingly prepared by former Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, highlights that Britain is one of the most centralised states in Europe and that power has been used in the past decade to create a low growth economy that uses talents of too few people in too few places. As a result, it is no wonder that people have lost faith in politics and its ability to improve their lives.

We cannot go on in this way – we are on a trajectory to go nowhere – so that is why the Labour leadership is convinced that we need radical change.

For my part, I am excited by plans to reignite our economy by empowering our towns, cities regions and nations to work together on local growth plans with new powers over skills, transport, planning and culture, all helping to drive growth by developing hundreds of new clusters of economic activity.

The aim would be to create formal partnerships between central government and devolved authorities and replace the unelected House of Lords with a with a new, smaller, cheaper and democratically elected second chamber to represent the regions and nations of the UK. It has always to my mind been an anomaly, in what is supposed to be a democratic country, that we have unelected people in the House of Lords as part of our legislative process. It is high time we moved to a more democratic model.

Details of how to build and implement this vision is now rightly a matter of public consultation but the clear intention is to make common cause with people in every part of the country who want to build this Fairer Greener Future. The reality of all the governmental hype about levelling-up is that bids for key projects in Ellesmere Port have been consistently rejected by this Whitehall-based government – all the more reason for regional decision-making as proposed by Labour to be enacted. Being required to bid competitively for time and cash limited pots of money which can often only be used on specific projects does not enable us to take control of our destiny locally which I would like us to be able to do more of.