Westminster Hall
17 March 2026
No chapters available yet
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
Chamber House of Commons
00:14 - 00:18
Speaker 1
Order, order. I call James Nash to move the motion. It
00:25 - 02:52
Speaker 2
is a pleasure to serve under your chairship Doctor Hook and I want to start by telling you as someone from London about how great the East Midlands is. Home to Derbyshire, Leicestershire, most of Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire and Rutland. We are central to the country's logistics network with fantastic facilities like Magna Park in Lutterworth and Daventry International Rail Freight Terminal and of course UK's largest freight airport at East Midlands Airport. We have deep industrial routes with space engineering expertise in Leicester, biomedical sciences clusters in Nottingham, and nuclear and rail engineering proficiency in Derby. We have a range of excellent universities from Loughborough and Nottingham to Lincoln and Northampton, all of which have produced fantastic start ups.
And we are home to major energy projects and developers such as Step Fusion, the world leading fusion energy programme, and great British businesses like Derby's Rolls Royce, which was selected as the preferred bidder to partner with Great British Energy to develop small modular reactors. In short, Chair, our region's potential is obvious to anybody who cares to look. And yet despite 5,100,000 people, 403,000 businesses and a fabulous location in the heart of The UK, today's debate is likely to repeat some of the messages that I know have been said before in this place many times. That the East Midlands is under recognized, under appreciated, and still doesn't receive its fair share of UK government investment. This points to a national policy failure which this Labour government must at long last address via a long term commitment to four things.
First, to backing our region across all Whitehall departments. Second, to sustained levels of public investment to correct historic injustices. Third, to further devolution to empower local communities across our region. And fourth, to a coherent set of tailored policy interventions which will turn the page on what has been for many parts of our region a sustained sense of managed decline for over forty years. I hope that we will hear these things from the minister today.
The rest of the transcript is for Pro customers
Unlock the full transcript, chat, and every analysis feature with Polyfact Pro.
Ask anything about this video — I analyse its transcript to answer.