As I said last week it’s all about getting out and about to meet constituents and businesses over recess. I was pleased to go to the meeting of the County Durham Economic Partnership Board which is looking at how the UK Shared Prosperity Fund can be utilised in County Durham. I also took the opportunity for a trip to Northumbria University to see the work they are doing to support our businesses by supplying young people with outstanding training. Many of the businesses I visit do raise with me their concerns that there are skills gaps that we need to address.
Later the same day I had a brief meeting with the Federation of Small Businesses representative for the area where we talked on similar subjects. I then joined a call with the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to discuss the Growth Plan. I then had a number of discussions with people involved in the local semiconductor supply chain and took information from them to feed into Government.
During the week I was also able to visit some of our fantastic businesses on Aycliffe Business Park. I went to Primex Plastics to listen to how they are now and indeed how the future looks. Primex Plastics are in use on many cars and other vehicles. They are another of our many businesses on the estate that provide products that are seen every day, but you would never know they originated from our town. I also visited PWS, as I am sure you are aware they are a fantastic kitchen business and continue to grow and invest. It was a pleasure to meet and see both organisations and it means that I can feed back to ministers the challenges and opportunities companies in our constituency face.
The Sedgefield constituency wraps around Darlington and a number of the Darlington businesses are therefore in my constituency. One of these is right on the border between Peter Gibson and me and that is Cummins Darlington. The business literally straddles the constituency border between us. As a result, when the Chancellor visited last Thursday, both Peter Gibson and I were present to meet him. I had two roles on this visit. One being as the constituency MP but also as a Parliamentary Private Secretary (PPS) in the Treasury, providing support for the Chancellor.
One of the pleasures of being MP is you can get invitations to events. On Thursday evening, I had the honour of joining Roman showers at a dinner in aid of the soldiers’ charity ABF (Army Benevolent Fund). This was originally to be a celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and was changed to be a celebration of Her Majesty’s life. We had the pleasure of the Coldstream Guards providing music for us.
On Friday, I was able to visit Wear Referrals, a veterinary practise based at Bradbury, soon to be the subject of a TV programme, to see what they do. This practice provides highly technical veterinary services to support, what they refer to as, the primary care of your local High Street vet. These are extraordinarily skilled people and use specialist equipment to look after mainly dogs and cats when they have complex needs.
Over the weekend I travelled to Birmingham for the Conservative Party Conference. As part of the Conference, on Sunday afternoon it was great to talk about the fantastic work of the APPG for Left Behind Neighbourhoods and its engagement with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport on the Community Wealth Fund (CWF). I am supporting this campaign as it is putting more power and opportunities in the hands of communities.
Later in the day I attended the Northern Transport Reception and listened to the speech made by Rt. Hon. Anne-Marie Trevelyn MP, Secretary of State for Transport, who talked about the importance of accelerating transport infrastructure to deliver better connections for neighbourhoods. After these speeches, I called in at the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) stand and attended the NFU annual reception where we discussed the importance of food and farming in the Sedgefield constituency. I have met a number of our businesses here at the Conference, including Ineos and Hitachi. I anticipate seeing more over the next few days and I will update you next week.
At the time of writing this column I am waiting to listen to the Chancellor’s speech. This morning has seen plans dropped to scrap the 45p rate of income tax. The introduction of this tax cut dramatically distracted from all of the many other initiatives of the Growth Plan and the Chancellor decided to withdraw it. I have conflicting views in that I think that it was probably right to withdraw the tax cut, but I do not like to see ‘U’ turns in policy. It will be interesting to see how the Chancellor communicates his decision this afternoon. I believe the rest of the Growth Plan, which is 95% of what was stated, should be a great platform to initiate growth. I hope we can see confidence returning to markets and this becoming a reality over coming months and years.
As always, if you want to update me on anything, please get in touch at paul.howell.mp@parliament.uk or give us a call on 01325 790580
Paul Howell, MP for Sedgefield