I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate and endorse everything said by my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) about schools and education. On those issues, he is always bang-on. Since the Budget, I have had positive conversations in particular on the transition between BTECs and T-levels that I hope will be reflected by the Secretary of State’s comments tomorrow. There are many opportunities there.
I welcome the many positive announcements in the Budget, which has been largely well received by residents. It set a good and clear direction to help take the country forward post covid. In particular, I welcome the business support measures, business rates cuts, changes to alcohol duties, the freeze on fuel duty and other measures that will impact on the cost of living and support businesses to grow and innovate. At some stage, we will have to reform business rates fundamentally. The measures announced in the Budget are positive and will support businesses—high street businesses in particular—but business rates are not fit for purpose. I had positive conversations last week on that with the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and I understand that a review is to take place. I look forward to seeing that in due course.
I also welcome the personal support for the lowest paid, with a £1,000 pay rise and a tax cut for working people on universal credit. The average wage packet in Mansfield is way below the national average, and thousands of people will benefit from those changes. I am grateful for those announcements.
I welcome the significant capital commitments on transport and infrastructure, although I am slightly concerned that it seems that only areas with combined authorities and devolution deals are eligible to get the best of that support. We have some positive announcements for Nottinghamshire: Mansfield will submit a bid for the next round of the levelling-up fund, as will Nottinghamshire County Council, and we look forward to positive news, hopefully. There was a huge multibillion pound investment in devolved mayoral authorities. However, the east midlands does not have that, so the area that historically has had the lowest level of investment misses out.
Do not get me wrong—I am not moaning. I think that passing powers down to local level and giving capital funds to accountable local leaders is a good thing. If I do have a moan, it is that we do not have one, and we want one in Nottinghamshire. We have a plan for that, and I want the Government to get on and give Nottinghamshire a county deal so that we too can benefit from such support. I remind Ministers of the fantastic levelling-up package that the east midlands offers with our freeport, our development corporation and our huge plans around Toton supported by the integrated rail plan. Altogether, that is more than 100,000 jobs and £5 billion in gross value added. The plan exists
and is all on track, and a devolution deal for Nottingham—which, by the way, is a bigger geography than the Tees Valley Combined Authority or the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority—would give us huge economic clout. It is a chance to invest for us, to get on a par with other parts of the country. We want a deal, we have the unanimous support of local leaders who have all made significant resource commitments for that, and we have a plan to deliver better public services. I will keep banging on about it until we get one—I am sure that Ministers will indulge me.
I turn to public services, which are the theme of the debate. There was positive news in the Budget, with £4.8 billion in grant funding to local authorities both very welcome and perhaps more generous than many had expected. That will help us to tackle things such as the cost of the minimum wage rise for care staff, which runs into the millions. I also welcome the commitment to new family hubs and the Start4Life programme that will benefit children and families who really need it.
I said in an intervention that certainty for the supporting families programme and investment in the development of early years staff is fantastic. In particular, early years staff development has been a problem for a long time, so the more we can do to support that sector, the better. We must continue the commitment to proactive and preventive services. In truth, children’s services, not social care, are causing every upper tier council leader in the land the biggest headache on budget setting. There are many challenges in social care, but, if I had loads of money, I could not spend it because I cannot recruit the staff. The challenges there are deep and long term.