oday, Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will visit Stockport in Greater Manchester where she will reconfirm Labour’s commitment to regional growth with plans to create jobs of the future for young people across the North West.
Last month, Labour pledged to put the right powers in the right places so that local leaders in every town and city in England can use Local Growth Plans to grow their economies and take advantage of their potential, using new powers over transport, skills, housing, planning and employment support. This included the promise to roll out new Local Growth Plans to towns and cities take advantage of their economic potential and foster clusters of well-paid jobs.
Today , Labour is setting out more detail about how it will make good on this pledge by rolling out a new British Industrial Strategy, which will include ten-year research and development budgets for key institutions. This will give businesses the stability that they need to support wealth creation, growth and the jobs we need to power the future in Britain.
By linking Labour’s plans with the new British Industrial Strategy, businesses supported could include:
- The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre North West in Lancashire which provides works closely with the North West’s defence sector. On current plans the Centre will create 6,000 jobs by 2035, supporting 22,000 jobs at BAE Systems across the North West, and 2,000 jobs in the National Cyber Force.
- The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Warrington which supports around 6,000 jobs in the North West’s nuclear energy cluster.
- The Manufacturing Technology Centre in Liverpool.
Labour has also announced plans to ensure local young people can access opportunities in these high-tech industries of the future, with pledges to:
- Support nearly 3,000 more young people into good education, employment or training opportunities each year by creating new training opportunities and driving high standards in schools
- Deliver 164,000 more hours of professional careers advice for young people in North West
- A new “youth guarantee” of training, an apprenticeship or help to find work for all young people, supporting the 96,000 young people in the North West who aren’t in education, employment or training
- Create a new generation of Technical Excellence Colleges to bring new training opportunities including in-demand higher technical skills to colleges in the region
On the visit to Stockport in Greater Manchester, Reeves met with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region and Labour’s MP candidate Navendu Misra, where they visited the Weir Mill regeneration project being developed by Capital and Centric. Reeves met with local apprenticeships employed by the scheme and had a walkabout around the new transport interchange which sits at the heart of the town’s £1 billion regeneration programme.
Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves MP, said:
“The choice at this election is 5 more years of chaos and decline under the Tories, or stability, opportunity and wealth creation with Labour.
“After the Tories’ failure to deliver high quality jobs and economic growth for Britain, Labour’s plan will create the stability that is needed for us to lead the world in the industries of the future – creating the kinds of jobs we want for our kids, in the places we live.
“Labour will relight the fire of the North West and drive growth in every corner of the country. You can believe that Labour is committed to tackling regional inequality in Britain because it is in our DNA. For over a century it has been a mission of every Labour Prime Minister to rebuild our economy hand in hand with local leaders so no one is left behind.”
Andy Burnham, Labour’s Mayor of Greater Manchester said:
“Greater Manchester is growing faster than the UK economy and is a Labour growth success story. It provides proof that Rachael’s drive for growth is achievable. With more devolution across all of England, a Labour Government will get the whole country growing faster.”