Western Gateway on the national stage at party conferences

Both events presented the area as one which is ready to create growth and drive the UK’s transition to green energy. Business, academic and local leaders came together as representatives from across the area to promote the Western Gateway’s case to national decision makers.

In Liverpool, at the Labour Party Conference, the partnership hosted a panel of speakers including Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, Cllr Rob Stewart, Leader of Swansea Council, Dr Jo Jenkinson, Director of the GW4 Alliance, and Richard Bonner, Chair of the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership.  

Together the panellists discussed the benefits that the partnership can bring to communities as well as the support it can offer to business and academia, and the incredible work already taking place across the area to create growth and reach net zero.

Marvin Rees, said: “What we’re not doing with the Western Gateway is artificially coming up with a convenient boundary.  We’re working with the economy and life as it actually functions.

“There’s a growing recognition that all wisdom, decision making and power cannot rest in Whitehall alone you have to release this across the whole of the UK […] Western Gateway offers a scale that Bristol alone cannot offer.  I believe this is one of the most important initiatives that we as a city have been involved in since I was elected, we need to land it and grow it.”

In Birmingham at the 2022 Conservative Party Conference, the Western Gateway Partnership chair, Katherine Bennet CBE was joined by board members Cllr Mark Hawthorne, leader of Gloucestershire Council, and Cllr David Renard, Leader of Swindon Council.  This was alongside Professor Philip Taylor, Vice Chancellor of Enterprise and Research at the University of Bristol, David Brown, Chief Executive of Bristol Port, and the session was opened by Sir Robert Buckland KC KBE, the Secretary of State for Wales.

In his opening remarks, the Secretary of State paid tribute to the work of the Partnership’s chair and gave his “full-throated support” to the Western Gateway:

He added: “[Western Gateway] is based upon the real lives of the people we serve.  It reflects the work patterns of tens of thousands of people in this country. 

“I am delighted in my position as Secretary of State to renew and strengthen the strong support I’ve given to the partnership since it was set up. This isn’t about jobs going from one neck of the woods to another. This isn’t about redistributing the existing slices of cake, this is about […] growing the cake and growing new types of industry and business as our economy […] gets greener and decarbonised.”

At the Birmingham event, Professor Taylor announced the Western Gateway’s publication of the SuperGen Energy Networks Hub review of the area’s Energy system– providing an evidence base to understand progress towards Net Zero to date.

He said: “We want to be internationally excellent in terms of education and research… but we also want to make sure [this] has an impact. We want to make sure what we are doing is working with partners in our geography to make sure the great ideas and skills don’t stay locked up in the university.  That we get them out there, get them adopted to ensure we are influencing policy to drive inclusive, sustainable and prosperous futures.

“What the university really needs is an organisation like the Western Gateway to help it enact that civic responsibility.  It needs an ecosystem, it needs partners and it needs connections so it can listen to what the geography needs.

“Western Gateway is absolutely crucial to our core mission of trying to apply our excellence to the grand challenges that we see in the UK and globally.”

The Western Gateway also had planned to attend the Liberal Democrats Party conference which was postponed due to the national mourning period. 

Our Acting Director, James Cooke, also gave his thoughts on the partnership’s attendance at the conferences in the Western Gateway blog.