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Mr. Matthew Banks: If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about the transport infrastructure in east London, can he explain why the Labour party scuppered the crossrail project?
Mr. Timms: I very much hope that crossrail will go ahead, and I believe that it will.
The key element in the transport infrastructure in east London is what is to happen to the channel tunnel rail link. When the Government announced in 1991 that the channel tunnel rail link was to be routed through east London, they said that the link would be welcomed in east London for the economic regeneration that it would bring. That was correct. I was leader of Newham council at the time, and we welcomed the announcement for that very reason.
Four years later, however, we still do not know for sure if there will be a station in east London. The Transport Select Committee rightly said that the station at Stratford was needed in the national interest, as well as in the interest of regenerating east London. We need the Government to confirm that they will allow the east London station to go ahead. East London faces Europe. It is the place where Europe reaches London, and the Government should join local authorities, training and enterprise councils and universities in exploiting it as an asset. We need both the east London international passenger station and a proper channel tunnel rail freight strategy. Good telecommunications are also vital, and we need a rapid development by the private sector of the new national communications networks mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South. Britain can become Europe's knowledge capital, but manufacturing requires high-capacity communications for computer-aided design. The networks will provide new highways for partnerships between companies, and
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between companies and universities. The Government need to provide the right framework and the leadership to ensure that the investment that is needed is quickly achieved.Finally, the Government need to ensure the availability of high-quality research data. The absence today of a clear picture of the condition of London's industry in a European context is becoming a critical problem. The standard industrial classification fails to show how the industrial sectors are converging and new ones emerging. Small and medium-sized companies need market data to understand how to expand into Europe, where 60 per cent. of our trade is now carried out.
We have tremendous needs in east London. Newham, with just over 200,000 inhabitants, has lost 50,000 jobs in the past 25 years. The Government have acknowledged that the regeneration of east London is a national priority, and manufacturing industry will be central to the success of that regeneration. Without it, we shall never create the decent long-term jobs that we need.
Manufacturing regeneration will happen only with targeted support for new business locations which are fitting for modern manufacturing companies, with creative partnerships between universities and industry, with a world- class transport and communications infrastructure and with high quality market data. Those do not require immense Government spending, but they do require Government action. Inaction will mean decline, a rapid worsening of the already severe deprivation that we face in east London and the unforgivable loss of an opportunity to provide enormous benefits to the whole nation. I do not say that the Government have done nothing--I have made it clear that I welcome a number of their initiatives--but much more needs to be done, as we cannot afford to miss these opportunities.
12.27 pm
Mr. Denis MacShane (Rotherham): I shall try to keep my remarks brief, as I am looking forward to the winding-up
speeches--particularly that of my old friend, the Under-Secretary. While preparing my thoughts on my short speech, I looked for some coherent policy -- [Interruption.] [Hon. Members:-- "She is walking out."] The right hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) can read my speech in Hansard tomorrow. Now I can say what I really think! We are seeing in effect the devaluation "boomlet" following our exit from the exchange rate mechanism petering out. The latest CBI industrial trends survey reveals that business investment is down, and previous speakers have identified a loss of confidence and job losses. There has also been a rise in unit labour costs, a far more important measure than productivity.
What worries me as a British Member of Parliament is that, when we talk about British manufacturing, we are talking more and more about foreign firms which happen to manufacture in this country. I have no objection in principle to that, but there is a problem that, for every pound of profit that Ford, Samsung or whoever makes in the United Kingdom, about 50p goes away to America, Korea or Japan.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Phillip Oppenheim): Does the hon. Gentleman know the proportion of British manufacturing that is foreign-owned?Mr. MacShane: What is most worrying-- [Hon. Members:-- "Answer the question."] I am looking forward to the Minister's speech, because he should give a clear-- [Hon. Members:-- "Answer the question."] Can the Minister name--
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. We cannot have a speech punctuated by various sedentary interventions.
