My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We want rising standards and support for higher standards. It is the only way to cut carbon emissions, support our environment and protect our workers’ rights.
There is nothing in the Queen’s Speech to address the serious challenges facing our towns and the unfair deal they are getting. We see that particularly in public transport. Our bus services have been cut and our trains, particularly across our northern towns, are still rubbish. We are not getting our fair share of investment. Billions of pounds is locked up in transport investment in our cities, while in Normanton we still have only one train an hour to Leeds, even though it is just half an hour away, and we still do not have disabled access at busy stations such as Pontefract Monkhill and Knottingley. We had the awful situation of a constituent in a wheelchair having to crawl over a bridge because the Government,
despite our requests, refused to fund the basic disabled access. Moreover, we still have rubbish Pacer trains and no proper plan for transport in our towns.
That compounds the wider problem of the growing gap between our cities and towns. Our towns, which have strong communities, are great places to live and are proud of their history, are getting an unfair deal, and Tory austerity has hit them harder. As public services budgets have been cut, many public services providers have pulled services out of towns altogether. We have lost libraries, sports centres, magistrates courts, police stations, fire stations, hospital services, maternity units, swimming pools, Sure Starts, jobcentres and council services, as so many of these services have shrunk back into the cities. We are supposed to travel to the nearest cities instead, but the public transport is not there, because bus services have been cut and the trains are inadequate.
Private sector investment, always pursuing economies of scale, is pulling in the same direction. Banks, ATMs and post offices in our towns have closed. The big cities and shopping centres may still be able to compete with Amazon, but our smaller town centres are struggling with business rates and parking charges, and having their heart taken out. The numbers of new jobs are growing twice as fast in the cities as in the towns, and as our town centres have shown, foreign direct investment in the cities is accelerating and our towns are not getting a fair deal. The Government’s stronger towns fund is still a top-down approach and only reaches a certain number of towns. Areas still have to bid and most towns still lose out.
We need a proper industrial strategy for our towns, which is why the Labour party’s approach of more investment in our towns, listening to towns and putting power back in towns is so important. We need towns to be at the top of the list, not the bottom, so that they can get our fair share of funding. We need public services back in our towns with a proper guarantee. We need a fair deal for Britain’s towns.
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