John Healey to use Rotherham as blueprint for reindustrialising Britain

South Yorkshire MP John Healey used Rotherham as the backbone for his speech as Chancellor at Labour Party Conference.

Chancellor John Healey has pledged to use Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Park as a blueprint for reindustrialising Britain.

Mr Healey set out his vision in his speech to the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool today, promising fiscal discipline as well as hope.

He said reforming the welfare system to get people back into work was not just an “economic must” but a “moral duty”.

The Chancellor announced a new £100m fund for metro mayors to boost apprenticeships, set out a £300 million investment by Rolls-Royce in British factories, including Rotherham, and confirmed support for British shipbuilding.

The Rawmarsh and Conisburgh MP said: “Let’s bring back hope to Britain for the next generation of young people, for a new age of industrialisation, for growth made here by British firms and British workers.”

He pledged to use his hometown of Rotherham as a blueprint for this change.

Mr Healey said: “My politics have been shaped by the industrial heartlands of South Yorkshire.

“The most brutal day of that bitter miners’ strike was at Orgreave,” he explained, where around 120 mineworkers were injured in violent clashes with police.

The Chancellor revealed that he has a miner’s lamp from Cortonwood Colliery on his shelf at home – the pit where the miners' strike started.

“Today, on the site of the Orgreave pit, is Rotherham's Advanced Manufacturing Park,” he continued.

Mr Healey described it as “one of the most concentrated areas of innovation anywhere in Britain”, with it hosting Rolls-Royce, McLaren and Boeing.

“It’s where South Yorkshire’s young people are working with high-tech systems, making things that their grandparents could never have dreamed of,” the Chancellor said.

“And one of those young people is Sean. Sean’s dad was a local miner – but there were no pit jobs for Sean.

“So he joined the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, he joined as an apprentice.

“So while his Dad mined the coal that kept Britain’s lights on, above the same coal seam Sean is now working on high tech research for the future of nuclear power.

“Our coal mines are not coming back. But this is how Britain’s industrial past is being remade now for the modern world.

“It’s how people are starting to tell each other stories of the future, and not the past.”

Mr Healey said that this was mirrored in Dundee, in Scotland, Deesside, in Wales, and in Derby.

The Chancellor announced that Rolls-Royce was set to invest an additional £300m in Derby, Bristol and Rotherham.

“This is the new age of industrialisation,” he said, “This is the new confidence in Britain.

“Lit by this government. Driven forward by business. So don’t tell me, don’t tell me it’s not possible to create a new age of British industry.”