Mr. MacShane: I invite the Minister to name a single car or computer manufacturer--they are still the key component industries for our future-- that is in British hands. That is why we are 18th in the world ranking of relative gross domestic product. We are out of the premier division and the first division. We have a third-rate Government, consisting of Ministers who, for the most part, are queuing up to join the National Westminster bank or GEC. When Amber Valley turns red at the next election, I wish the Under-Secretary good luck on his future job promotion prospects.
Mr. Sykes: The hon. Gentleman is a well-known pan-European Member. Can he tell me why this country, of all European countries, has attracted 40 per cent. of Japan's inward investment in Europe? Is it because of our deregulated market or the socialist policies followed here?
Mr. MacShane: The answer is simple--other European countries invest far more in themselves than we do. Investment per capita in Austria stands at 79.6 per cent.; in Belgium, 35 per cent.; and in Germany, 59 per cent. The equivalent investment in the United Kingdom is zero per cent. Even more alarming than the OECD's GDP per capita report is the report published in the summer by the World Economic Forum, which ranked the United Kingdom 35th out of 48 countries in terms of education and training in the world's manufacturing economy. Yesterday, we read that the Deputy Prime Minister has announced that he intends to set up a committee to consider why our industrial training is so poor. Frankly, he need only look in the mirror, because he and his Cabinet colleagues have presided over the destruction of apprenticeship schemes, the de-industrialisation to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) referred and the de-skilling and de-waging of our society. He and his successor at the Department of Trade and Industry seem to think that McDonalds and Burger King can replace the sinews of British manufacturing.
Do we have an identifiable industrial policy? That is certainly not evident at the Ministry of Defence. Its equivalent in other countries is a lead ministry in supporting the manufacturing sector. We have a Secretary of State for Defence who is so puffed up with his hatred of Europe, and so full of contempt for the necessary politics of international partnership, that he will sell Britain's defence manufacturing sector down the river. He will turn the British armed forces into demonstration teams for American arms dealers. The letters SAS on his office wall actually stand for "sell- off and scrap" what remains of the United Kingdom's defence industry.
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The hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) referred to subsidies. The haphazard policy of subsidisation, which does not seem to follow any coherent--Mr. Matthew Banks: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. MacShane: I do not wish to be discourteous, but I must make progress.
Mr. Banks: But the hon. Gentleman mentioned me.
Mr. MacShane: Very well, I shall give way for the last time.
Mr. Banks: When the hon. Gentleman referred to the haphazard nature of policies, I presume that he was referring to the policies of his own party rather than to my remarks.
We all know that £80 million has been given to Ford to keep Jaguar production in the west midlands and that £10 million was given to Samsung to expand in the north-east. I have no objection in principle to such funding, but such massive subsidies--more than £150 million offered to firms under the regional selective assistance scheme in the first three months of this year alone--make a mockery of the Government's efforts to outlaw the subsidies that are paid to certain companies in other European countries.
In common with other Opposition Members with an interest in steel, I have always supported the efforts of British Steel and Ministers to bring pressure to bear on the European Community to stamp out such subsidies. When our own Government send multi-million pound cheques to Ford at Detroit and Samsung in Korea that makes us look foolish and hypocritical as we campaign against European subsidies.
Mr. Oppenheim: What about Bridgend?
Mr. MacShane: The Under-Secretary may like to know that Samsung is a Korean firm.
This country has been offered the possibility of using European structural funds for the regeneration of steel regions such as my own, Rotherham. The European Commission steel area regeneration programme, known as RESIDER, had a budget of £224 million for 1988 to 1992. Because of Government inefficiency, we got only £4.14 million of that, despite the fact that our steel industry suffered the biggest job losses in Europe. The second stage of that initiative, known as RESIDER II, has been allotted reduced funds for 1997 99.
