House of Commons Hansard Debates for 26 Jun 1995

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman is now going very wide of the amendments under consideration. I remind him also that he is beginning to rehearse his arguments. I shall watch that carefully.

Mr. Cohen: I will try not to rehearse my arguments. I was referring to a parliamentary answer on the specific subject that was given on 24 January. The Minister claims to be neutral and that it is nothing to do with him. That amounts to a brush-off of the university of Westminster, but it does not stop Ministers, Conservative councillors and officials at the Department for Education from criticising universities such as the university of Westminster for what they claim to be their high costs. They have sometimes been referred to in inspection reports.

Those high costs are incurred because the university of Westminster has to operate from a number of diverse, small campuses. That is why it has developed plans to replace a number of those smaller sites with five large sites by the year 2000. As I have told the House already, one of those sites is going to be not in Westminster but in Harrow. The Moxon street land would be ideal for such a site.

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There is a chance to solve, at least partially, the university of Westminster's problems. It is not right that the Department of Education should ignore the university while criticising it for high costs that are brought about by having diverse sites.

Mr. Bryan Davies (Oldham, Central and Royton): Is my hon. Friend aware of a recent survey of staff at Westminster which showed that one of the problems that they identified in their work at the university was the dispersal of sites? As my hon. Friend rightly said, the dispersal includes a site in Harrow. Therefore, for the very best of educational reasons, an attempt to bring an element of concentration to the university's operations would greatly assist staff morale and improve the quality of education generally.

Mr. Cohen: That is an excellent point. That point from the Labour Front Bench, which is currently the Opposition, was very ministerial. Increasingly, right across the board, statements from the Opposition sound more and more like the statements of a Government. The Government are a shambles.

My hon. Friend's remark showed that he is aware of the problems of the university of Westminster. If he were in the Department of Education, he would help the university. Its aim of improving education opportunities for Londoners is my hon. Friend's aim, too. If my hon. Friend were a Minister, even though he would be busy cleaning up the mess on education left behind by the Conservative Government, he would send an official to have a word with the university of Westminster and ask it what its problems were. He would have told the university that the Bill was before the House and that the council wanted to get out of its commitment to using the land for educational purposes and asked what it thought of the matter. That is what would have happened. It did not happen under the Government. The university of Westminster has been given the brush-off.

The Minister should have intervened. He is responsible for education and for improving education. That is his job and he should have taken that on board in this case. If he had, he would have been backing the university of Westminster.

I say that there is a proven educational need but Westminster council is trying to extinguish that commitment. It is justifiable to extinguish such a commitment to educational purposes--for which it got the land free of charge--only if there is no need for those education purposes. I submit that there is a need.

I have a letter from Dr. S. M. K. Wilmington, the chairman of the governors of the St. Marylebone school, of 64 Marylebone High street, W1M 4BA. He says:

"Dear Mr. Cohen

City of Westminster

I understand that you were one of the three Members of Parliament who opposed the private Bill the city of Westminster is promoting, Clause 9 of which deals with the former county primary school in Moxon Street.

I thought accordingly that you might find it helpful to have a copy of the attached letter to Councillor Robert Davies of 22 March from one of my fellow Governors. This is the culmination of a long correspondence between ourselves and Westminster members and officers."

He encloses a copy of the letter to Councillor Robert Davies, the chairman of the planning committee at Westminster, from Robin Majdalany. He says:

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"Moxon Street Site

I write in advance of the meeting planned for the 10th of April to express my concern with regard to the planning brief for the Moxon Street site. This appears to imply an intention on the part of the council to dispose of the site. I wish to enquire how the education needs of the area will be satisfied, and whether an option might be retained for a development to incorporate a school.

I write on behalf of the St. Marylebone school which, as you may know, is restricted on its present site. The site is held in trust for the benefit of the School. The School can neither move out of London, nor develop the present site further. There is considerable demand for places at the School and the Governors believe that growth in the capacity of the School can only be accommodated on a site fairly close to the present school premises in St. Marylebone. Moxon Street would provide an ideal and close site for this purpose. I trust that you will be able to take our interest into consideration in your deliberations of the planning brief. May I also ask for a response with regards to the points raised".

