Jonathan Brash MP: speeches

Speeches

• 14 Jul 2026 · Coastal Communities: Isolation and Hidden Deprivation · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. Hartlepool is a town with a proud coastal and industrial heritage, but above all, it is a town of proud people. We spend a great deal of time in this place talking about the concept of freedom, by which we usually mean freedom from something—whether that is freedom from regulation, from taxation or from the state. Although those debates matter, there is another freedom that we speak of far less: the freedom to become everything we are capable of becoming. The freedoms to earn, to learn, to build a secure life through our own hard work, to raise a family with confidence and to fulfil our potential—those freedoms matter every bit as much, if not more. Freedom is not simply the absence of restraint; it is the presence of opportunity, but that is what deindustrialisation and globalisation robbed from communities like mine. It did not simply close factories; it took freedom away from working people. It took away their freedom to earn a secure wage and build a career, or to believe that if they worked hard, there would be a decent job waiting for them at the end. It took away the freedom to know that our children will enjoy a better future than we did. The scars were never just economic; they were social, cultural and deeply personal. To solve this issue, education must be the engine room of freedom. In Hartlepool, I am so proud that our FE college is taking a visionary approach to ensure that children have that freedom. Not every young person wants the same pathway, and vocational excellence is every bit as valuable as academic excellence. Through our partnerships with X-energy and Centrica, whereby the new nuclear that we are bringing to Hartlepool partners with our FE college, we are once again giving our young people the freedom to believe that their future will be better than the lives their parents had.