That programme, together with initiatives on the textile and coal industries, and those concerning military conversions, have been allocated £394 million for 1994-97, and £315 million for 1997-99. We will get £50 million for those industries, but so far the Government have not said that that money from Brussels will be used to support the steel, textile and coal industries and the military conversion sector. Many in the steel industry fear that that money will be used to buy votes in marginal seats in the south rather than to support the conversion and re- industrialisation of the steel sector. I want to hear the Under-Secretary pledge that European cash for steel under the RESIDER II programme will be allocated to help conversion
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programmes in Rotherham and other steel communities. It would be the most cynical corruption of that programme's money were it to be used for any other purpose.I look for some balance and equilibrium. We need a service industry and a healthy financial services sector, but we also need a new industrial programme. That is why I welcome the proposals announced this morning by the shadow Chancellor. Under Labour again, we need a one-nation manufacturing policy in which industry and manufacturing will once again be given their rightful place.
12.36 pm
Dr. Kim Howells (Pontypridd): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe) on initiating this debate. I am sure that my congratulations reflect the admiration felt for him by everyone in the Chamber.
We have had a good debate. I was especially glad that my hon. Friend saw fit to begin his speech by highlighting the cultural problem from which we still seem to suffer concerning the status of the manufacturing sector. I know from his previous speeches that the Under-Secretary is also concerned about that. I hope that he will address that issue today and tell us whether he has any new ideas to reward those employed in that sector; they would then receive the recognition that they deserve for their central role in our economy and society.
I hope that the Under-Secretary will also address the critical questions raised by my hon. Friend about the extremely worrying slump in industrial investment. We have great firms--there is no question about that--and we should celebrate them a lot more than we do. We must also address the serious problem of under-investment, which was the theme of much of today's debate. As my hon. Friend pointed out, the average level of investment in the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1993 as a share of the economy was the lowest of the G7 countries. The August inflation report from the Bank of England noted that investment is now 20 per cent. below the level that it was in previous recoveries. That is a significant indicator, and I hope that the Under-Secretary will pay careful attention to it.
The statistics quoted by my hon. Friend reinforced vividly the case made this morning by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), who called for urgent Government action to arrest this country's relative decline in the league table of national income per head, which was published by the OECD. I have no doubt that the Under-Secretary will want to explain why the United Kingdom has slumped from 13th to 18th place in the league table.
Mrs. Jane Kennedy (Liverpool, Broadgreen): That is not likely.
Dr. Howells: I hope that the Under-Secretary will do so. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South mentioned that in 1851 Britain had the most dynamic economy in the world. Like me and hundreds of thousands other others in this country, he bitterly regrets our relative decline as a manufacturing country. We are proud of our industrial heritage. Those who try to pour scorn on what we argue should realise that that is where we come from.
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When I read tables that chart our continuing relative decline, it offends me. I do not want Britain to be outstripped in the prosperity league table by countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, Hong Kong and Singapore--countries that have never enjoyed a fraction of the benefits that we have enjoyed of mighty natural resources of coal, gas and oil and our wonderful geographical location as one of the great trading nodes of the Atlantic and European economies. The Under- Secretary must tell us why we have slumped under his Government's management and why, with some of the world's finest scientists and greatest educational traditions, we continue to invest less in our manufacturing industries than do our competitors. He might try to explain how we can begin to educate and train our people and to modernise our welfare state so that it provides new incentives for employment and skills and the opportunity for Britain to tap the enormous creative potential of the 2 million people, many of them young, who are trying to find a pathway from welfare into work. Most important of all, perhaps the Under-Secretary will tell us when and how the Government intend to construct a modern competition policy capable of tackling the sort of monopolies and market rigging by vested interests that is holding the country back. He must know that competitiveness abroad depends on greater competition at home. It also depends, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) said, on recognising the urgent need for the Government to be proactive and infinitely more energetic in transforming potential business locations such as Newham--and scores of other places the length and breadth of the country --where old industries have died and where there remains a crying need for properly targeted support for new business locations and, as my hon. Friend put it so well, for creative partnerships to be developed between universities and industries.As my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East said, the need to encourage high-quality research, and to collect and disseminate accurate data on that research, is of central importance if our universities, training and enterprise councils, business links, local authorities and all the other agencies operating in and around the sector are to succeed in playing a part in the transformation of our manufacturing industry.