8.45 pm

That is a letter from a nearby school, the St. Marylebone school in Marylebone High street, saying that there is a need for a school on the site. It is crystal clear from the governors of that school that there is a need for a school on the site. Yet all we have had is assertions from Westminster council and the promoters that there is now no longer a need for a school. Those assertions are shown to be false by the letter from the governors of St. Marylebone school. The fox has been shot by that letter. There is clearly a need for a school and assertions that there is not are downright untrue. We should not pass clause 9 on the basis of untrue assertions.

Mr. Sedgemore: Could my hon. Friend tell me how what he has just said, which I have not heard before, fits in with the statement of the promoters? They say:

"The City Council would therefore be in the position of having to build a school in a part of the City where there is little demand, to the detriment of educational provisions in other parts of the borough."

I do not know whether my hon. Friend's letter came from a teacher or head teacher but it says that there is a demand. How do those two statements square with each other?

Mr. Cohen: That is exactly my point. The first letter that I have read into the record was from Dr. Wilmington, the chairman of the governors. The letter to Councillor Davies was from Robin Magdalene, MA, FCA, FRSA. He has plenty of qualifications. I want plenty of qualifications for Londoners through the use of the site. He is a governor and chairman of the finance and premises committee. I will not repeat it, but he clearly says that St. Marylebone school is restricted on its present site and that there is much demand for places at the school that is not being fulfilled.

The Prime Minister--I do not know how long he will be Prime Minister--said only last week that the Conservatives were for giving parents choice about schools. It is not choice. It is the right to express a preference. There are not really places available. The Minister may laugh but when I wrote to him or his predecessor last year giving cases of people who cannot have their choice and asking him to intervene, his Department refused and said that it was a matter for the local authority. It is about a preference, not a choice.

The surface language and the presentation from the Government is that there is a choice. Here we have a school to which many parents want to send their children. It is restricted on its present site, children cannot get in

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and parents cannot have their choice met. If the site, or part of it, was made available to them, the Government's language of choice could become more of a reality. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) was absolutely right. The nonsense and disingenuousness of the statement issued by the promoters has been exposed.

Representations have been received from the university of Westminster. Professor Burlin sent a briefing to hon. Members which said:

"Within two years, the City of Westminster had reached a radically different view of projected numbers of children, and was seeking through the current Bill . . . to be released from the requirement to build a primary school on the Moxom Street site. Planning guidelines have been produced . . . indicating a predominantly residential development,("a substantial number of new, high quality, residential units") and other uses, including retail development."

There we have it: Westminster council wants to build luxury houses and a supermarket.

Professor Burlin went on:

"Much local publicity has been given in preparing for the expectation that, if the Bill is successful, Westminster will sell the site to the Howard de Walden Estate, providing a Waitrose supermarket and residential development. Other property developers are believed to be interested."

Incidentally, he included with his briefing an article from the Hampstead and Highgate Express of 12 May 1995. The article is headed "Rivals line up for prime site battle". It is reported that, as the university developer and supermarket chain prepare to fight it out, there is an "unseemly scramble" for a car park. It is only unseemly because of the action of Westminster council which is trying to make a profit out of the site. The article also states:

"The Howard de Walden estates, the largest landowner in the area, has so far been the most vocal of the parties interested in the site.

The estate sees itself as a natural choice to buy the site, as it owns many of the properties that surround it and would therefore avoid running into the access problems that would discourage others. The estate has teamed up with Waitrose and set out its stall in a new publication, The Marylebone Newsletter, which was recently distributed to local residents trumpeting the happy headline `It's Waitrose!'"

It also states:

"For the University of Westminster, acquisition of the site would be a godsend, enabling it to expand its Marylebone Road site and ditch some of the smaller, cripplingly expensive venues that it is currently forced to lease all around the borough.

