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10.27 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Ms Beverley Hughes): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs. Ellman) on securing this debate about the regeneration of a very important city in the UK. I recognise also her long experience in working to secure regeneration through local government, and her hard work since becoming a Member of Parliament to help Liverpool get back to where it ought to be--one of our foremost cities.
My hon. Friend has outlined some of the ways in which we can begin to see the seeds of change. There has been much progress in Liverpool city centre recently.
Liverpool Vision--to which my hon. Friend referred--is the first urban regeneration company, and is building on that progress. The city centre is the prime location of high-quality jobs, business and tourism.
My hon. Friend is right to say that Liverpool Vision must ensure that the wonderful potential of the sites and historic buildings of Liverpool can make the city a place for the new millennium--more jobs, more homes and more places to visit. That means improving accessibility, and the public realm, and adding value to what is already there.
If we are to achieve sustainable growth in those areas, we must involve people and communities, and build real partnerships that draw on the strength and experience of everybody. It will be important for Liverpool Vision to produce a top-quality bid in single regeneration budget round 6, which embodies the principles of sustainability and social inclusion.
We have noted that the North-West development agency has produced its strategy for the region, and that strategy recognises the regeneration of Liverpool city centre as an early priority. The agency is a founding member of Liverpool Vision and is working closely with all the partners to bring forward a strategy to help Liverpool become a world-class city. The agency believes that concentrating on the city centre is crucial to changing the economic prospects for the city as a whole. Many of the proposals likely to emerge from Liverpool Vision will require resources from the agency over the next 10 or even 15 years.
There has been much movement in the city council, with a new chief executive with an excellent track record of achieving change. Sweeping changes are taking place in the council's management, with clear portfolios of responsibility, a new Cabinet-style structure and a smaller management team. I wish David Henshaw well in his new role and assure him of our continued support.
The Liverpool democracy commission has tapped into, and revealed, tremendous popular concern about the kind of local government that the city needs for its future and has made some radical and exciting proposals, including a directly elected mayor. Many winds of change are blowing and things are beginning to happen that bode well.
My hon. Friend rightly raised the issue of the Walton group and the Exchange Flags project. The Walton Commercial Group Ltd. was awarded a grant of £4.5 million in July 1992 towards the refurbishment of the Exchange Flags building in the city centre. It was to provide 400,000 sq ft of refurbished office space and a museum. Total grant payments of nearly £4.5 million were made between November 1992 and May 1994, against claimed qualifying expenditure of more than £27 million. The situation regarding the project's realisation is much as she described.
The Government are taking the issues extremely seriously. English Partnerships, acting as agents for the Secretary of State, is reviewing the project and the use to which the grant has been put. English Partnerships has given notice of its intention to exercise its right under the terms of the agreement to enter the premises and carry out an inspection of the works and of the relevant books and records of the Walton group. I assure my hon. Friend that the Government will ensure that a thorough and determined approach is taken to investigating all those matters involving the Walton group.
I stress that the Government are trying to help regeneration in Liverpool across the board, through a variety of mainstream programmes as well as specific regeneration initiatives. That includes health, education and housing.
Liverpool has been chosen to have two new education action zones, in Dingle, in Granby and Toxteth and in Speke-Garston. Both will begin work next spring. That is an important success for Liverpool. More than 120 applications to run zones were received in round 2 and only 48 were shortlisted for further development.
As part of "Excellence in Cities", two new beacon schools for Liverpool were announced by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education and Employment on 23 November: the King David high school and St. Malachy's primary school. They are among the best-performing schools in the country and are examples of successful practice that are being brought to the attention of others with a view to sharing that practice. City learning centres will provide state-of-the-art information and communication technology-based learning opportunities for pupils, teachers and the wider community and will be based in the inner city.
Merseyside has a strong health action zone comprising the local and health authorities across Merseyside. It is the largest HAZ in England and has been allocated £13.7 million over the next three years. It has been operational only since May but several projects are already under way. It is concentrating on developing the strongest possible partnerships with delivery agencies in a well-focused attack on health inequalities. The first mid-year review, conducted in October, was well received and the mood was upbeat.
The work to find housing solutions for the inner core of Liverpool is crucial but we must have a strategy linking into Liverpool Vision's across-the-board work. Liverpool has already done excellent work on homelessness, refugees and asylum seekers, anti-social behaviour and supported housing. I am aware of the concerns of my hon. Friend the Member for Riverside about an 11 per cent. reduction in housing provision for Merseyside from the Housing Corporation as a result of changes in the way the figures are calculated. However, that figure needs to be read alongside the housing investment programmefor Merseyside. We will make some important announcements on the housing investment programme shortly, and I ask that my hon. Friend waits for those announcements before making her judgments on the matter.
