Watch as Crawley's parliamentary candidates faced a question about the economy and jobs from St Wilfrid's student Ela Guillen Hall ahead of the General Election 2024.
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00:00You're looking to represent the community of Crawley in Parliament. I'm thinking about what I'm going to do after I leave school in two years. What are you going to do to make sure there are good policy jobs in Crawley that I can do?
00:13Peter?
00:43We can see that at Gatwick. More and more stuff is being automated over time. So a lot of those jobs that our parents and grandparents have had are not going to be there in the town in the future. We're going to have to find new types of jobs to bring into Crawley.
00:54The big opportunity around this is around the green transition. The UK is going to have to change every part of the country if we're going to be able to have a zero carbon economy by 2050. That's going to be an enormous amount of economic work and there's going to be a lot of opportunity with jobs there.
01:09Particularly for a town like Crawley that's got a lot of engineering skills, that's a lot of manufacturing skills.
01:14So one of the things we've been trying to do is to have incubators set up to get new businesses in the area. We've got what's called the Crawley Innovation Centre being built on Manor Oil at the moment. That's designed to start small businesses that will then scale up and provide more employment as they get bigger.
01:28We've been working on bringing the Institute of Technology into Crawley that's based in Crawley College. That's going to marry up employers with people coming out of the education system to make sure they've got the best quality skills training for the types of jobs we're looking in the town.
01:41We're looking to attract in new types of employment that we think are going to be really big opportunities in the future. Actually, we very nearly saw a massive win on this. At a council site in Manor Oil, we were going to have one of the country's largest solar panel factories built here.
01:59It was going to be at a council site, so that's going to be rent money coming in to help make sure the council's got good services for people, keep council tax low, and it's going to provide lots of good technical opportunities for people's jobs. Just as we were doing the deal, the National Grid turned around, privatised National Grid, and said we can't supply power to Crawley anymore.
02:16That's the problem I've run into over the last council in 2014. Every time we score a win for the town, someone higher above us snatches it away. That's why you need someone who's going to go into Westminster to understand where all the blockages are and get them out of the way so we can actually get the quality of jobs that we need in the town.
02:36We have got great schools in Crawley. We have got fantastic businesses and business opportunities, but if we're going to be able to harness them, we're going to have to make sure the system is set up in a way that lets us bring those new employers in. They're going to be the jobs opportunities of the future, because if we don't, and if we can't find a way to make planes fly green by 2050, this town is going to have one of the highest levels of unemployment in the country.
02:58So what are we going to do? Who are we going to listen to?
03:04I think the answer to the punch there about Gatwick is quite right. Crawley has relied on Gatwick quite heavily for a long time, and so it should. Gatwick is always going to be creating jobs all the time, apart from when Cleveland happened, which really obviously has people like that.
03:20So what we need to start doing in this town generally in Crawley is finding a way to really allow the investment opportunities that are there that haven't been grasped yet, because it can be, you know, to put your money into something is a big deal. You can even have it in your pocket and you can put it somewhere where you might lose it.
03:46The Liberal Democrats say we want to launch an ambitious industrial strategy to incentivise business to invest. If businesses don't put the money into expanding and creating those jobs, it's going to be hard for them to come about.
04:04And in the small business, we want to abolish business rates, which sounds very scary by the way, and replace it with a commercial landowner levy to help secure the high streets every year are struggling.
04:20So what we really want to do throughout our manifesto is we want to have the local governments able to do what they know is best there, rather than have an arbitrary rate. That's not going to help that particular area in itself, so that's a couple of things we're looking to do to try and really grasp that manifesto.
04:43Peter's talked about the green infrastructure we really need to try and seize, and that's a big part of our manifesto as well.
04:50I have sat across Peter in Crawley Bound Council as an opposition member. It's very rare that I praise him for what he said, but I'm very grateful that he brought in Crawley Innovation Centre and also the investment in Crawley College, because that's one of the achievements.
