After keeping a low profile following the A66 crash in Middlesbrough on 22 August, Ben Houchen wrote an opinion piece for the Daily Mail on 30 August.
The myth of Lawless Britain
Houchen’s first instinct was to fall back on the favourite trope of Reform UK, the Conservative Party, and right wing websites such as the Daily Mail. The country is “going to the dogs”, and other such cliches. But the facts don’t bear this out. Britain is a far safer country than it was in the past.
Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative
But the inhabitants of the UK think that almost every measure of crime is increasing. Why is this? Maybe it’s that incessant barrage of right wing propaganda, obsessing with violent crime. Even the BBC is in on the act of talking Britain down, with its recent sensationalised, inaccurate portrayal of Glasgow.
Talking Teesside down
But in addition to disingenuously reinforcing tropes about a “lawless Britain”, Ben Houchen’s Mail piece is hypocritical too. Of Middlesbrough, he notes that “a drugs trade that has sunk its claws into the town”.
He might wish to explain why, in January 2025, his South Tees Development Corporation (STDC) renewed a £9mn contract with NE Security Ltd to provide security across the Teesworks site. The contract, which runs until December 2026, involves guarding the boundaries of the Teesside Freeport customs zone.
Drugs Kingpin
At the time that the contract was renewed, the company’s Managing Director, David Garside Jr, was on licence from an almost 12-year prison sentence for his role in a multimillion-pound drugs conspiracy that “flooded the North East” with cocaine and amphetamines.
The NE Security contract was awarded despite concerns about David Garside Jr’s role having entered the public domain. So, plenty of talk of “wannabe gangsters” in Ben Houchen’s opinion piece, but no mention of whether Garside Jr has “sunk his claws” into Teesside Freeport.
A lawyer writes
Prior to her sudden departure in July 2025, former Monitoring Officer Emma Simson was quizzed about the wisdom of this particular Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) hire. Simson was unwilling to elucidate, but her recently hired replacement, Andrew Perriman may wish to revisit this thorny issue.
Poverty and deprivation
And is always the case with right wing diatribes against crime, Ben Houchen’s op-ed ignores many of the root causes of it. These events took place in some of the most deprived areas of the UK. Houchen has been Tees Valley Mayor for more than nine years. He may wish to reflect on his own long-term failure to deliver economically for Teesside.
Mapping deprivation
The map below shows the South Bank and Grangetown Lower Level Super Output Areas (LSOAs). LSOAs are used to map areas according to their Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD).
The South Bank LSOA is the 60th most deprived community out of 33,755 in England. Grangetown ranks 99th. For anyone not familiar with the IMD, these high rankings indicate extreme deprivation. Full details of IMD rankings can be found here. I’ve included the location of the recent fatal road crash and fire for information purposes.
And it hits young people the most
According to statistics provided by the TVCA, the latest claimant count for 18–21- year-olds in the Tees Valley is 9.2%, equivalent to 2,530 unemployed young people, compared to 5.6% nationally and 4.5% for the total working age population in Tees Valley. The “claimant count” is thought to be Universal Credit recipients.
Youth Guarantee Trailblazer
The Youth GuaranteeTrailblazer, a recently announced TVCA initiative, is aimed at young people not in education, employment or training (NEET). But it’s not very ambitious. The Trailblazer aims to reduce the number of “NEETs” by 300 over the long term.
We’re in the money
During his BBC Tees mayoral phone-in on 5 August, Ben Houchen boasted about apprentices at the Net Zero Teesside (NZT) construction site in Redcar being paid £500 per day, rising to £1,000 per day at weekends. If apprentices were indeed being paid these sorts of wages, it would provide a genuine alternative to the easy pickings of crime. Houchen’s outlandish claim can be heard 37 minutes into this clip.
Back in the real world
There are some apprenticeships available in the Tees Valley. On 7 August, Houchen welcomed the recruitment of apprentices at British Steel. The wages haven’t been stated.
Despite Teesside Live talking about “scores of apprentices”, it’s only 17 recruits across three sites, Hartlepool, Lackenby and Skinningrove. Some of these 17 recruits will be graduates. And the press release didn’t specify how many of the handful of apprenticeships will be reserved for young people.
In February 2026, Grant Glendinning, CEO of the Education Training Collective (ETC) noted that only one in four apprenticeships went to young people aged 16-18.
One step forward, two steps back
I’ve reported here about the recent troubles facing the flagship SeAH Factory, including the need to lay apprentices off. In April 2025, Stockton Councillor Lynn Hall gave an early warning of the peril that SeAH was in. Councillor Hall told the TVCA Overview & Scrutiny Committee that SeAH had retained only two out of eight welders who had recently completed their apprenticeships.
During the 5 August mayoral phone-in, Ben Houchen told BBC listeners that the company currently employed 300 workers, with 600 more to follow, plus a couple of thousand in the supply chain. But, only weeks earlier, industry insiders confirmed that SeAH was looking to “optimise” its headcount down from 153 to 81. Who to believe?
And it’s not just young people
Despite having more than £1bn in public investment thrown at it, the Teesworks project has failed in its key objective of job generation.
Coming back to that 5 August mayoral phone-in, Ben Houchen pushed back on a caller who stated that only 800 jobs have been generated at Teesworks. Houchen claimed that it had already generated 12,000 jobs by the time of the publication of the Tees Valley Review Report in January 2024.
Despite repeated media requests to verify these claims, by simply stating which companies employ these people, Ben Houchen and the TVCA have persistently failed to do so.
To coin a phrase
The Tees Valley’s problems won’t be solved by grandstanding, populist Daily Mail articles. To paraphrase Tony Blair, Ben Houchen is tough on crime soundbites, but completely ineffective on actual solutions to crime.
Thanks to James Waterson for providing additional research for this article
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