Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1
- 19)
MONDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2003
COUNCILLOR BILL
FLANAGAN OBE, PROFESSOR
STEVE FOTHERGILL,
MR STEVE
BURROWS AND
MR KEITH
MACKENNEY
Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome to
this first session of the Committee on coalfields communities.
Does anyone want to make any statement, or would you prefer to
go straight into the questions?
Q1 Mr Cummings: Many of the submissions
made to this inquiry suggest that the regeneration of the coalfields
is quite well advanced. Some people might agree with that, but
I am sure many would disagree. Could you tell the Committee in
your opinion how successful coalfields regeneration measures have
been to date?
Councillor Flanagan: Quite frankly,
there has been some success, a fair measure of success, over the
last six years, but one has to remember that for 12 years prior
to that there was nothing at all done in the coalfields. Since
the intervention of the Deputy Prime Minister and through his
Office, we have seen success of various degrees. Certainly the
Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has been pretty good; the
DTI have been reasonably good; with the Lottery funds we are getting
there but we are not there yet—we are not getting our fair
share; Education "could do better", to use an educational
term; we were well received by Treasury, but they do not seem
to have delivered the goods. That is on par for what is happening:
there is a great deal done, but nowhere near sufficient for the
coalfields to go out there and compete on level terms with those
areas that have not had a quarter of a million redundancies all
on one spot, and all the things that brings with it in terms of
housing, health, education and so forth. So yes, over six years,
they are getting there; they are probably 45-50% of the way there.
Q2 Mr Cummings: Is Staffordshire
of the same opinion?
Mr Burrows: Yes, we would certainly
support those comments. I think the progress we have made has
been primarily in the physical renewal of the areas, particularly
bringing forward the former colliery sites, which we have done
quite successfully. In Staffordshire we have brought forward four
or five of the colliery sites for modern business parks and created
quite a number of jobs, somewhere between 3,000-3,500 jobs. However,
you should compare that to the fact that we lost 10,000 jobs in
the mining industry directly. Where we have made less progress
is in the social problems that have gone with the coalfields areas,
particularly in terms of raising educational performance, and
also raising educational aspirations, whether directly through
the children or through the parents and families. There is still
a big job to do.
Q3 Mr Cummings: So the Committee
can have some idea of the scope of the problem, how many years
do you believe it will take before coalfields are successfully
regenerated?
Professor Fothergill: You will
remember that probably 10-12 years ago we used to say that regenerating
the coalfields was a generation's work. That was probably true
then, and I think it is probably true now. What has actually happened
is that we are 10-12 years further down the line than we were
at that time, and we are towards the halfway mark, but it all
has to be seen in the context, as Councillor Flanagan has said,
of the scale of the problem. Two hundred and fifty thousand jobs
gone in the coal industry since the time of the miners' strike
is a hole in local economies which is not going to be plugged
overnight; it is going to require action across a very broad front.
We are getting there but we are not there yet. We will know when
we have got there.
Q4 Mr Cummings: You certainly speak
with an air of optimism. I wish I shared it. Looking to the future
and your activities, do you intend to concentrate more on the
social measures? You have done an immense job, an admirable job,
in relation to regeneration and clearing of pit heaps, but there
are scars on people's lungs, there are scars inside people which
need to be attended to. I am speaking of the appalling state of
health that exists within mining communities, as evidenced by
the Indices of Multiple Deprivation. I am talking about outside
of the area I represent. Do you intend to concentrate your efforts
more on this in the future?
Councillor Flanagan: I do not
think this inquiry wants us to concentrate on that. It specifically
leaves that out.
Q5 Mr Cummings: I am asking whether
the Coalfield Communities Campaign is doing that.
Councillor Flanagan: We are concentrating
on that, and you gave us credit for the amount we have done. We
are nothing but a pressure group; we put pressure on other people
to make sure that they have done it. We have given credit where
it is due. There have been a lot of players, a lot of people.
It has been organised by the Government, the RDAs and English
Partnerships, and various other organisations have come together.
The scars on the landscape are much easier to get rid of than
the scars on the lungs. One of the biggest problems is the culture
of low educational standards, and the culture of low expectation.
This is going to take a lot of developing, and it needs the jobs,
the infrastructure, the trains, the environment before people
can start expecting more. At present they do not expect a great
deal.
Mr Burrows: I would certainly
support that. In Staffordshire we have high schools in some of
our coalfields wards which are achieving less than half the national
average in GCSEs, and although we are doing well in creating new
jobs on new business parks, you have to ask the question whether
the children that are leaving school have the educational skills
and attainment to access those jobs. In many cases we suspect
they have not. Jobs for the future is very much about raising
educational attainment, expectations and skills.
