15:50 Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)

North West Durham, like most of the post-industrial north, has undergone an economic and social revolution in the past 13 years, with the support of the last Government. Educational outcomes, which are very close to my heart, have been transformed. We now have some of the best schools in the country, with the best performances. Sure Start centres are ensuring that our children have the best beginning to their academic lives, and our young people now go on to further and higher education in much great numbers than was possible before. There are more good, sustainable jobs; people are better off; health and housing services are much improved; our local economy has been given the time and support needed to adapt and diversify; and the food and renewable energy industries and tourism now thrive. The biggest employers in North West Durham, outside the public sector, are International Cuisine and Derwent Valley Foods—a sign of the diversification of our industries and jobs. Renewable energy and green industries were being established in the north-east region with the help of the last Government, and I sincerely hope that they will continue to be supported by the new Government.

With the recession and the return to power of a Conservative Government, backed by their Liberal Democrat friends, my people fear a return to the desperate situations of the 1980s and early 1990s. They fear for their jobs, their homes and their children’s future. The public sector in my constituency employs 6,100 people, and I am especially worried about them, particularly given the Prime Minister’s warnings about what he has in mind for the north-east. In order to grow, the north-east needs a work force who are highly skilled and possess diverse, adaptable and technological knowledge. There are real opportunities for us to seize, in tourism and the renewable energy industry, that have the potential to bring jobs and growth to the north-east, but to do this the Government need to show that they have faith and confidence in the region—the kind of faith and confidence that employers such as Nissan have shown and which the previous Government had in my region.

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16:58 Alan Campbell (Labour)

One NorthEast has been a leading player in the New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth and along the north bank of the Tyne, in low-carbon vehicles at Nissan on Wearside, and in the Printable Electronics Technology Centre in County Durham. Every one of those developments had at their heart a level of operation between private investors and the public sector. There may be support for small businesses for local authorities to pick up, but I am concerned that without such strategic action, the big national decisions will go elsewhere. My fear is that that will be bad news for the north-east.

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18:07 Chi Onwurah (Labour)

First, population and economic growth across the world are stoking demand. Secondly, the global financial crisis has made it extremely important that we grow other sectors. Thirdly, climate change is making many of our ways of building and manufacturing things inefficient. Fourthly, the population of the western world is ageing. That is a good thing; it is good that people are living longer, but it requires different markets and goods— for example, more automotive goods. Finally, globalisation means global markets and global industries.

On the Opposition Benches, we believe that we need to grow our way out of the global financial crisis. The challenges I have enumerated give us many opportunities for growth in the UK, in the north-east in particular; for example, in renewable energies such as wind power, which is why the previous Government invested in NaREC—the New and Renewable Energy Centre—a world-class testing facility for wind turbines in Blyth. Sustainable transport provides another opportunity for growth, which is why the previous Government invested in it by giving grants to enable Nissan to build the electric car facility in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson).

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