Jenrick pledges to invest £100 million a year to regenerate the Black Country

The Black Country and surrounding areas will benefit from £1 billion in tax incentives for business if Reform is elected at the next General Election, the party’s Treasury spokesman told a rally in Wolverhampton.

Robert Jenrick said Dudley, Wolverhampton, Walsall, Sandwell and Cannock would become the UK’s first ‘industrial stronghold’, which would seek to replicate the Black Country Development Corporation and Dudley Enterprise Zone policies of the 1980s, which led to the construction of the Black Country Route motorway link and the Merry Hill shopping centre.

He said the party would pour £100 million a year into the region for a 10-year period through business tax incentives, some of which would be funded by levies on companies which employ overseas workers.

But Mr Jenrick said he expected the scheme would in the long-term generate revenue for the Treasury through increased economic growth.

“I think overall we’re going to find that the Treasury actually makes money out of this because so many good jobs and businesses will be created,” he said.

“I think we’ll have a massive multiplier effect because you’re going to find new businesses opening, existing businesses expanding, maybe big multinational companies deciding to come form overseas and invest here,” he said.

“It will be rather like the 1980s Black Country Development Corporation that spawned the trunk road, and the Merry Hill Centre. It’s going to be a golden age for the Black Country.”

Mr Jenrick, who grew up in Wolverhampton, spoke fondly of his memories of the city during the event at the Grand Station banqueting suite in the former Low Level station.

But he said he was saddened by the state of the city centre, particularly the loss of Banks’s Brewery and Beatties department store.

He poured scorn on the council’s £19 million paving scheme.

“No point in going an inch where you need to go a mile, and putting some new paving slabs in the centre of Wolverhampton,” he said.

“That’s not going to make a blind bit of difference. You’ve got to do something radical to turn this place around. I am confident, as a son of Wolverhampton, that the best days of this city, and the Black Country lie ahead.”

Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice and home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf also addressed the rally, and party chairman Lee Anderson was also present.

Labour, which runs Wolverhampton Council, was quick to respond after the speech.

The party issued a statement saying: “Reform aren’t on the side of British workers – in fact they’re determined to rip up your rights at work. That means slashing your paternity rights, ripping up protections for unfair dismissal, and leaving employees at the mercy of bad bosses.

“Labour has delivered the biggest boost to workers’ rights in a generation and we’re investing in well paid, skilled jobs for the future – giving Britain hope after decades of deindustrialisation. Reform would scrap hundreds of thousands of the new industrial jobs that Labour is opening up. Farage and Reform simply can’t be trusted to stand up for British workers or British industry.”