Professor Fothergill: I would
just like to make sure you do not get the impression that somehow
we are thinking that the problem of the jobs is solved in our
communities. If you look at the raw unemployment figures these
days, they would suggest that we really do not have the problem
that we had in the early 1990s or indeed even in the mid 1980s.
Claimant unemployment is quite low, but that is really only a
small part of the overall jigsaw. In many mining communities we
have diverted huge numbers off Jobseeker's Allowance, for example,
on to other benefits, or even outside the benefits system altogether.
The best way of looking at the continuing need for job creation
is to look at what proportion of adults actually have jobs in
our areas. Whereas in the best parts of the South East it is typically
80-85% of adults of working age with jobs, if you look in your
own constituency, you will probably find that the comparable figure
is barely 60%, and in many other mining areas it is often only
in the mid 60s in terms of the percentage of adults of working
age who actually have jobs. That is a full 20 percentage points
behind the rates that are routinely achieved in the best parts
of the South East. So even on the jobs front we still have a long
way to go, quite apart from all the social problems.
Q6 Christine Russell: On the jobs
front, what are the employment statistics for the under-25s?
Professor Fothergill: I could
not give you the precise figures off the top of my head. The main
problem in terms of the labour market is that the disappearance
of very large numbers of jobs for male manual workers has resulted
particularly in withdrawal of the men completely from the labour
market, above all on to long-term sickness and incapacity benefits.
That is where the slack in the labour market has gone. As those
people reach 65 and get their state pension, they are not going
to be freeing up vacancies for the generation behind.
Q7 Christine Russell: I am asking
you about the youngsters, whether in the coalfields communities
the rates of youth unemployment are much higher than they are
in other areas.
Councillor Flanagan: I can see
that being an important question, because if we have a second
generation unemployed because they do not have the skills, that
is really desperate. There are some of them in fact going on to
further education, moving into different skills from their fathers.
The figures must be available. We can find them somewhere. Can
I just clear up one thing said by Professor Fothergill, when he
said we do not have the jobs they have in the South East? I want
to make it perfectly clear whenever we talk about the affluent
South—and we will—we do not mean the east coast of
Kent, we do not mean Thanet, we do not mean Dover, because they
are in as bad a position as we are.
Q8 Chris Mole: If I can play devil's
advocate for a moment, is it actually realistic to expect all
coalfield communities to be fully regenerated?
Councillor Flanagan: I cannot
see why not. What is the alternative to fully regenerating them
in one way or another? To obliterate them? To close them? To move
on? Where do they go if they move from where they are? They could
all move down here and we could have another 50,000 jobs created
in Reading or somewhere, and 50,000 houses. Obviously that is
not an answer; there are too many people moving south. There has
to be something in the North. Commuting to the larger cities does
not help, with the travel problems and congestion on the roads.
If there could be some form of employment in an area that has
10,000 people, it is the best method of keeping people gainfully
occupied, educated. The social fabric of a community that size
is worth persevering with for a bit longer.
Mr MacKenney: We have very strong
coalfields communities in Kent, and I totally agree with Councillor
Flanagan: you cannot just leave them to their own devices. There
is a strong community feeling and they have strong aspirations.
They cannot just be ignored.
Q9 Chris Mole: So you do not think
there are any circumstances in which local authorities should
accept that some of the former coalfield community villages are
just too small and unsustainable, and with the mines gone, they
should just manage the decline. That would not be a way forward
that you would see?
Mr MacKenney: I think the work
being done on regeneration in Kent is not being done on a village
basis. Albeit Kent is a different case, we are trying to regenerate
the whole coalfield. It does mean we are developing, for example,
Aylesham as a centre for the coalfield, and the things that are
happening at Aylesham will benefit the other communities close
by. Some communities are further away from that, and you have
a similar sort of concentration on Hersden in the Canterbury area
and on the area of South Ramsgate with the Thanet communities.
I do not think there is a need to actually regenerate every village.
Mr Burrows: Staffordshire is a
slightly different case, because they are not free-standing pit
villages; they are parts of bigger towns like Stoke-on-Trent and
Newcastle-under-Lyme and Cannock, where there are other industries.
The problem is that some of those other industries are also in
decline: in North Staffordshire the steel industry, the pottery
industry and traditional engineering are in decline as well. So
the issue is about regenerating the whole of North Staffordshire,
a population of maybe 300,000 people. It is not about targeting
specific smaller communities.
Q10 Chairman: Many years ago Durham
County Council, for instance, had a policy of what they called
"category D" villages—this is a long time back—and
a category D village was basically a village which was doomed;
it was not going to survive, because the coalfield had closed
and the community could not survive on its own. Not that that
has reversed, but some of those villages have only survived because
they have become commuter villages. Do you see the future of most
regenerated villages being on the basis of commuting rathe than
developing their own energy?