We need to know much more about demand for housing in Liverpool, because otherwise we are fighting in the dark. I am glad to say that Liverpool has engaged the university of Birmingham to undertake a full assessment of the housing demand picture. It has also commissioned land surveys by Grimleys. It is too early to judge the outcome of the surveys but, so far, the city council has stuck to the task and put resources behind it.
In addition to those mainstream initiatives that have benefited Liverpool, there has also been the single regeneration budget. Round 5 is the latest, and Liverpool city centre secured £475,000 in total. Liverpool Vision has been asked to submit a comprehensive bid for round
6 of the SRB in the context of a strategic regeneration plan for the city. The round 5 proposal, which was supported, is a preparatory move for the round 6 bid. The round 5 proposals can shape the round 6 bid, especially in terms of developing genuine community capacity building and testing innovative approaches to regeneration. The bidding guidance for round 6 will be published next month. We are looking for Liverpool Vision to put in a really good proposal for Liverpool in that round.
In addition, the round 5 scheme for Speke-Garston--a total of £10 million, with an SRB contribution of more than £4 million--will build on the jobs and other benefits of the round 1 schemes in Speke-Garston. The development company there has been a major player in attracting investment, such as the Jaguar X400 investment in Halewood, which has also attracted other companies to the area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Riverside raised the issue of European objective 1 funding for Merseyside for 2000-06, and we are pleased that Merseyside achieved objective 1 status. However, it has never been the case that the Government have had to make matched funding available for objective 1 European funds. It is not correct to state that the Government have to match objective 1 EU funding for £844 million for Merseyside on a pound-for-pound basis in order receive that funding. My hon. Friend will know from her previous experience that objective 1 funds from the EU can be used to fund up to 75 per cent. of regeneration schemes, with applicants having to find the rest from UK sources, either public or private.
For the previous Merseyside programme, the regeneration partners thought that they could find pound-for-pound matched funds for European objective 1 funds. However, some regeneration scheme applications found it difficult to locate the funding on that basis. The Government are trying to maximise the grant rate from European funding to reduce the matching funding that needs to be found here and also to ensure that the maximum amount of European funding is drawn down, so that the maximum number of projects can be funded. That approach will also free up Government funding for other regeneration schemes in the area. We are not at odds with the spirit of what my hon. Friend the Member for Riverside is trying to achieve, but the position is not as simple as she seemed to suggest when one tries to ensure the maximum resources from all possible sources end up in Liverpool supporting regeneration projects.
The economic revival of Liverpool is there for us to begin to see. The transformation of Merseyside includes the complete refurbishment of the Albert dock area, where a media cluster has begun to develop. Planet Wild is an independent television production company that has received three Royal Television Society awards since it was established 18 months ago. A company called Amaze, situated in the Port of Liverpool building, is a world-class designer of software, websites and expandable movies--I am not sure what they are, but they sound interesting--and is a leader in computer-mediated communication.
The transformation of a 64-acre former railway marshalling yard into the Wavertree technology park is further clear evidence of Merseyside's determination to play a major part in the new, technology driven economy. Equally, several automotive companies are locating,
or will be doing so, in the Speke-Garston-Halewood area, and the Speke-Garston development company has been a major player in attracting that investment.
I mentioned the Jaguar initiative earlier, and other companies--including Lear, Conix and Johnson Controls--have also brought investment to the Halewood area. That has linked parts of Liverpool such as the Speke-Garston area to areas of need, and thus represents a real opportunity for the city.
We have heard tonight about the progress already being made in Liverpool. The process of regeneration has already begun. Partnerships between local communities and the business and voluntary sectors are building a foundation for change and growth, along with localand regional government, and central Government. Government initiatives such as the single regeneration budget demonstrate what can be achieved through working together. We recognise the importance of involving local people in finding solutions to Liverpool's problems, and of giving the people of the city a greater stake in the success of its development and its future.
I hope that we have learned a critical lesson from Liverpool's long history. The change being brought about cannot be sustained unless people are properly involved and have ownership of it. We must build people into the programme of change, from the outset and from the bottom up.
The Government, and other bodies, are trying to takea holistic approach to Liverpool's regeneration, by combining health, economic and environmental initiatives
with lasting benefits for the community. I have great hopes for Liverpool Vision, our first urban regeneration company. I am sure that it will benefit the city and demonstrate the value of such companies, of which I believe that there will be more. I am also sure that the North-West regional development agency will be important in implementing economic and social change in the area.
A great deal of work remains to be done, as my hon. Friend the Member for Riverside will know. However, we are putting in place a framework that I hope will provide opportunities to raise the quality of life in Liverpool for all those who work there.
My hon. Friend knows Liverpool very well. I hope that she will agree that Liverpool now has something that it has needed for perhaps 25 years--a constellation of people, business, local governance and local organisations working together and pulling in the same direction.
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