West Midlands, (Samaj Weekly)- Labour’s Shadow Mayor for the West Midlands Liam Byrne has written to Chancellor Rishi Sunak calling for a £7.8 billion Budget ‘fair share funding’ boost for the West Midlands economy to tackle the region’s jobs crisis.
“Covid has hit the West Midlands harder than any other economy” Byrne said, “What we now need is a Budget for jobs, jobs, jobs – and that means an end to the great short-changing of the West Midlands.
“If we had our fair share of the country’s national investment, we could take our region from lock down to lift off”, Byrne told the Chancellor, “leading Britain’s green industrial revolution, creating the best life chances for our young people, and delivering safer, stronger communities”.
The call comes as Byrne published a new analysis commissioned from the House of Commons Library which revealed that the West Midlands would gain nearly £8 billion by 2025/2026 if capital funding was allocated according to population.
Yesterday, new figures showed that five Birmingham constituencies are now in Britain’s claimant count top ten, while the young peoples’ claimant count has almost doubled in a year.
“The reality is that life in the West Midlands is now shorter, poorer and less safe than it was four years ago – and that was before the Covid crisis knocked us sideways.
“We cannot go on like this. It’s time ministers genuinely delivered on levelling up the country – so we can level up our region.
“Last year, the government’s Getting Building Fund delivered the grand total of 50p per week, per person in the West Midlands. Now we see the unemployment claimant count is simply spiralling.
“What’s needed instead is our fair share of the national investment pot. That would deliver us an extra £7.8 billion over the next five years. That’s enough to create 92,000 new jobs and help make the West Midlands the green workshop of the world.
“The first £3.5 billion should be used as a capital kick start to build 10,000 new homes on brownfields sites, retrofit 100,000 to meet today’s environmental standards, and install solar panels on 200,000 houses.
Byrne also wants the government’s £290 billion annual procurement budget to be spent on the goods and services produced in the West Midlands. “If we buy it, in the West Midlands we can make it” he said.
Byrne told the Chancellor that the provision of a factory to make batteries for electric cars – the gigafactory – was critical if the region is to retain and grow as a manufacturing centre for green transport. “The government must outline the process for accessing funds and bring into production the site already earmarked in Coventry,” he said.
Meanwhile West Midlands businesses need help to bounce back from the Covid crisis. Byrne suggests extending the furlough scheme in a targeted way, extending business interruption and bounce back loans, enabling interest free deferral of VAT, and extending targeted business rate relief.
West Midlands families will need more support advises Liam Byrne with a pay rise for front line workers, preventing a projected average 5% increase in council tax, extending the £500 self-isolation payment to more people, continuing with the £20 temporary uplift in universal credit, providing a extending the eviction ban and establishing a flexible furlough scheme for working parents, and those shielding who are unable to work from home.