Perhaps the most legitimate claim to the land is the most neglected. The University of Westminster has an undeniable claim to a property that, after all, was intended for educational use." It then praises the university.

The article concludes by quoting Professor Burlin,who said: "We might not be able to compete financially with a developer like the Howard de Walden estate or a supermarket chain like Waitrose . . . They may be able to bid more money--but what it really comes down to is the value the council actually puts on education in Westminster."

It is not only a question of the value that the council places on education but of the value that the Government and the House place on it.

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There are two options. If we allow the clause to be passed, Westminster will be duty bound, as has been said, to sell the site to property developers and the supermarket chain. Otherwise, the commitment is retained and the site is allowed to be used for educational purposes, in which case we place the proper value on education, as Professor Burlin said.

In his briefing to hon. Members, Professor Burlin said:

"Since this site was acquired by the GLC in 1966, it has been promised for educational use . . . If it were put on the open market, there is no way that educational organisations, such as colleges or universities, could compete with the financial resources of developers. Therefore, to retain the site for educational purposes, it is vital that it remains designated for such purposes

Although the site may not now be required as a primary school, there are other important uses which, when they are examined, justify retaining the educational designation. These are nursery provision and post-compulsory education . . . The University of Westminster runs an over-subscribed day nursery on the Marylebone campus close to Moxon street, and with more space would be happy to cooperate in increasing various forms of nursery provision in the area." I do not want to read all the briefing into the record--I would if I had more time--but it is clearly relevant. It states that the proven need for an expansion of full-time and part-time higher education is being ignored.

The briefing goes on to say that the university has been trying to overcome its problems caused by being dispersed uneconomically over 20 sites and has a programme to consolidate on five major sites by the year 2000. It continues:

"Purchasing a further major building, against commercial competition, would overstrain our resources, given that many of the properties we have for disposal are leased rather than owned." If the university had the site in question, it would not have to replicate such facilities as

"refectories and libraries and services such as heating, caretaking and cleaning."

The university of Westminster has shown how it could cut its costs while pointing out the diversity of its needs.

Another briefing was sent to hon. Members earlier this year. I do not want to spend too much time on it, but it states:

"The mission of the University of Westminster is to be the leading provider in the capital city of a high quality accessible portfolio of higher education and associated strategic research."

Mr. Bryan Davies: Does my hon. Friend think that the university of Westminster might have approached the local authority with rather greater optimism some time ago when the authority might have had a greater awareness of the university's history--its first constituent college was founded by the first Lord Hailsham, or Quintin Hogg--and of its long association with that aspect of the Conservative party which always showed itself to be concerned with education and the good of the people of London? Now, the university seems to be dealing with the modern and rather different Conservative Administration, who have different values.

Mr. Cohen: Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The university has certainly been treated poorly by the current Conservative council and by the Minister who, despite his so-called neutral stance, has not done what an Education Minister should have done. The present Conservatives have not listened properly, and I think my hon. Friend is probably right to say that the Conservatives of the past were concerned about education and would

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probably have given the university a fairer hearing than the current lot, who are interested only in land speculation, property development and such commercial activities.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. However, I thought that he was going to make a different point: I thought that he was going to suggest that the university of Westminster would get a better hearing if clause 9 were not passed.

That is certainly true. If the clause is passed, the Conservatives on Westminster council who are not interested in education--who turn a deaf ear to it--will say that, because the legislation has been passed by Parliament, they have a duty under the law to sell the site to the highest bidder. The university of Westminster will not get any sort of hearing once the legislation is passed.

If we are to strengthen the hand of the university of Westminster in its discussions with the council, it is absolutely crucial that we do not pass the clause and that we pass the amendments to which I have referred. In view of the nature of the Conservatives with whom the university is dealing, it is correct that the House should try to strengthen the university's hand--the hand of education--in the negotiations. My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point. 9 pm

In the January briefing, the university of Westminster said that it is building on a major site in Harrow which it owns. However, that removes educational facilities from central London and the communities which they serve. That is a very good point. The briefing states:

"The Moxon Street site . . . would be ideally located for a major building of the University of Westminster".

