On Thursday 11th September, Chamber Group, Curia and UKAI heard from Bill Esterson, MP for Sefton Central, at the Get Britain Growing: North West Conference. Esterson’s pride at the North West’s successful development was immediately tacit: ‘We really are at the forefront of what is happening nationally’. But, the ubiquitous political caveat abides: in the North West, more can always be done – ‘there is a massive opportunity right now for the foreseeable future’.
Housing and energy development
With opportunity comes challenge, and Esterson moved swiftly on to the issue of housing quality and accessibility. He described the government’s new Warm Homes Plan as a ‘big step forward’; it aims to improve UK housing’s energy efficiency, reduce heating costs, and tackle fuel poverty. The other benefit of the plan will be job-creation: ‘it will create jobs in every community, it will create economic activity in every community’, a cog in the wheel of the UK’s ‘energy revolution’.
Clean energy jobs more generally, he insisted, will become the way to economically supercharging the country, and in particular, regions which have flailed financially during the Tories’ austerity such as the North West. Not only housing, but the retrofit agenda too (the government’s ambition to hit net zero carbon emissions by 2050) are ‘fantastic’ job-opening opportunities.
Esterson also celebrated the government’s apprenticeship agenda, because for the 15-year period of his time in Parliament, ‘skills has been the number one issue raised for me’ in terms of employment. The flexibility offered by Labour’s apprenticeship policy (supported by a historic £3 billion apprenticeship budget) is cause for ‘great hope’. Another aiding factor is the North West’s crucial role in nuclear; both essential to the climate change committee and to job investment.
Threat of Reform
Although Labour have come under recent scrutiny for their rhetorical and media attacks on their political rivals, Reform UK, Esterson does not shy away from invoking their menace to investment in clean energy and job creation: ‘whether it’s transport or whether it’s investment in energy, we’ve seen Reform politicians threatening those companies or that investment in people […] a very, very sinister threat. This cannot be allowed to stand. This is not how we do things in this country. It’s a threat to democracy as well’.
He cites the rise of populism more generally: ‘we can’t afford to sit around and let it happen’. But as well as pushing back against Reform, he insists, the government need to make their work clearer – to demonstrate the tangible differences their schemes and policies are making to people’s lives.
Economic Stability
Esterson considers three Labour policies the greatest indications of the UK’s newfound economic stability:
- The creation of the industrial strategy
- The success of the last offshore auction round
- The success of the private investment event last autumn
- The fact that we have (albeit relatively small-scale and early days), the fastest growth in the G7
The Government’s Next Steps
Esterson feels that ‘the problem with the government is communication’. People need to feel that they are ‘better off at the end’ of Labour’s term in government, a harbinger of Keir Starmer’s conference speech: ‘Because growth is the pound in your pocket, it is more money for trips, meals out, the little things that bring joy to all our lives’. Labour’s growth project, delineated both through government policy and here in Esterson’s speech, is about tangible, felt improvements – growth which manifests itself both in grandiose, country-wide developments, but also in the seemingly humble, mundane benefits felt in daily life.
Esterson insisted that people need to ‘feel that the NHS is better, they get better treatment and they and their families are healthier [and] to feel and believe the country is safer’. The media’s fixation with Farage and immigration is another challenge; the government need to change the narrative, ‘demonstrate some success’.
Ultimately, as with the other panel discussions shared at the North West Conference, development, growth and direct improvements in people’s lives were explored by Esterson through the areas of improved housing, skill development, and sustainable and equitable innovation.