The great success of co-ordinated ventures, where they have occurred, should be replicated across the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Dudley, West (Mr. Pearson) stressed the need for the regions of England to have a greater say in shaping the economies of the regions in the way that we in Wales and Scotland have done through our development agencies. That would help to encourage that sense of belonging, identity and pride that was such an important component of industrial success a century ago right across these islands.
As all my hon. Friends emphasised, there must be a sane and urgent assessment of our transportation and telecommunications infrastructure if we are to maintain our position as manufacturing producers and world traders. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South observed, congestion, whether in our airports or on our roads, railways or telecommunications highways can only waste our resources and energy as manufacturers.
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Let the Government be under no illusion: the Labour party has no higher priority than to address the problem of how to arrest the trend of relative decline in investment and prosperity.As one who has been associated in various capacities with the coal mining industry in this country on and off over 20 years, I have few illusions about the performance and nature of publicly owned enterprises and what can happen as a result of overcentralised planning and management. I witnessed the meddling hands of Whitehall combined with the half-witted prejudices and dogmas of those on the Government Benches strangle what little spirit of initiative remained in the industry by the early 1980s. Nor do I doubt that, perhaps even by the late 1960s, the National Coal Board's management mechanisms for deciding production and investment policy were wholly incapable of responding to the demands of rapidly changing markets and energy technologies.
Those short histories apply more or less equally to a range of industries, including key ones such as car and motor cycle manufacture. For those who were born and raised in communities that depended on those enterprises, the experience of the past couple of decades has been painful in the extreme. As we heard in the debate, no one understands that experience better than my hon. Friends. Labour has every wish to ensure that never again will our communities be forced to endure the rates of unemployment and social deprivation that resulted in no small part from the inability of those charged with managing our economy to understand the changing demands of the market, to help ease the pains of transition and to provide the infrastructure required by modern manufacturing. I recognise the strengths and benefits of a market economy but also the need to guard against market failure where the market is not delivering a solution that benefits consumers and customers. Where that happens, we should be able to design a minimum amount of intervention as a corrective so that the market works for the benefit of the many and not the few, if Government economic and industrial policy is to be designed to produce a better, more equitable and more prosperous society.
We have had a helpful debate today. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Scarborough (Mr. Sykes) could not give us the benefit of his great experience by telling us how we should run the economy. I am sure that his interventions have been helpful.
More helpful, however, have been the contributions of my hon. Friends. I hope that the Under-Secretary will take them seriously and give us some answers.
12.46 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Phillip Oppenheim): I thank the hon. Member for Pontypridd (DrHowells) for the spirit of his comments. He will be disappointed to learn that I agree with some of them and with some of the comments of the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), whose choice of debate I welcome. It is an important issue.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South mentioned that too often in Britain manufacturing is regarded as a second-rate option. We have a cultural aversion to
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manufacturing. Britain must be the only country in the developed world where, if people say that they are engineers, it is thought that they have come to mend the washing machine. That is not the job of an engineer--not that there is anything wrong with people who mend washing machines.The hon. Member for Bradford, South is also right to believe--this has pervaded the debate--that our manufacturing decline started not in 1979, as some people have liked to try and make out over the past 15 years, but in the 1850s or 1860s. We have had a long period of relative decline in manufacturing.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield): It is the Whigs' fault then?
Mr. Oppenheim: It is the Whigs' fault. The hon. Gentleman has put his finger unerringly on it.
Mr. Oppenheim: That is probably why they have not turned up, not that there are many of them. There is a difference between Whigs and Liberals. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. MacShane) should read his 19th -century history.
