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11.48 am
Mr. Richard Allan (Sheffield, Hallam): I congratulate the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) on securing the debate. He has inspired me to look up his books in the Library. If they refer to concepts such as site value rating, they will be excellent bedtime reading for a Liberal Democrat, as we find such things fascinating in the extreme.
Mr. Sanders: Better than mogadon.
The report is an excellent contribution to the debate on urban policy. I have been conducting an urban policy review for my party, and often, while reading the report, I wished that I had thought of something that was in it. We may have to review our review.
Cities have had a bad press. Many people love living in cities. Most people in Britain do so. I love Sheffield, and I think that I speak for most Sheffielders when I say
that I live in Sheffield because I want to. Nobody forces me to stay there. We can overdo the suggestion that cities are a zone of desperate flight out when in fact they are tremendously attractive places in which to live. I hope that we can move the agenda on to talking up cities a little more, talking about their advantages, particularly in terms of access to facilities.
Within striking distance of my home I have two excellent universities, two large and comprehensive hospitals offering a full range of services, two professional theatres and any number of amateur theatres to provide me with entertainment, and I can walk down Ecclesall road near my house and choose between 15 and 20 good restaurants. Not many rural dwellers have access to such a range of services. Those are real things that affect real people. To be able to walk out of one's door and have access to such a range of services is one of the principal attractions of living in a city. The real challenge is how to extend those advantages to everyone throughout the urban areas, and how to deal with some of the problem parts of those urban areas.
There is a huge difference between one part of a city and another. I am fortunate enough to represent the relatively well-off part of my city, but I know that, in terms of all the indicators--such as educational expectancy, and even life expectancy--there is a huge disparity between my area and other areas. We need to spread the advantages of living in some parts of a city across the whole urban area.
I want to discuss some key elements in the report. Mixed-tenure housing is crucial. Sheffield contains large estates where there is single-tenure housing, meaning that there is only one kind of tenant--the council tenant. It also contains housing association areas, where virtually everyone receives housing benefit. One problem is people's inability to stay in their areas; as soon as they can trade up, they get out. We should adopt some of the report's suggestions and bring about more imaginative sets of housing tenure. If we can do that, as people move up the social and economic spectrums they will choose to stay in their own areas, rather than fleeing to attractive suburbs.
Most cities suffer from the same inability to retain people in deprived areas as they move up the social spectrum. That is largely because the quality of housing that people expect as they move up the income scale simply is not there. Not many areas blighted by deprivation contain four and five-bedroomed homes with gardens. Sheffield has bold plans to redevelop some of the larger areas. I think that when cities redevelop they should concentrate on mixed tenure, rather than simply providing new housing with the same tenure as before.
A particularly bizarre scheme involves housing associations paying tenants to move out as soon as they have jobs and can afford their own housing. When those people are able to contribute to the local economy because they are in work, the housing associations want to replace them with people on housing benefit. That makes sense in terms of the housing association's role as a social housing provider, but I do not think that it does the areas concerned any good to bribe people to move out as soon as they become financially active.
Density is another important issue. The hon. Member for Totnes mentioned high-rise living. As we redevelop, there is a trend towards lower-density housing, but there
is now scope for us to consider, for instance, new urban terraces. Terraced houses were very attractive in Georgian times: people do not think of terraces in Bath as being deprived housing. I think that we can move back towards higher-density housing if we can overcome some of the other problems, such as transport and parking. If we simply redevelop all inner urban areas with much lower-density housing to make them more attractive, we may miss some of the benefits of being able to absorb extra housing stock in urban areas.
Attracting jobs into cities is vital. In terms of job creation, the north-south divide is very evident, but I think that it can be reversed. There was a fair amount of scepticism when the Midland bank--or HSBC, as I think we are now supposed to call it--moved its headquarters to Sheffield and began shipping in people from other parts of the country, but I understand that the staff love it there. They do not want to move away from Sheffield, where they have a tremendous quality of life.
If firms are bold enough, they can put jobs into cities in the north, in particular, without experiencing the problems that some may fear. EDS, the computer company, has just brought several hundred jobs in information technology into Sheffield. It understands that Sheffielders love Sheffield. It knows that if it recruits Sheffielders it will keep them for a few years, whereas if it sets up a business in the south-east--as it has in the past--it will train people, and a year later they will be gone. Urban areas, especially those outside the south-east, have a great deal to offer in terms of recruitment and retention. We should take advantage of that, rather than simply tipping the whole population out of the north and into the M4 corridor--where I am sure they are often unwelcome, because of the extra development requirements that they impose.
As the report points out, new technology is a key aspect. I hope that we can take advantage of the universities that are generally found in our urban areas. Cambridge is a leading example of the university cities that have introduced science parks. York is trying to do a similar thing with its "science city York" initiative, using the university to add value to the local economy. I hope that the Government will encourage that trend and work with universities to enable them to add value in that way. Such action can give us a leading market edge. It will be easier for us to attract jobs into urban areas if there are high-quality universities producing high-quality graduates who can offer the industrial marketplace something that other areas cannot. Our cities need unique selling points, and universities can provide them.
The brown-field site development initiatives are welcome, but, as has been said, they require incentives. I would look favourably on a green-field development Act, especially if it enabled us to absorb the extra money from such development and recycle it into the brown-field clean-up. The absence of such a virtuous circle often presents a barrier. British Gas sites, for instance, are often left empty because of the phenomenal costs of cleaning them up. Not everyone can put up a dome to help with those costs.
As the report suggests, compulsory purchase orders need looking at. We need to assemble attractive packages of land, but new development is often prevented by the holding of "ransom strips", which means that developers cannot secure the attractive packages that will make their developments viable.
We should also examine the role of city centres. Sheffield has a famous--or infamous--shopping centre, Meadowhall. It was recently sold, and I understand that some of the proceeds will fund the anti-euro campaign--courtesy of Mr. Paul Sykes, one of the developers of the site. Given that many shopping facilities have moved out of the city centres, we should consider their future role.
There are some very hopeful signs. I do not often praise the former city council regime in Sheffield, but I praise it for having introduced a new redevelopment scheme to make our open spaces in the centre more attractive. There is, I think, a significant role for the city centre as an area of public open space, offering entertainment and service facilities of every kind and, perhaps, moving away from the model of the centre as primarily a shopping area. Of course we need shops, but we should accept that time moves on and that city centres can provide more than a monoculture of retailing. Certainly Sheffield is trying to provide more attractive facilities to bring people in.
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