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10.45 pm
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): I have been watching the progress of the Bill through the House with growing incredulity. I have considerable regard for the Minister for the Regions, Regeneration and Planning, and no doubt he is regarded by his constituents as a good Member of Parliament; but the trouble is that he actually believes in the Bill, whereas what worries me is its monumental irrelevance.
The Bill is fundamentally flawed, and I have a fundamental objection to this sort of economic manipulation by any Government. Those of us who are on the wise side of 50 have seen it all before and we thought that the Labour Government might have learnt from their experiences of the Department of Economic Affairs and all that went with that. It is an amazing figment of Ministers' imagination that they believe that they can create a single job through the construction of some bureaucracy out in the country.
The Minister and I share a great deal--we share ancient constituencies in proud cities--but the proud city of Salisbury had eight Members of Parliament when it was first created, and it sent its first Members to Westminster in 1260; at that time, the Minister's city of Sheffield did
not have any Members of Parliament. We take the long view, which is quite clear: this sort of irrelevance will not help. Our country, our counties, our cities and our towns will thrive in spite of the Bill, not because of it. The Minister will win the vote tonight--of course he will--but he will not win the arguments, or our hearts and minds.
The other fundamental flaw, and my fundamental objection to the Bill, is the concept, in which the Minister believes, of a region or area. Clause 4 of this wretched Bill contains six mentions of "its area", meaning the development areas. What areas? What nonsense it is to suppose that we in my constituency of Salisbury have anything to do with what is going on in Gloucestershire, or, for that matter, in St. Ives and the Isles of Scilly. Regional identity is thrown to the winds by this ridiculous piece of legislation--it is utterly meaningless. All the Bill will do is suck democracy and accountability out of our districts and put them in the hands, in my case, of an overblown city in the west midlands called Bristol.
This ridiculous Bill is flawed, politically and economically, and will do little good. However, it does great harm to my constituents. The discourtesy of the Department last week in not informing me of the future of the Rural Development Commission is something that I would forgive, were it not for the fact that, after nearly a year of procrastination, those of my constituents who have given their all for the RDC still do not know whether they have jobs, or, if they do, whether those jobs will be with a new rural development agency or the Countryside Commission. They do not know what the RDC- Countryside Commission combination will be called, and they have no notion of what it will do, or of what their jobs will be.
The Bill is a complete mess--if only the Minister would come down out of the clouds, put his feet firmly on the ground and think for once about the economic prosperity of this country, rather than the creationof irrelevant bureaucracies and nonsensical pseudo-Parliaments.
Ms Jenny Jones:
I, too, shall be brief, as I know that several hon. Members wish to speak.
Regional development agencies will bring my region and every other region in England something that they have lacked for a considerable time: a coherent, co-ordinated, strategic approach to economic development and regeneration.
Hon. Members will confirm that, under the previous Government, there was no shortage of economic development initiatives. However, they were piecemeal, and were often dumped on local government, with no consultation with councillors and local business people. Experience was never acknowledged, and local people
were never listened to. That led to a very divisive approach, duplication of effort and to a waste of resources. Regional development agencies will bring a coherence to the regions that will ensure that the needs of all local people are met and that the regions can compete effectively in Europe.
Regional development agencies will also pose major challenges. As I have said, I recently attended a major conference in the midlands attended by hundreds of business men and people from the voluntary sector, local government, colleges and universities. They were extremely enthusiastic about the proposed West Midlands RDA, but they raised many questions.
There is no doubt that the boards of RDAs have a major responsibility to ensure that they are constituted properly, and that they meet the needs of all the people in the regions. There will also be challenges for the Government offices for the regions. They will have to learn how to work more effectively in order to meet local needs. What is known as the "district commissioner" approach to listening to and working with local people must change.
Mrs. Ellman:
Regional development agencies will be a breakthrough for the English regions, because they will combine commitment to an area with the ability to act in relation to investment in companies, the development of property and premises, business support, training and retraining.
I shall illustrate the way in which a development agency can affect an area by referring to Lancashire Enterprises, set up by the county council--of which I was vice-chairman between 1982 and 1997--and its work when Leyland-DAF collapsed in 1993, threatening devastation and the loss of thousands of jobs in Lancashire, and signalling the virtual end of truck making in the United Kingdom.
Lancashire Enterprises worked in partnership with the private sector, and, using its investment, training and development powers, helped to develop the current thriving Leyland Trucks. At the newly developed Lancashire Enterprises business park, nearly 1,900 people are employed by 45 different companies that did not exist in 1993. The area has been transformed, and it is now a centre of manufacturing activity. Truck making has continued, and has been strengthened. Wealth and employment continue to develop in the area.
A regional development agency will bring great support and benefit to the whole north-west. In my area, I look forward to a regional development agency ensuring that the benefits of Ford's major investment in the new Jaguar flow to small and medium enterprises throughout the area.
I look forward to the development of the creative industries. I look forward to the use of the knowledge base in our universities for commercial and community benefit. I look forward to seeing the benefits of the information society extended to all companies in the area. I look forward to the linking of that progress with
community-based economic regeneration. I look forward to a much closer link between Manchester and Liverpool airports, for the benefit of Merseyside and the whole of the north-west.
A regional development agency cannot exist in isolation. The present Government's policies of supporting business, especially small and medium enterprises, will be of benefit. It is essential that Government Departments such as the Department of Trade and Industry, as well as the Department for Education and Employment, work closely with the regional development agency. That is one reason why I regard the development and strengthening of regional chambers as an essential part of the strategy.
Mr. Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow):
Considering the Bill from a northern regional perspective, two questions need to be answered: what are the problems with existing regional policy, and do the RDAs, as presented in the Bill, address those problems?
It is plain to see that the present regional policy, which has been in place for many years, has been an abject failure. Nowhere is that more obvious than in the north-east, where I am fortunate enough to represent a constituency, where we have higher unemployment than many regions, lower wages, and a desperate need to improve skills. It is a disgrace, and an indictment of the previous Government, that the average age of the skilled worker on the Tyne is 47; if that is economic decline, we should acknowledge it.
The Government solutions of the past have been parachuted-in, Whitehall-designed schemes, coming down--top-down urban initiatives. We have heard them all before: task forces, urban development corporations, city action teams. The result is that things stay the same. Economic decline continues, local democracy is sidelined, and power is increasingly centralised in national Government.
Government neglect has meant that the regional stakeholders in the area have had to play their part to make up for the deficit of Government action. We have had private-public partnerships and trade union involvement. Eleven years ago, the Northern Development Company was set up by those people--and a successful partnership it has proved, creating 520 investment projects, 75,000 jobs and £9 billion of capital investment in the region. However, they are running hard--although successfully--to stand still.
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