05:17That is a central funded project. The Conservative government under Crawley Conservative MP have provided that funding, and it's very important that we see those investments through that Innovation Centre and the Crawley College investment.
05:35We see it through because it's going to, quite rightly Peter said, it's going to give an opportunity to you guys to get more jobs. As I said earlier on, I'm a father of two teenage kids. I want them to have a local opportunity.
05:51I want them to have an opportunity to choose when they are in your age, going out of college and whether they want to go to uni, whether they want to do an apprenticeship. That's what we are providing. That's what I will do.
06:09I live in Broadfield. Some of you might live over there as well. My first job was a kitchen boarder in one of the cafes. I completed my degree. Then I had an opportunity. I worked in a couple of very large big international organisations.
06:25Then I started a business from my home in my college and paid it up to 75, 80 full time people. I think the government, whatever party it is, people should have that choice what they want to do and they should have those opportunities.
06:41That's my promise to you. If I elected on Friday, it doesn't matter if we do one poll, it's going to look like it's going to be a Labour government over there. As I said, I have already experience to hold them to account. I'll be your vice. I'll create that opportunity for you.
07:01I don't believe the government should tell people what job, what business, small, big or large, or apprenticeship, what they need to do. You should have that choice and I'll work for you to give you that choice and then you can decide whatever you want to do with your life.
07:17Business growth, essentially. Let the private sector grow as much as it can. We're going to free over 1.2 million small and medium sized businesses from corporation tax, lifting the profit threshold to £100,000. The corporation tax rate is down from 25% to 20%. Lots and lots of numbers.
07:39But the idea is more business means more jobs and you guys are almost certainly going to be working in the private sector where those people are going to be hiring people. There's more details on how that works but I don't think you guys are that interested in all these numbers. But this is the idea. We boost the economy, we get things growing. With more jobs there, you'll find it easier.
08:01The other options are all very much state intervention and there's not much to do with growth. We haven't heard anyone talk about improving the economy by having people grow. And our country is in a terrible amount of debt and a terrible financial problem. We're not going to tax and benefit our way out of it. We're going to grow our way out of it. That's me. That's how you get yourself. Good job. That's what we offer.
08:31Green growth? Yes, green growth. I would like to see, as Peter mentioned, the industries and companies we have in Crawley and Barnet Road in particular. We've got a lot of IT, light engineering, electronics companies. I would like to see Crawley actually become the green tech, the central green tech in the country. Because we've already got the steel base here. We've got the companies here and we know how to do these things.
09:00We also want to transform the economy into a zero net carbon emission economy over the next 20 years or so, after 2050. Now that's going to take a huge amount of effort, a lot of money and resources. It's also going to create many, many jobs, millions of jobs across the country.
09:22Certainly here in Crawley, one of those jobs could be the ones that you have, in actually building a better economy. I think that's the way out. That's the way by investing in a green economy, we're talking about 40 billion a year, up over the next five years possibly, in order to actually stimulate that growth.
09:43Then private companies can come in. They're going to be the start. The government needs to be at the start and help them set up businesses or turn their businesses into green based companies. So that would be a good start.
10:00I think we also need to insulate houses. All the homes, there's I think about 50,000 homes around Crawley, they need to be insulated. So people need to be employed to do that, to get that happening. We need to change our transport infrastructure. We need to put charging stations around the town for electric vehicles.
10:21We'll need to change to electric vehicles over the next five, ten years or so. So we're going to need more electric charging. That needs work, that needs the infrastructure to be placed in, and we need people to do that work.
10:33Other things could be that Green Party also want to support small to medium sized businesses, especially in the high street type businesses, because they are failing, they are struggling at the moment, and we need to revive those. That means if they get some support, they'll be able to employ more people, and there'll be greater prosperity as a result.
10:54There'll be more tax revenue available, which is for more people to be employed, and that will help the country as a whole, and also help Crawley. So that's some of the things that we would plan to do as the Green Party plans to help Crawley.