Sitting down with the Levelling Up Secretary of State Michael Gove last week, I made the case for York’s future: jobs and housing.

With the advent of York Central, a forthcoming devolution deal and our great educational institutions, our city has a huge opportunity to create good quality, well paid jobs for all, in a way that would also see significant inward investment. In turn, we will then be able to export our capabilities across the world.

My case is this. If we develop economic clusters – BioYorkshire, an advanced global rail and transport supercluster, a thriving digital creative footprint and reimagined tourism, heritage and retail sector – York can be thriving for everyone.

With Ministers now seeing BioYorkshire as the Green New Deal that will tackle the agricultural and climate challenges of our time, while creating 4,000 green collar jobs, they also recognise the strength of the partnership across our Universities and Colleges, research capability and business to draw in inward investment and spin out new businesses and innovations.

Who benefits? You, the people and planet.

This week I am leading a debate in Parliament on ‘The Future of Rail’ where I am making the case to expand York’s rail footprint and anchor Great British Railways’ new HQ in the city.

In highlighting the power of our rail heritage and existing strengths, I am making the case that with research and development, with unrivalled skills in everything from high end engineering and digital to planning and operations, York could once again showcase our rail capability to the world.

But why stop there? Integrate The York Institute for Safe Autonomy driving forward the next generation of vehicles (and let’s not forget our new arrival in Active Travel England) and we can soon see that York will uniquely deliver end to end transport systems, and secure not only national benefit, but be able to market it globally.

Now the intersection of these two clusters is beyond exciting: transport and energy transformation. This is essential to keep the climate in control and the hope of 1.5’C alive. As we leave fossil fuels in the ground, our transport system, now emitting almost a third of our carbon budget, will radically change if hydrogen and renewable energy replaces the hydrocarbons.

There is more to be done on consolidating York’s digital creative assets. However, with the heart of the games industries, the digital creative sector as well as our rich cultural landscape, a third economic cluster is starting to take shape.

Heritage, tourism and our hospitality and retail sectors need to be transformed too. Image a city centre without a constant stream of ‘hen and stag’ weekends; bliss I know! Containing the night-time economy enables York to become a family friendly city with a healthy café culture, like thriving European cities. Done right, it would certainly invite local families back into York, who spend more and invest better in the local economy through supporting our brilliant Indie York offer.

This agenda will drive up wages for local people and opportunities for local businesses. But it will also require housing to be developed to meet local need and curbs put on existing housing stock.

I told Michael Gove that I wanted Government to get a grip of the Airbnb party houses which are flooding York, through licensing, taxation and powers to close nuisance homes, essential to stop York’s housing stock being hoovered up by people who don’t live here and freeing up housing for those that do. Build to meet local need, retrofit to cut costs and reapportion to ensure that housing is both affordable and of the highest standards.

Achieving this requires citywide vision and inspiring, dynamic leadership. For too long, however, the council has failed to plan properly and get a grip of the economic opportunities presented to it, leaving a gap that has been enthusiastically filled by those looking to exploit our assets and extract our wealth. This has left too many people in low paid work and in unaffordable and often undesirable homes, who are now facing the hardest cost of living crisis in living memory. It is not good enough.

This did not have to be this way, but it can change.

I am determined to bring about this change, economically and socially and am working with partners across the city to do so. As this Parliament closes this week, this is what I will strive for in the next: good jobs and homes for all.

Rachael Maskell is the Labour MP for York Central