I disagree with the hon. Member for Bradford, South about the idea that the decline has somehow continued. In fact, as I hope to show, we have shown some improvement, not necessarily since 1979 but certainly since the early 1980s, and tribute should be paid to that. My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Mr. Banks) mentioned some other points on which I disagreed with the hon. Member for Bradford, South.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South talked about the ascent of the Asian tigers as being largely the result of protection and industrial policy. That is a little simplistic. For one thing, Hong Kong and Singapore have been very open markets, relatively speaking, and have had little in the way of industrial strategy. Between 1982 and 1994, those countries increased their imports four times but Britain's exports to those countries increased by five times. That shows that the picture is not only of decline; there are areas where we have done very well indeed.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South also mentioned that we had to have a visionary industrial plan. Visionary industrial plans are rather easier to talk about than implement. I seem to recollect from my childhood and student days that we had a visionary industrial plan in Britain the 1960s and 1970s; I shall return to its results later. The hon. Member for Rotherham seems to want a policy of guns, not butter, and to believe that Britain should somehow pour money into an industrial strategy to encourage the arms industry, which sets him at odds with many members of his party. He also seems to think that inward investment is not a totally good thing because we lose control, and he said that the investment in this country by Samsung and by Ford was a mixed blessing. Inward investment has gone on for many years. In fact, one of the few successes in inward investment under the last Labour Government was a huge Ford engine plant in Bridgend that was financed from the United States.
I thought that the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) made many very valid points about the link between education and industrial
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performance. I shall return to that issue later. Many people are hung up on the idea of industrial strategy and Governments doing this, that or the other. We can assist industry by improving education and training. The hon. Gentleman should probably have given the Government some credit for the fact that the number of people in higher education has increased from 10 per cent. to 30 per cent. Although they need some fine tuning, the launch of national vocational qualifications is a huge step toward improving vocational education.The hon. Member for Rotherham or the hon. Member for Bradford, South--I forget which--referred to the British Telecom agreement as a great example of the way forward in leading edge industrial strategy. BT has pulled a fast one over the Opposition, and it will be laughing all the way to the bank. It appears that, in return for cabling hospitals and schools--many of which are cabled anyway--it will have a virtual monopoly over the provision of cable services nationwide. I must inform the hon. Gentlemen that cabling is free. However, the subscriptions paid afterwards are not free, and BT has not agreed to waive those charges. That is a classic example of the naivety of the Labour party when it comes to negotiating with organisations such as BT. It is the consumer who will suffer from carve-ups of the market by vested interests.
I conclude my canter over the territory covered by Labour speeches by mentioning an advertisement that appeared this morning in The Times and possibly in some other lesser journals. It purported to show that Britain has slipped from 13th to 18th in terms of gross domestic product per head. There was one glaring mistake in the advertisement: it claimed that France had overtaken us, whereas in fact France overtook us during the period of the previous Labour Government.
The hon. Member for Rotherham might also be interested to learn that the figures in the advertisement have been achieved by inserting Hong Kong and Singapore, which were not included in previous tables. It is true that Hong Kong and Singapore produce more per head than we do. They are great paragons of the relatively open market and low taxation. According to the World bank, Hong Kong and Singapore also rank above Germany, Japan and France--so we are not in bad company in that respect.
Many Labour speeches have the pervading theme that markets are imperfect, and that therefore Governments should step in to perfect what Labour Members call "market failures". I am a free marketeer who agrees that markets are imperfect--very few things in this world are perfect. I am afraid that the idea that politicians and civil servants can step in and resolve market imperfections has been disproved by a long litany of failed interventions on the part of politicians and civil servants. Markets are imperfect, but unfortunately the decisions made by politicians and civil servants to try to correct market failures are even more imperfect.
