Adam Thompson

I thank my right hon. Friend for making that point of order. I was just talking about being the last in a long line of Government MPs. In 2024, the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), launched the Conservatives’ 2024 election campaign in Ilkeston, where he took some planted questions from local Conservative councillors dressed in hi-vis jackets—that definitely made them look like ordinary members of the public—and the current Prime Minister kicked off his August listening tour in Ilkeston as well. As per the accounts of one Peter Thorne—one of my fantastic former local members, sadly now passed—even Clement Attlee once stood on a soapbox in Long Eaton market place. Indeed, many Labour party and Conservative party leaders have done so over the intervening years. Has Erewash’s status as a perennial key marginal done it any great service? Sure. Long Eaton was in the first round of levelling-up funding under the previous Government, but Ilkeston got rejected in the second round. The particular formulation of my constituency and its demographics mean that it has never been described as part of the “red wall”, but parts of it—especially Ilkeston—can really be considered as such. Ironmaking at Stanton—one of the smaller parts of my constituency—started at the dawn of the industrial revolution, and it carried on for more than 200 years, but sadly it did not survive beyond 20 years after it was privatised. A deep point of pain for my constituents is what happened in Stanton after it was privatised. I have spoken plenty of times in this place about the struggles that our town centres face. The high street banks are abandoning Ilkeston and Long Eaton, without any regard for the one in five people in my community— often elderly and disabled folks—who still do not use online banking and probably never will. Historic industries have left our towns. That is all as true in the midlands as it is on the coasts of Lincolnshire, Yorkshire, Essex, Kent, Dorset and Cornwall—wherever. It is just as true inland as on the coast. I accept that Erewash is almost as far from the sea as it is possible to be in England—I understand that the furthest point away is about 7 miles away from my house, so that is pretty close—but it is not like we do not also have the flooding issues that face our coastal communities. My constituency is bounded to the east by the River Erewash and to the south by the Trent, which is fed by the Derwent. That means that the entirety of my constituency—particularly Long Eaton—is always at flood risk, as I am reminded every year when I struggle to get house insurance. Even before I was a Member of Parliament, when Storm Babet came in 2023, I spoke to people across the constituency in Ilkeston, Long Eaton and especially Sandiacre, where many residents found their homes under water, facing exactly the same issues as their counterparts in coastal constituencies. A few months ago, I was joined by my hon. Friend the Minister of State for Water and Flooding at the new Witches Oak addition to the Severn Trent site at Church Wilne, which is being specifically developed to deal with particularly dirty water sourced from the River Trent. The River Erewash itself, formerly flanked on both sides by heavy industry, as it flowed through Mansfield, Ashfield, Amber Valley, Ilkeston and Long Eaton, was once said to be the most polluted river in Britain. I was particularly bemused by attitudes to regional development and the distribution of economic growth during the Makerfield by-election. Right-wing journalists, perhaps for the first time ever, were looking at ward-level economic data to try to say that the incredible growth they have had in Greater Manchester was all just bundled up in shiny towers in the city centre, but that is not what the evidence showed. That suggests that columnists at The Spectator and The Daily Telegraph were perhaps not engaging with that very real and serious debate in good faith. While the pinnacle of growth in Greater Manchester may not yet have reached to the very edges of the metropolitan area, it has spread outwards into Salford, Trafford and Stockport. What does that tell us about economic growth in the country, in coastal communities and in my community? It is quite simple, really. Some have observed that maps of economic growth across the country just show us where trams go, where local train stations serve or where bus routes go. That should not be a surprise to us in the east midlands or in our coastal regions; Nottingham has a great tram network, and the city has a more productive economy than the country as a whole. I know that they have done incredible work in Stockport on densification, meaning that there are more people in the same space living together, shopping and socialising, and therefore doing a greater amount of economic activity. I will return to my central thesis. We have grievous economic inequalities around the country, be it in coastal communities or in towns. As we all know, regional distribution is exceptionally poor. I met an education YouTuber—a woman called UnJaded Jade—at Labour party conference this year, and she drew my attention to some of the statistics. They are the things that we know in abstract and by instinct, but it is shocking when they are laid out in front of us. More than half of all graduates from the top universities are still from London and the greater south-east. Young people in the midlands are the least likely to go to university to study a creative subject. When I see communities in England that are really moving, getting along and growing, they are down here in London and in Manchester, where there is a clear, significant space for creative industries, which need graduates in creative subjects to fuel them. The truth is that that is a world away from our economy in the midlands, where there is very little opportunity for jobs in the creative industries and young people are thoroughly discouraged from pursuing one, despite their growing and innovative part in the British economy overall.