Time and again, I have had conversations with my constituents who can see no visible government investment in our local towns. I led a debate in Parliament on the Green Book review, and I reiterate something I said in my speech: people in my area and beyond know that something is not right and has not been right for a very long time. They see no evidence of growth or improved infrastructure, and I am completely with them on this.
Local communities, particularly in the North, are suffering following 14 years of failure: failure to invest properly outside of London, and then – even when improvements are promised – failure to deliver. Total capital public spending per person in the North West in 2022/23 was £13,297 per year. In London, it was £14,842. Are my constituents worth fifteen hundred pounds less a year than people who live in London? If we limit opportunities to our capital, how can we expect people to stay local?
The Green Book is the guidance that the civil service uses to evaluate investment decisions. Of course it is important that there are some objective criteria for this. We do not want pork barrel politics. But there are longstanding criticisms that the Green Book and civil service emphasis on benefit to cost rations means outcomes are skewed towards London and the South East. The result is that government investment simply goes to the areas that are already the most developed.
There are a multitude of reasons why the scales have been tipped south regarding funding, but the Green Book is a significant factor in that.
As it stands, the processes are so complicated that an entire consultancy industry has formed around them. The guidance that it provides is incredibly confusing, and smaller local authorities – without as many resources – struggle to form business plans with the complexity that the Green Book asks for. This is another reason why areas like mine have missed out.
There was a 2020 review of the Green Book which was supposed to address this. It didn’t lead to any significant change of outcomes. Different government departments still have different appraisal mechanisms based on the Green Book. Many have not updated these after the 2020 amendments, which will not be helping either.
The Green Book also tends to focus on short term impacts over long term outcomes, via the application of a discount rate. This is another matter that the review needs to address. Labour’s manifest promised sustainable economic growth – reducing short termism in political decision making is exactly what we were elected for.
I’m glad that Cheshire and Warrington are becoming a devolved authority, but we have to make sure we’re able to use these new powers to their full potential. Rather than the current, overly complex Green Book process by which local authorities need to successfully put together a business case, we need it to be simpler and more driven by outcomes. Proper investment into local areas is imperative: for my constituents to have prospects comparable to those in larger cities, smaller local authorities should have just as much chance in bidding for funding as larger ones.
We should be enriching our communities, not expecting them to flourish in environments stuck in the past. The North West was still relying on Pacer trains – fashioned out of bus chassis – until far too recently, long past the lifespan for which they’d been made. And outside large cities like Manchester and Liverpool, investment into our transport and connectivity remains minimal. When you look at the number of people commuting to those cities daily from elsewhere in the region, you’d expect to see infrastructure to match.
A significant lack of infrastructure is something that holds back growth across my Congleton constituency. I want us to increase our supply of affordable housing for local young people and the key workers that we need. But we need the infrastructure to match. Along with my neighbouring Labour MPs, Andrew Cooper, Connor Naismith, and Tim Roca, I have lobbied the government for the change needed. Labour’s ten-year infrastructure plan is a major step towards that change, and I look forward to seeing our infrastructure evolve as a result. I’m really pleased that the Treasury has initiated a review of the Green Book, and I hope that it gives us the opportunity to balance our economies regionally.
The residents in my constituency know that we need better prospects for young people, and affordable homes for essential workers. They want to be able to travel without needing to factor in damage to their cars from decrepit roads, limited bus availability with ludicrously lengthy journey times, or unreliable railways. This Green Book review is just one step to help us eliminate the obstacles that keep our communities from becoming even more brilliant places to live.
To quote Alistair Darling: “it isn’t just about pots of money or building the odd rail or extending a road. It’s about quality of life. It’s about making places that people want to go and live in, where they feel confident, they can live there, their children can grow up there, there’s opportunities there, and they don’t have to go somewhere else to get on, as it were. None of this is beyond us. Most other countries do it, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t either.”.
Time to rewrite the Green Book that penalises some constituencies, particularly those in the North