Professor Fothergill: I think,
in fairness, this will vary from place to place. Different towns
and different villages will find new roles in time. Some of them
may indeed become commuter settlements for neighbouring big cities,
but that cannot be the way forward for the whole lot. We are not
talking about a small number of villages and a small number of
people; three and a half million people live in the English coalfields
alone—five million if we add in Scotland and Wales. They
cannot all be commuting out to neighbouring settlements. It is
going to vary. Some of the significant settlements undoubtedly
can be developed as new employment centres, others through time
will adapt to become commuter settlements for neighbouring towns
or indeed cities. Sometimes we will find that things will settle
down at a lower level of population and a lower level of economic
activity than we started at 20 or 30 years ago maybe. But that
does not mean to say that these places should be wiped off the
face of the earth. There is a process of adaptation, which needs
to be encouraged and nurtured, and that is going to vary from
place to place.
Q11 Chris Mole: What we are trying
to get a sense of is whether it is a die-in-a-ditch issue over
every last cluster of houses, or whether there are going to be
measured responses in different places to different circumstances.
Councillor Flanagan: It has happened
in the past and it will continue to happen. There are a number
of ex-mining villages where the pits shut some while ago that
have developed into very nice commuter belts, and the property
prices are way higher than they are in areas where there are still
pits or where the pits have closed quite recently. So it does
happen.
Q12 Chris Mole: I think you have
begun to identify some of the things that you see as the most
serious problems facing coalfield communities. It would be useful
for the record if we could capture for each of the witnesses'
areas of interest what you believe those are.
Professor Fothergill: Shall we
start with CCC's concerns, which are really set out in the submission
to you? Our basic approach to this is that regeneration requires
a real toolkit of measures. It requires action across a broad
front. We are saying yes, there is a problem of continuing under-employment;
yes, there is a problem of continuing under-achievement at school;
yes, there is a problem of poor health. There is a range of problems
and a range of measures which really need addressing simultaneously,
and I think the experience of regeneration in the coalfields and
elsewhere is if you just go for one of those problems alone, you
do not provide a total solution. This is something that requires
action across the full range of government departments as well,
not just ODPM. This is the ODPM Select Committee but it requires
input from DTI, DCMS, DfES etc.
Councillor Flanagan: Speaking
of the coalfields as a whole, they have done reasonably well,
and I hope we do not give the impression that we are here today
to complain. There have been quite a lot of improvements, and
we are all grateful for the efforts that the various organisations
that are under the Government's control have made. Education,
I think, is paramount to the next generation, and the question
we were asked about under 25 year olds not finding work is important.
There is a difference in the amount of effort put in by the development
agencies. In my area, in the Midlands, we are delighted with what
they are doing. SEEDA is equally good. They go from good to bad,
and I will leave Staffordshire to tell you about the others.
The Committee suspended from 4.31 pm to
4.40 pm for a division in the House
Q13 Andrew Bennett: Funding. The
coalfields have actually had a lot of money. Do you think that
is justified, or ought it to have gone to other places as well
as the coalfields? If we take Staffordshire, there is the huge
decline of the pottery industry and considerable difficulties
with steel. How can you justify separate money for the coalfields?
Mr Burrows: In Staffordshire,
because the coalfields are so closely entwined with the same settlements
as the other industries, the jobs we are creating in the area
are obviously taken up by people who are coming out of the pottery
industry, out of the steel industry and out of the coal industry,
so it is difficult to split it up. All those industries I have
mentioned are in decline, and the forecast is that they will continue
to shed labour well into the future. So the jobs we are creating
and the educational opportunities we are trying to create are
in terms of regenerating the whole of the settlement of maybe
300,000 people.
Councillor Flanagan: I would like
to know who we have had a lot of money compared to. Compared to
who? We got off the train at Victoria, and looked at Bressenden
Place and Stag Place, and I cannot see that much development anywhere
in the coalfields. Next door to here is a meeting with the farming
communities, and quite a lot of money has gone into farming and
drainage. The European agricultural communities seem to get quite
a bit. Up until 18 years ago the mining industries and the mining
communities were putting in a great deal of money. I cannot remember
the exact figures. All we are doing is getting a little bit back
now.
Professor Fothergill: Can I say
that a lot of what we get is mainstream funding; it is not simply
special programmes for the coalfields, but what we do find in
general is that coalfield communities often fall between two stools.
Staffordshire is perhaps the exception to the rule, in that the
pits were pretty close to big, built-up urban areas, but your
typical coalfields are smaller towns and villages. They are not
targeted by the initiatives designed for the big cities, so they
miss out on that funding stream, but at the other extreme, they
are not rural areas either, and they tend to miss out on the purely
rural programmes. There is a case for targeting those middle areas.
