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9.26 pm
Mr. Christopher Fraser (Mid-Dorset and North Poole): I shall keep my comments brief because I know that other hon. Members would like to speak.
We have heard it said several times this evening that the millennium dome was conceived by the previous Government. My right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) described the purpose of the project in the evidence that he gave the Select Committee in 1997. He described the legacy that the previous Government had hoped the dome would leave as an image of the country at the forefront of cultural, artistic, engineering and scientific activity and attainment. It was to have a sense of unity, bringing the nation together and, of course, regenerating a derelict and contaminated area of London. That was his vision and it was ours. However, it was destroyed when the Millbank machine took control. When the Labour party decided to make the millennium dome a symbol of new Labour, it took that vision away.
It is easy to point to the Conservative party and say that it was our idea, but the tragedy of the dome is not its design but the Government's shameful hijacking of the nation's project for its own ends. Quite simply, people do not want to see what the Government have presided over. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) said:
- those looking for fun might prefer a theme park, and those hoping to learn something might do better to visit the Science museum.
- it must be a mixture of exciting and serious stuff.
Mr. Gale: Does my hon. Friend also accept that when this vision was dreamt of, there were people in the House--on both sides, to be fair--who believed that the millennium dome might just have something to do with the millennium, as a celebration of the birth of Christ, which has not been mentioned tonight?
Mr. Fraser: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that comment. In evidence to the Select Committee, Ministers could not even decide whether the dome should have a faith zone. I refer back to that evidence, which makes interesting reading.
The failure of the dome comes down to visitor numbers. The business plan was based on the assumption that it would attract 12 million visitors. However, the figure was arrived at before the contents of the dome were decided. The ticket prices had not been decided and the decision not to allow cars near the dome had not been made. Those are contributory factors to the lower than expected visitor numbers. I go back to what I said earlier to the Secretary of State about what Mr. Keith Bales, the senior Disney executive, said to the Select Committee about the visitor numbers and the people in charge of the dome. The Secretary of State did not answer that point and I hope that the Minister will do so in her reply.
There was great scepticism about people on the board and great scepticism about the numbers. The Government had three years in which to talk further to Disney, but they did not. They went cap in hand only at the last moment.We can look back at the figures I have jotted down. By November 1998, it was estimated that 8.74 million people were "likely" to visit the dome and that a further 3.65 million "could be persuaded" to do so. However, as the report states, those surveys excluded education groups and potential overseas visitors. The company considered that that provided comfort for the overall projection of 12 million visitors.
Such figures may have provided comfort until the Prime Minister announced that a million schoolchildren would be allowed to visit the dome for free. I do not object to that in principle, but the business plan should have revised given the direct revenue cost of about £7 million. That did not happen, and decisions were taken in the light of the knowledge that the company saw risks that the dome would
- not be a priority for many overseas visitors, who would be more likely to visit the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace . . .
-
However, despite that knowledge, the dome was still allowed to open with little idea of what would happen if the number of visitors fell below 12 million.
- in essence . . . the strategy had been to draw on the cost contingency and to plan on the expectation of receiving proceeds from the sale of the Dome.
The Government cannot claim that no one foresaw the problem of visitor numbers. The NAO report states:
- the Commission's staff had recommended that the Company's business plan be based, for the sake of prudence, on the figure of eight million visitors which was the "worst case" of the estimates provided to the Commission by its consultants, Deloitte & Touche Consulting Group.
Mr. Sheerman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Fraser: No. The hon. Gentleman wasted my time and that of the House when he tried to intervene on me during a previous debate, and I shall not give him that privilege this evening.
When leaving the sinking ship, the Minister then responsible, who is now the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, told the Millennium Commission:
- It is not public money, no. It is lottery money.
- in the context of accountability, this is a distinction without a difference. It is not money raised by taxation and it may be excluded from certain public expenditure definitions, but it is still taxpayers' money, and expenditure which must be held to account in the same way as money paid in taxation, whether directly or indirectly.
The project has been mismanaged by the Government, who tried to take it on and use it for their own political advantage. What the Prime Minister has said beggars belief. He said:
- we will say to ourselves with pride: this is our Dome, Britain's Dome. And believe me, it will be the envy of the world.
The Government have made a mess of the dome, with the politicisation, the over-hype, the interference and the insistence on filling it with politically correct nonsense that no one wants to see--but there is a vital component missing: accountability. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey has said, Lord Falconer has talked about what has gone on at the dome but has not apologised.
The Government have not apologised, and tonight they should come forward and say that they have made mistakes. To help them on their way, I remind the Secretary of State that the then Minister told the Select Committee:
- I will come on any occasion to meet any of my colleagues in Parliament and provide them with any information on a public or confidential basis . . . in order to make sure that people like you are satisfied that we are acting in a proper and transparent way. You have that undertaking from me today.
9.35 pm
Mr. Clive Efford (Eltham): I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your elevation to the Chair.
A comparison of the contributions made by the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and his Front-Bench colleague the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr. Ainsworth) makes it clear why the Conservatives will not be trusted by the people and will not win the general election. Their shabby opportunism and the shallowness of their debate on the dome have shown the shifting sands beneath them as they try to duck responsibility for the decisions that they took in the past. They do the House no credit.
The overriding matter affecting and undermining the dome has been its visitor numbers. We all accept that the estimates were not realistic. Although revisions were made several times by both the previous and present Governments, at no stage did estimated figures fall below 10 million visitors. We shall never know the full effect of what the right hon. Member for Henley called the vilification and undermining of the dome project. How many visitors were prevented from going to the dome because of negative publicity and the sniping that it has consistently endured?
The dome represents a major regeneration achievement. The Royal Arsenal used to employ 80,000 workers not far from the Greenwich peninsula, but that figure had fallen to 6,000 by the beginning of the 1990s. As a former Greenwich councillor, I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Henley and his colleagues who heard our pleas for redevelopment of the site. It is not true that it was not included in docklands development because the previous Government made a mistake. In fact, the private sector was not prepared to take on the huge cost of decontaminating the site. The commercial return on investment would have taken too long to be realised. Only a scheme on the scale of the millennium experience, underwritten by the Government, could ever have resulted in regeneration that would bring the site back into use. No private investor was prepared to carry out that regeneration. I hope that the dome remains, because, now that decontamination has happened, I am sure that people will be lining up who would like to get their hands on that prime piece of real estate on the river front.
We should consider the benefits of the dome. The halo effect for job creation was projected to be 25,000. There are 5,700 operational jobs at the dome, and 2,300 employ people who live in Greenwich, a borough that was the 14th most deprived in the country when the scheme was conceived. Some 300 acres of derelict land have been decontaminated, and there are 50 acres of new park,
including ecological park and terraces. There are 1,004 new homes in the millennium village, of which 266 will be for rent. There are two miles of river walk and cycleway. There is a new, 160-room hotel, and a 14-screen multiplex. All that, plus new schools and health centres, is happening on the millennium peninsula because of the investment that came in around the millennium project.Is the Conservative party seriously saying that it would have turned its back on all that regeneration in south-east London?
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