It continues:

"Architects have undertaken preliminary drawings and estimate the site would accommodate a building with 17,000 sq m floor space. This would provide a large building in an ideal location for the University".

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is now repeating arguments that he has already put to the House.

Mr. Cohen: I do not wish to do that, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was trying to put the argument in the words of the lobbyist, Professor Burlin. Some hon. Members cast doubt upon the statements that I made earlier in the debate and suggested that I was not stating the facts. I have tried to show that that information has not come from me; it has come from Professor Burlin, the university of Westminster and the St. Marylebone school. Professor Burlin's briefings and the letter from St. Marylebone's school show that there is a clearly established need for the site to be used for educational purposes.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Leyton has made his view quite clear on several previous occasions. He is repeating the arguments.

Mr. Cohen: I do not want to do that, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Bryan Davies: My hon. Friend is seeking to stress that the authority he is now quoting--the vice- chancellor--was acting in an entirely dispassionate way. He has no conceivable political axe to grind; he is simply concerned about the educational opportunities of his

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institution in relation to the decision about that crucial piece of land. Therefore, it is rather important that my hon. Friend develops clearly the arguments that Professor Burlin has put to several hon. Members but which have not been clarified on the Floor of the House as yet.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Member for Leyton that he should be giving his own speech. He may wish to adduce the arguments of others, but it is not a sufficient excuse for him to repeat a series of other people's arguments as a means of getting around the strictures that I have just offered him.

Mr. Cohen: I understand your concern, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Mr. Sedgemore: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you can help the House? You always guide us beautifully and we accept your guidance every time, but I am slight puzzled about this. What if my hon. Friend quotes 500 high-powered sources who are saying roughly the same thing? It has never stopped Ministers quoting 500 high-powered sources, so why should it stop Back Benchers doing the same?

Madam Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member for Leyton has already received the answer: it is incumbent upon hon. Members to make their own speeches and not simply to quote from other sources, however eminent, as a substitute for their own views.

Mr. Cohen: I take your point, Madam Deputy Speaker. You were correct in describing the sources as "eminent"; Professor Burlin, who is speaking on behalf of the university of Westminster, is certainly eminent. Madam Deputy Speaker, I understand what you have said about not repeating my argument and I do not want to do that. I was seeking to add emphasis and to give weight to my point.

Madam Deputy Speaker: The hon. Member has already done that; he does not need to do it again.

Mr. Cohen: That is fair enough, Madam Deputy Speaker. I just wanted to make it clear that those points were not mine but those of the eminent people whom I quoted. My hon. Friend, in his intervention, made a good point about Professor Burlin--a new point, not made before. From Professor Burlin's point of view, this is not a party political matter. I am sorry in some ways that a Labour Member must raise the matter on behalf of the university. I am trying not to make my speech party political.

In some areas, doubt has been cast on Westminster city council. I am afraid that the district auditor's report will become a party political issue, but the arguments concerning the university must be judged on their merits. I just wish that the Minister would do so and that, when there is a vote at the end of this debate, hon. Members who have not been present in the Chamber will consider the arguments on their merits and not treat the matter as party political. If they did that and considered the points made by Professor Burlin in a non-party political fashion, they would not agree to clause 9. Dyson Bell Martin drew attention to the meetings between the university of Westminster and the council. I have made this point before but I hope that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will allow me to quote Dyson Bell Martin, which is important in this context: "The University of Westminster has been interested in acquiring part or all of the site for educational purposes since it became clear that the Council did not intend to build a school on it. University

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representative have met members and officials of the Council at various times to discuss the matter. All such meetings have been polite, but rarely helpful and it is apparent that the Council has never had any intention of entering into serious discussions with the University about the land remaining in educational use."

