Ben Houchen is the Mayor of the Tees Valley.
As the primary Mayor of the Tees Valley, I’ve spent the final 5 years setting up my plan to carry new jobs and funding to the area. Nobody has been extra supportive of that mission than Rishi Sunak, who has properly and actually put our area on the map. Whether or not it’s the creation of Teesside Freeport or the primary ever Treasury campus exterior London in Darlington, he has championed this space. As chief and Prime Minister, I belief him to go even additional.
As a rustic, we face challenges on quite a lot of fronts. The primary precedence of our new Prime Minister should be to sort out inflation; to fail to take action would make individuals poorer and create distress for hundreds of thousands.
Folks throughout the Tees Valley are frightened about price of residing pressures, be it power payments, gas prices or meals costs. We owe it to hardworking households to supply them reassurance and peace of thoughts that we are going to step in to assist the place it’s wanted. Sunak has performed precisely that. As Chancellor, he put in place help price as much as £1,200 for essentially the most susceptible households. He has outlined plans to chop VAT from power payments and he’s clear that he’ll go additional after we understand how rather more payments shall be rising by.
To be clear, the proposals we’ve got seen from Liz Truss don’t search to do something for hardworking households and pensioners. The 2019 Normal Election will without end go down in historical past because the election during which we Conservatives shattered the ‘Purple Wall’. But when we predict we’ll maintain on to all of these seats if we don’t search to assist individuals by these powerful instances, we’re woefully mistaken. We’ll be punished on the poll field.
Rishi’s plan will assist individuals, sort out inflation and develop the economic system. He has already been clear that he’ll reduce taxes when the time is true to take action. However, he can even make it possible for our nice area – whether or not it’s Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland or Stockton-on-Tees – is ready to take advantage of the good alternatives that await.
Let’s not neglect that Rishi backed and believed in Brexit. He has already made a great begin – from freeports, to monetary providers reform. However there’s extra to do; Rishi will reform or rip up all the 2,4000 retained EU legal guidelines which have been carried over.
After all, Rishi was additionally chargeable for the levelling up fund that has benefited communities throughout the North East. He believes that everybody – wherever and whoever they could be – ought to have entry to the identical alternatives. There isn’t any higher demonstration of that than his resolution to carry the Treasury campus to Darlington.
That is an agenda that he won’t renege on; the identical can’t be mentioned of his opponent who simply final week prompt that nurses, lecturers and law enforcement officials needs to be paid lower than their equivalents in London. I’m glad that these plans won’t be going forward, however the electoral fallout for the Conservatives had we been in the midst of an election marketing campaign would have been nothing in need of apocalyptic.
A lot has been achieved for the North East in recent times. Sunak will construct on that and make it possible for our priorities are delivered and our voices are heard. .
