Burnley MP welcomes Prime Minister's 'New Deal for Britain'

The Prime Minister has set out a ‘New Deal’ for an ambitious economic strategy to rebuild the UK post Covid-19, putting jobs, skills and infrastructure investment at the heart of the economic recovery and delivering on manifesto pledges to level up the entire country.

After lobbying the Government on behalf of Burnley, Antony Higginbotham said: “We need to use the coronavirus pandemic to tackle this country’s great unresolved challenges which successive governments have ducked and which I was elected to fix.

"To build quality homes in the right places; improve the NHS; tackle the skills crisis; mend the indefensible gap in opportunity and connectivity between the regions of the UK; and to unite and level up Burnley.

"My job as the MP for this borough is more important than ever and as the PM has made clear, coronavirus won’t knock off us this course and I’m pleased to see us push ahead.

“Since this pandemic hit I have been lobbying to make sure we get the support we need locally and I will keep doing that. Using this fresh impetus from the PM to deliver the economic future we need.”

Plans to introduce an Opportunity Guarantee for young people, ensuring they have access to work or training, are part of these measures as is a list of ‘shovel ready’ local growth projects in England which will accelerate investment in town centres and high streets.

Boris Johnson also announced the most radical reforms to our planning system since the Second World War, making it easier to build better homes where people want to live and giving freedom to developers who want to help transform town centres but face red tape when doing so.

“Many parts of the country have felt left behind, neglected, unloved, as though someone had taken a strategic decision that their fate did not matter as much as the metropolis. Not only has a vision to change this country for the better, we have a mission to unite and level up – the mission on which we were elected last year,” said the Prime Minister.

“If we deliver this plan together, then we will together build our way back to health. We will not just bounce back; we will bounce forward – stronger and better and more united than ever before”.