Chris McDonald

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Hobhouse. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East (Kate Osborne) for securing this debate. She follows in the proud footsteps of her predecessor Ellen Wilkinson, who was the MP for both Jarrow and Middlesbrough. As we have heard, there is an incredible history of the Jarrow march. For anyone interested, I can strongly recommend Ellen Wilkinson’s book, “The Town that was Murdered”. My own copy is at home on my bookshelf, so I have borrowed the House of Commons Library’s copy. I will be returning it later today, so Members may wish to take it out and study more about the social conditions in Jarrow at the time. As we have heard, in October 1936, around 200 unemployed men set out from Jarrow and walked almost 300 miles to London asking for the opportunity to work. They carried with them the hopes of a community and a petition signed by 12,000 of their neighbours, but they were ignored by the Government of the day. Those men and their community will not be ignored by history, nor by this Government. The story of the Jarrow crusade cannot be separated from the story of British industry and shipbuilding. Today, we recognise the UK’s civil maritime sector as it should have been recognised then, as a strategic national asset underpinning prosperity, resilience and security. Shipbuilding ended in Jarrow, but the wider Tyneside retains ship repair capability at Hebburn—a yard recently acquired by Balaena Tyne during my tenure as the shipbuilding Minister. I am pleased to offer reassurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East that as Minister for Investment, I am concerned with ensuring that we continue to attract investment into British shipyards. I am working with ministerial colleagues to maximise the opportunity of Government procurement, including opportunities for Hebburn. Those areas where modern shipbuilding, ship repair and marine fabrication continue benefit from highly skilled, well-paid industrial jobs, and they are often areas of the country that are otherwise lacking in alternatives. That contributes to the growth in every postcode scheme that the Prime Minister has committed to across the whole of our United Kingdom. When I was the shipbuilding Minister, I was pleased to visit Harland & Wolff in Belfast and learn from the managing director. When I asked him, “What is your greatest concern?” he said, “The lack of space,” which is quite remarkable at Harland & Wolff. It shows the strength of British shipbuilding and the opportunity for new orders. The pride in skill that we saw in Jarrow and that I have seen in British shipyards was demonstrated during the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders dispute of 1971 to 1972. Faced with liquidation and threatened job losses, shop stewards representing 8,000 workers staged a disciplined work-in: they kept the yards operating and continued to build ships under contract. The campaign helped to secure Government investment and preserve shipbuilding employment on the upper Clyde. A firm tradition of shipbuilding continues today. The sector supports more than 38,000 skilled jobs across the country. The Government are expanding the role of the National Shipbuilding Office to oversee civil shipbuilding decisions and to use procurement more strategically to give British yards and supply chains a clearer pipeline. The forthcoming shipbuilding and maritime technology action plan will seek to align procurement, innovation and industrial capability, to improve pipeline visibility, to accelerate technology adoption, and to strengthen UK supply chains across defence and civil maritime markets. The Government are investing £440 million in UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions research and development between 2026 and 2030: the largest Government investment yet in the UK commercial maritime sector, including £150 million for zero emission infrastructure and vessels, and £120 million for clean maritime demonstration projects. The tragedy at Jarrow—for it was a tragedy—was that the shipbuilding industry and the community that depended on it were left at the mercy of the market, not to improve efficiency or productivity but to effect consolidation that would raise prices. For shipbuilding, a project-based industry with high fixed costs and high economies of scale, that was a disaster. The community in Jarrow understood the need for industrial transition; they had already transitioned from mining to shipbuilding. They were asking for a transition from shipbuilding to steel. The Government of 1936 took a free market approach; this Government take a different approach: supporting a transition. Alongside our plans for shipbuilding we are reindustrialising the UK, building on our industrial strategy. Reindustrialisation is creating more, better, well-paid jobs in manufacturing and industry, including in those sectors critical to the UK’s resilience. It is bringing back jobs, pride and decency to the places that deindustrialisation most badly affected. But saying what we will do is not enough; we also know how we will address the situation. The jobs plans that we have set out will ensure that workers have the opportunity to develop the skills they need for the jobs in growing areas, and there are opportunities across the whole country. We have published job plans for digital and technologies, clean energy, life sciences, financial services, construction, and professional and business services. They set out practical actions to tackle workforce and skills challenges. The jobs plans for professional and business services and for construction were published on Monday and will support 22,500 new under-25 apprenticeships a year in businesses such as accountancy, legal services and consultancy. That comes alongside 40,000 construction placements annually, as part of a previously announced construction industry ambition to create 100,000 jobs a year. Over the next year, the Government will further cut industrial energy costs, roll out further jobs plans in partnership with employers, see our new apprenticeship units and technical excellence colleges train people for growing industries, and strip back unnecessary administrative costs to businesses. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bromley and Biggin Hill (Peter Fortune), was generous in his remarks, particularly those relating to the Prime Minister, and in his criticism of Stanley Baldwin, but it has been nearly a century so I do not think he is going to get any comeback from that. He also expressed his concern about deindustrialisation in the UK, so I remind him that under the previous Government we lost around 50% of our automotive output, 30% of our chemicals output, 50% of our steel output, and around 30% of our ceramics output. This Government have made efforts to support those industries, to reinvest and to reindustrialise. Last year, as Industry Minister, I announced a £350 million chemicals resilience fund, a ceramics support scheme, £2.5 billion of support for the steel industry through the steel strategy, the critical minerals strategy, and of course the nationalisation of British Steel. This Government remain committed to supporting the growth of and investment in our industry. The Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) mentioned the issues affecting young people and their employment. That was also a great concern for those who marched in Jarrow. The social conditions in Jarrow were quite appalling and were the sort of social conditions that can be found today in parts of the country where there are high levels of unemployment. Unemployment and poverty also result in cramped and squalid housing conditions, such as those found in Jarrow at the time. There were high levels of ill health among young people, particularly tuberculosis, and there was a shortage of food, as was noted at the time by the very low consumption of milk by children in the local area. This was compounded by the inability of the local council to raise local taxes sufficiently high enough to provide relief for local people—a product of the inequality of land values in places like Jarrow compared with other parts of the country. In fact, Ellen Wilkinson, in her book, makes a direct comparison with the property taxes that were able to be raised in Westminster, a comparison that my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Brash) made in his own area, so the problem persists until this day. What the town council in Jarrow did do with the resources that it had available was always put education first because it knew, as we know, the success of our country and industry depends on the next generation of people who will build, design and operate the industries of the future. I know my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow and Gateshead East has made a particular point during this anniversary of working to include young people in the commemorations of the Jarrow Crusade. It is vital that our young people have the opportunity to understand the histories and values of their forebears. I do hope that Elise and Imogen had a very memorable meeting with the Prime Minister at Downing Street. It is also important that we support our young people to access work opportunities, which they were asking for, but were rejected, in 1936. With around 1 million young people not in education, employment and training, this Government will not leave an entire generation of young people behind. Our measures are helping more young people take their first step into work. Since announcing an additional £2.5 billion to create up to 500,000 opportunities to earn and learn by 2029, we have begun rolling out youth guarantees across Great Britain. The youth guarantee gateway is now available in jobcentres. We are expanding youth hubs. We have launched the £3,000 youth jobs grant and are rolling out the jobs guarantee. Youth hubs are a crucial part of our youth guarantee. They bring together the employment skills and wider support that young people need to move into work, training or education. By expanding the network to over 360 locations across the country, more young people will be able to access personalised and wraparound support in their local community.