Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves paid a visit to Stockport where she reconfirmed Labour’s commitment to regional growth with plans to create jobs of the future for young people across the North West.
Last month, Labour pledged to put the right powers in the right places so that local leaders in every town and city in England can use Local Growth Plans to grow their economies and take advantage of their potential, using new powers over transport, skills, housing, planning and employment support. This included the promise to roll out new Local Growth Plans to towns and cities take advantage of their economic potential and foster clusters of well-paid jobs.
Labour is setting out more detail about how it will make good on this pledge by rolling out a new British Industrial Strategy, which will include ten-year research and development budgets for key institutions.
This will give businesses the stability that they need to support wealth creation, growth and the jobs we need to power the future in Britain.
By linking Labour’s plans with the new British Industrial Strategy, businesses supported could include The Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre North West in Lancashire which provides works closely with the North West’s defence sector.
On current plans the Centre will create 6,000 jobs by 2035, supporting 22,000 jobs at BAE Systems across the North West, and 2,000 jobs in the National Cyber Force.
The Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Warrington which supports around 6,000 jobs in the North West’s nuclear energy cluster and The Manufacturing Technology Centre in Liverpool.
On the visit to Stockport Reeves met with Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, Steve Rotheram, Mayor of the Liverpool City Region and Labour’s MP candidate Navendu Misra, where they visited the Weir Mill regeneration project being developed by Capital and Centric. Reeves met with local apprenticeships employed by the scheme and had a walkabout around the new transport interchange which sits at the heart of the town’s £1 billion regeneration programme.