Politicians are at a disadvantage in that regard. The market is an aggregate of thousands, sometimes millions, of decisions by the people most concerned with it: investors, consumers, shareholders and workers. Their aggregate decisions are likely to be better than those decisions made by politicians and civil servants who almost invariably do not have access to the same information.
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Even if they did have such access, as hon. Members who remember the 1970s will know all too well, the decisions of politicians and civil servants are distorted by vested interests. Politicians and civil servants are influenced by vested interests, and the most politically powerful vested interests will receive most of the money. Labour Members seemed to think that British manufacturing has done particularly badly in the past 15 years. The 1960s and 1970s were probably the nadir of British manufacturing under Governments of all political persuasions, not just Labour Governments. The performance of British industry during that period was so poor that many foreign observers genuinely wondered whether Britain had a real future as an industrial nation. Poor labour relations and low productivity in huge swathes of our manufacturing industry led to Britain's falling further and further behind our main competitors and to a steady decline in our share of the world market for manufactured goods. In the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, Britain was bottom of the G7 countries when it came to growth in manufacturing productivity and output. Growth in manufacturing output actually fell between 1974 and 1979. Let us not forget that those were the days of grandiose state-sponsored industrial strategies, when British Steel was the world's largest loss maker and British Leyland cars were, sadly, the butt of musical hall jokes--that is when the nightshift was not asleep or on strike.The hon. Member for Pontypridd correctly pointed out that the decline in manufacturing in the early 1980s proved very painful for many communities. Conservative Members must recognise that fact. Mining areas in my constituency suffered not just in the early 1980s but in the 1960s and 1970s when Labour Governments closed many pits. We must realise that mining communities underwent a painful transformation.
However, Labour Members should also recognise that manufacturing output has expanded rapidly since the early 1980s to make up the lost ground. I think that Labour Members know in their heart of hearts that much of the industry that was lost in the early 1980s was inefficient and unsustainable capacity, which was kept alive on a drip-feed of Government subsidies and protection from foreign competition.
Since then, the growth in Britain's manufacturing output has not only made up all that lost ground, and more, but put us on the G7 manufacturing output average. We have moved from the bottom to the middle of the league. A much more important figure is the growth in productivity. During the 1960s and 1970s, we were
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bottom of the tables for productivity growth in manufacturing. During the 1980s and 1990s, we moved to the top of that league. British manufacturing productivity was higher than that of Japan, Germany, France and Italy during the 1980s and 1990s.A recent independent report has shown that we have made up three quarters of the productivity gap between Britain and Germany. In every decade since the war until the early 1980s, the productivity gap between Britain and Germany widened. Since 1980, we have made up three quarters of that lost ground. Labour Members should recognise that there have been some successes as a result of factors such as increased competition and privatisation.
Companies such as British Steel, that were almost basket cases are now highly successful. British Steel is the fourth largest steel producer in the world. It is highly profitable, it exports half of its output and it supplies 80 per cent. of the domestic market. The Rolls-Royce aero-engines company, which was almost written off in the 1970s, doubled its share of the market for civil aero engines following privatisation. Privatisation and the hands-off approach has had an effect. I also believe that sounder monetary policy and lower taxes and inflation have created a more stable environment. We must improve our standards of education if we are to close the remaining gap between Britain and the best economies, such as Germany and Japan. We have not overtaken those countries; we have caught up a lot of lost ground, but we still have some to make up. Hon. Members on both sides of the House accept that education has been our Achilles' heel since the middle of the 19th century. I hope that we are about to reach some sort of consensus on the issue. We must improve vocational education and ensure high standards in education. In the past, Labour Members have opposed many of our education reforms. However, in their heart of hearts, I believe that they accept that many, if not all, of the reforms were necessary and worth while. Conservative Members accept that those reforms take some time to bed down. It takes time to change the culture of an education system that has been in place for 30 or 40 years. We must recognise that some disruption will occur.
