‘Plan B’ for Marshalling Yard “could save £35 million from city dole bill.”

Local MP Liam Byrne will today call on ministers to drop their plans for an HS2 marshalling yard in inner-city Birmingham and instead develop the site creating up to 7,000 jobs and saving up to £35 million a year in unemployment benefit.

The Hodge Hill MP who has led the charge for ‘jobs not sheds’ on the site has triggered a major debate in Parliament today on the validity of the plans. Other speakers are set to include Andrew Mitchell, the MP for Sutton Coldfield and Jack Dromey, MP for Erdington.

The proposed site is the size of 100 football pitches and makes up one third of the industrial land in Birmingham. It lies at the junction of Ladywood, Erdington and Hodge Hill –three constituencies which between them are home to 45% of the city’s unemployed. HS2 will lock up the site as a construction yard for a decade before opening as the marshalling yard in the mid 2020’s.

Liam Byrne has worked with city planners to draw up plans which show that between five and seven thousand jobs could be created on the site over the next five years. It’s claimed that if these jobs went to local people, then the city’s dole queue would be almost halved saving the taxpayer nearly £35 million a year in Job Seekers’ Allowance.

Speaking ahead of the debate Liam Byrne said: “I am a supporter of HS2 but we’ve got to get it right for everyone in our city – not just for some. This gigantic site has come together like a giant jigsaw puzzle for the first time in 100 years. Developing the site as a whole could create 5-7000 jobs in the short term. That would be a huge boost to the worst unemployment hotspot in Britain.

What today’s debate is all about is simple. If HS2 destroys our best chance in a generation to get our community back to work, then they need to show just how they will create a similar number of jobs in the short term – not in ten years’ time.”