We need a top-up, because we are not getting the cities' top-up
and we are not getting the rural areas' top-up either.
Mr MacKenney: Perhaps I can endorse
that. In Kent, our coalfield does not even enjoy Objective 2 status.
Some communities in Thanet do, but we do not enjoy that throughout
the coalfield, and certainly we see the coalfield regeneration
in a similar way to Staffordshire, as part of the regeneration
of East Kent, because not only do we have the coalfields but we
have the coastal towns, which are in a similar state of disarray
as a result of the decline in the tourism trade round there. I
would like to see the coalfields seen within the context of East
Kent, and there is an awful lot to do.
Q14 Andrew Bennett: What about EU
funding? It does not apply to Kent but it does apply to a lot
of the other coalfield areas. Ae you happy that you are going
to lose it?
Councillor Flanagan: No. The reason
they got it in the first place was because they were in need of
it. People give money where it is needed, and that is a good point.
Nobody wants to live in an area with Objective 1 status. You receive
the money because it is an area of great depression and great
need, and that is no more evident than in the valleys of Wales—it
is such a depressing sight when you go round there—and South
Yorkshire. It is far nicer to be on the beaches of Cornwall, if
you have got to be in an Objective 1 area.
Q15 Andrew Bennett: Let us be realistic.
It does not look as though much of the United Kingdom is going
to qualify for Objective 1.
Councillor Flanagan: I am being
realistic. We have got to fight for Objective 2. We are fighting
for a bigger share of Objective 2. We accept that it has to be
Cornwall, with a bit of luck, in Objective 1. We shall be looking
to see that an equitable amount comes to this country, and comes
to the coalfields in the new Objective 2. We are already prepared
for the losing of Objective 1 status. We are above the 75% of
GDP. But if there is money there—and I do not know yet whether
the Government is going to dish it out or whether it is still
going to be the European Union dishing it out—
Q16 Andrew Bennett: Which would you
prefer?
Councillor Flanagan: Our options
are open. It depends on who offers most and who offers the best.
Q17 Christine Russell: Can I ask
you whether you think there should be a single pot of money for
regenerating the coalfields? Professor Fothergill, you seemed
to tell us a minute ago that in fact the coalfields miss out on
a number of initiatives, yet other submissions say there is a
multiplicity of initiatives. Is there a need for either a single
pot or better targeting?
Professor Fothergill: I do not
think in practice a single pot would work, because you are talking
of funding streams which need to come from several different government
departments. So no, I do not think that is a sensible way forward.
When I say we miss out, let me give you an example: New Deal for
Communities. You might think, with a name like that, it would
be the sort of programme that would be tailor-made for our areas.
There is £800 million attached to that programme, but not
a single one of those New Deal for Communities areas is a coalfield
area. That is an example of how we miss out. Most of them are
around the big cities, not in the sorts of places we are talking
about.
Q18 Christine Russell: Also, your
submission stressed the need for Enterprise Zones. Would you like
to explain that?
Professor Fothergill: Going back
to the time of John Prescott's Coalfields Task Force, which I
was a member of, I well remember the discussions. The proposal
for a successor to Enterprise Zones was central to our conception
of the way forward for our areas. It is not sufficient in many
coalfields to trust to grow your own businesses. You need substantial
injections of inward investment to make good the huge hole caused
by the disappearance of the coal industry. In the coalfields the
experience of Enterprise Zones, where we have had them, has been
extraordinarily good: in South Yorkshire, in North Nottinghamshire,
in East Durham. It has worked, perhaps better than it worked in
and around some of the big cities. The whole Enterprise Zone initiative
is time-limited, and it is dying. The last coalfield EZs will
disappear in 2005, and if they disappear without a replacement,
we do not really have a tool for areas we really need to kick-start
with development. A lot of it will have to be development brought
in from outside. I think we will be fighting the regeneration
game with one of our hands tied behind our back, because we will
have area designations but nothing to really target areas of need.
Q19 Christine Russell: So what you
are arguing post 2005 is a new type of Enterprise Fund; you think
that would be very useful.
Professor Fothergill: Let us differentiate.
There is the Coalfield Enterprise Fund, which was promised some
while ago and still has not been delivered. The Enterprise Zones
are lines on maps where particular financial incentives will be
available as they are at present. The Coalfields Task Force certainly
thought that a successor to Enterprise Zones was a key to the
jigsaw, and CCC thinks that as well. We are doing our best to
persuade ODPM, the Treasury and DTI that that is the way forward,
but I have to say it is an uphill struggle. Enterprise Areas,
even though the name may sound familiar, are not the same thing
by any means. They will provide assistance for very small firms
and new start-ups, but they will not provide a substitute for
the package that we have now in the Enterprise Zones but is about
to disappear.
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