However, there are no magic solutions that will improve manufacturing performance. We must improve education and training, and ensure a stable monetary policy that maintains low inflation, which will allow manufacturing industry to invest for the long term and get away from short- termism. We must have a low-tax regime that does not crowd out the manufacturing sector.
Although we continue to have differences, the opinions of Conservative Members and Labour Members about those issues are a great deal closer together than they were 15 years ago. I recognise that we have not done everything right, but I hope that Opposition Members will acknowledge that we have made significant progress in making our manufacturing industry more competitive and productive and increasing output since 1989.
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Motorway Service Area (Iver)12.59 pm
Mr. Tim Smith (Beaconsfield): I am grateful for the opportunity to draw attention to the important matter of the proposed motorway service area at Iver on the M25 in my constituency.
I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister for Railways and Roads will reply to the debate, not only because he is the Minister responsible for that aspect of policy, but because, as the hon. Member for Slough, he knows that part of the country as well as anyone, and is especially well qualified to make a judgment about that important matter.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for the fact that he has agreed later to receive a petition that I hold in my hand, which was signed by nearly 2,000 local people and which gives some sign of the strength of feeling about this proposal. I am especially grateful to those people who have gone to great lengths and put in a great deal of hard work to collect all those signatures, especially Mrs. Eileen Sibley, who is secretary of the Iver Lane and district residents association, who personally collected about 800 signatures.
An inspector appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment has recommended that a motorway service area should be built on the M25 at Woodlands Park, Iver, in my constituency. In my opinion, that is one of the most perverse and indefensible planning recommendations that I have ever come across. I am grateful for the opportunity to explain to the House why it should not be allowed to proceed.
There are three motorway service areas on the M25--one each in the north, south and east quadrants. It is generally agreed that there is a need for a fourth motorway service area in the western quadrant, as the distance between the one in the north and the one in the south is 63 miles. I do not disagree with that conclusion, although I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the fact that Woodlands Park is 24 miles from the one in the north but 39 miles from the one in the south, so it is by no means equidistant between the two.
The history of that matter is, as my hon. Friend confirmed to me in a written reply last week, that the Department of Transport commissioned a survey of possible sites in July 1984. That led to an announcement, in 1988, that the Department would promote a motorway service area at Iver. However, that was not the Woodlands Park site, but a site on the other side of the M25, between Iver Village and Richings Park. In the end, for various reasons, no planning application was submitted.
In 1989, the Department of Transport announced a fresh search for a motorway service area site on the western quadrant. Soon after, the provision of motorway service areas was deregulated, and the search for a suitable site was abandoned.
We now move to February 1994, when Cape Plc and Corporate Land Ltd. submitted three planning applications for a motorway service area at Woodlands Park. Those were determined by Buckinghamshire county council, because that site is the subject of an existing minerals and waste disposal planning permission.
When the applications were submitted, the Department was still proposing to build link roads along the M25
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between the M4 and the M40. Since then, it hasabandoned that proposal, and instead proposes to build a fifth lane in each direction to accommodate the increased traffic. I believe that it was for that reason that the Department directed the county council to refuse planning permission.The Department gave two reasons. The first was that the development of a motorway service area would be incompatible with the link road proposals; obviously, that objection is no longer relevant. The second was that the motorway service area would be incompatible with the use of the motorway in its present state, as regards both the safety and function of the motorway as part of the national system for through traffic. I believe that reason to be as relevant today as it was last year. Indeed, I believe it to be a conclusive reason not to implement that scheme.
Although the county council had no choice but to refuse the planning application, it considered all the other issues arising from it. It concluded that planning permission should be refused for those reasons, too.
First, the council said that it had not been demonstrated that that was the proven optimum site in the western quadrant of the M25. Secondly, it said that it had not been demonstrated that the development on a former waste disposal site could be carried out safely during and after construction. Thirdly, it said that the proposed hotel was not a necessary facility, and might become a destination in its own right.