That is all that I shall quote; otherwise, you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will accuse me of repetition.

That quotation makes a weighty point about the council's treatment of the university, which the council has not taken seriously. Once the council gets the Bill in the form that it wants, it would not have to take the university seriously and will not do so. I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make that point.

I will address next the planning brief, which is new information. I should like to take the House through some aspects of that brief, which is a long document.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that he is speaking to a group of amendments. If he wants to use the planning brief to support his amendments, that will be all right--but he is not here simply to go through a series of documents.

Mr. Cohen: I will not do that, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will notice that I have just a few sheets of paper. Otherwise I might have read out the whole planning brief. In fact, of course, I would not have done so because you would have stopped me. I have selected key areas of the brief which relate to the use of the land for educational purposes and I will quote relevant parts in support of my amendments. I am sure that you will stop me if any of them are not relevant.

The planning brief is entitled "Main issues arising from the public consultation exercise" but, amazingly, it gives no specific consideration to educational use issues, particularly in respect of the university of Westminster. The extinction of the land for education purposes has been virtually taken for granted by Westminster council in its planning brief. That is shocking. One of the central arguments is that the site should be used for education purposes and that the university of Westminster should have first crack at the land--in other words, the option to use it. Yet the planning brief virtually ignores that argument. I accept that the argument is taken up in little bits but it is not dealt with coherently. It is not considered as an option.

The council has virtually taken it for granted that it will get its Bill through the House and thereby extinguish education use. That enhances the argument advanced by Dyson Bell Martin that the university has been treated extremely badly. Indeed, it has been virtually ignored by the council.

The planning brief refers to Howard de Walden Estates and a food supermarket. That is something that gets plenty of space in the brief. Indeed, it seems to have coloured the council's views. I shall not repeat that point, Madam Deputy Speaker. I merely say that the largest landowner in the area, Howard de Walden Estates, had a bearing on the council officers' views when they came to prepare the brief. There was little discussion about education use and plenty of discussion about a food supermarket and what Howard de Walden Estates wants. It is not an especially sensible planning brief.

The planning brief includes a planning history of the site. It states:

"It was intended to be a short term measure"--

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that is, the use of the site as a car park--

"pending redevelopment on a properly planned basis for educational purposes."

That does not mean a primary school but use for "educational purposes". That was stated in February 1995. That is what appears in the brief. The council officers make it clear that the land would be used for a car park

"pending redevelopment on a properly planned basis for educational purposes."

The officers have given the game away. The history of the land turned on "education purposes", and that is why it was given to Westminster. The Minister is again looking exasperated. Let him understand that I am referring to the words in the brief. There we have it, "education purposes". Whatever the result of the Division, the argument is won. The site should be used for "education purposes".

We are told in the brief that the policies set out in the development plan

"are guided by a number of long-standing planning objectives, of which maximising residential accommodation and ensuring a high quality environment are the most important to the development of the Moxon Street site."

It adds that new residential building

"is usually by way of demolition and replacement rather than providing substantial net increases of housing on previously non-residential land.

On the whole, however,opportunities for such gains in the future will be few."

It was referring to opportunities to obtain sites for social housing. The same goes for sites for educational purposes and opportunities to improve the environment. Such opportunities will be few. We are talking about a busy, built-up, urban area. The opportunities for social housing and educational land will be few. That was in the officers' brief.

9.15 pm

So why should a supermarket be put on the site? If it is a matter of scarcity, what should be the priority? The future opportunities of land for the university of Westminster, are not in Harrow, in Timbuctoo or on the moon, but in Westminster in central London. Aneurin Bevan said that socialism was the language of priorities. In many ways, politics is the language of priorities. The House has to decide on priorities. If the opportunities are few, I say that the land would be best used for educational purposes and some social housing rather than a supermarket. It is there in the planning brief. It says:

"opportunities for such gains in the future will be few."

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has made that point several times. I do not think that any of us can have failed to take it in.

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