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Building Britain's Future

I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the matter of Building Britain’s Future: how the region will make the most of the upturn. I am delighted to address this inaugural meeting of the East Midlands Regional Grand Committee. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire for acting as our Chair. Many thanks also go to Nottingham city council for agreeing to host the event in the grand surroundings of its council house. Parliament last met here in 1357. This is therefore an historic day for the city of Nottingham. Today is also an historic day for regional accountability in the east midlands, and as I was saying earlier, the establishment of a Regional Grand Committee, along with a Regional Select Committee, brings Parliamentary democracy closer to the people we represent, and closes the gap of democratic accountability at a regional level. It is important that appointed regional bodies such as development agencies are held to account: that they are scrutinised and their work is looked at, as demonstrated recently by our Regional Select Committee. I am immensely proud to represent the east midlands as the regional Minister. We each know our constituencies well and are proud of them, but we can also be proud of our region, which brims with innovation and creativity. Our towns and cities boast some of the most successful businesses and universities in the country. We have a diverse rural economy—a point raised earlier, I think, in questions—which grows a fifth of the nation’s crops, and that is vital, not just to us as a region but to the country as a whole. Our expertise in staging national and international events was evident again recently when Leicester hosted the Special Olympics. That event, which I had the pleasure of attending in July, is unique. The east midlands paints a fine picture of the strides forward that we have taken as a country over the past decade. In the past 10 years the east midlands has become a fairer, stronger and safer place to live. Overall, recorded crime in the region has fallen by more than a fifth, thanks to a more effective criminal justice system and greater investment in communities and neighbourhood policing. Lengthy hospital waiting lists have been consigned to history. Interestingly, in March 1998, more than 35,000 patients in the east midlands had waited longer than 13 weeks for an out-patient appointment, while regional figures published this month show not one patient waiting longer than 13 weeks. School standards also continue to rise. Since 1997, there has been a 22 percentage point rise in the number of 15-year-olds achieving five or more GCSEs at grade C or above. Emerging GCSE results for this year, provided by local authorities, show a significant improvement in the attainment of the key five A to C grades across the whole region. Poverty has been significantly reduced in our region. The number of neighbourhoods in the east midlands suffering the worst levels of deprivation has fallen by around 13 per cent. since 2001. I want to make it clear to the Committee that these achievements have not been by chance. They were gained with decisive government, by a Government prepared to invest record amounts in public services. Today, in the midst of the global economic downturn, that strong, active style of government is as vital as ever.