Fourthly, the council said that the motorway service area, because of its excessive size and unsatisfactory siting, would be unduly obstructive and detrimental to the visual and residential amenities of the occupiers of neighbouring residential properties and to the character of the area. Fifthly, it said that the MSA would, according to the advice of the National Rivers Authority, be at direct risk of flooding, and would increase the risk of flooding elsewhere. Cape Plc and Corporate Land Ltd. appealed against the refusal of planning permission. Between 22 November and 9 December 1994, the inspector appointed by the Secretary of State to consider the appeal held a public inquiry at the Evreham centre, Swallow street, Iver. Evidence was given by the appellants and by Buckinghamshire county council and individual witnesses, included County Councillor Mrs. Audrey Bainbridge, County Councillor Mrs. Ros Wingrove, District Councillor Mr. Richard Worrall, and Mrs. Sibley, whom I have mentioned.
Those individual witnesses said that, for many years, local residents had suffered the adverse effects of two previous exploitations of the site-- mineral extraction and industrial waste filling--as well as those arising more recently from the addition of fourth lanes to the M25. Now, just as the site has been restored to a rural appearance, they are confronted with the prospect of further and permanent damage to their residential environment by the construction and subsequent operation of a massive motorway service area.
Those witnesses told the inquiry that noise and air pollution levels in the locality, not least from the M25, are already high, and would be further aggravated by the appeal proposals.
Those witnesses said that asbestosis and related diseases are well known at first hand in the locality, including numerous deaths, especially of former employees of Cape. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend
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the Member for Uxbridge (Sir M. Shersby) in his place, since many of his constituents will be affected by that proposal. Later, he will say a few words about an aspect that we both consider extremely important--what will happen when the site is dug up and asbestos, which is buried in the site, is exposed.The local objectors also claim that the assessment of need for a motorway service area does not take into account the relative proportions of long- haul and short-hop traffic on the M25. Lastly, but by no means least, they said that the motorway service area, with its approach roads and its overbridges, would have a devastating visual impact on the present rural appearance of the site. I deal now with the inspector's conclusions. The inspector complains that neither Buckinghamshire county council nor South Buckinghamshire district council nor any other local authority has even mentioned an alternative site. What does the inspector mean by that? Is he saying that the planning authority is required to consider a planning application not only on its absolute merits but on its merits relative to the merits of a range of hypothetical alternatives? If so, he is talking nonsense.
As the director of planning services of South Buckinghamshire council said in a letter to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Croydon, Central (Sir P. Beresford), dated 29 September, local authorities are not in a position to carry out a detailed analysis of propositions concerning alternative sites. Local authorities do not have the responsibility or the resources to do that. Councils have not been asked to do that by the Government; nor did the inspector state that that was required in this case.
If an applicant seeks to demonstrate that an exception should be made to green belt policy, the onus must surely be on that applicant to prove that there are no suitable alternative sites. That was not done satisfactorily in this case. For the inspector to imply criticism of local authorities and to expect an optimum site to be put forward by them is wholly unacceptable. Given that the inspector has not been able to say that Woodlands Park is the optimum site suggests that the decision is flawed.
The inspector's logic is as follows: we need an MSA in the western quadrant of the M25; the whole of the western quadrant is in a green belt area, so we must make an exception to green belt policy and put the MSA in the green belt; no one has come up with a satisfactory alternative to Woodlands Park, so Woodlands Park it must be. That is the logic of the madhouse, but it is, of course, partly due to deregulation.
The Department of Transport abandoned the strategic approach to MSA site evaluation in favour of a more free-market approach. Although that may be acceptable generally, I doubt whether it makes a great deal of sense when there is a presumption against development in the entire area of search.
As I said, the proposed site is 24 miles from the northern motorway service area on the M25, but 39 miles from the southern one. That suggests that the optimum site would be some seven or eight miles further south than Woodlands Park, somewhere to the south of the M4. However, it is not my job to propose alternative sites, nor
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