Select Committee's Urban Affairs Sub-Committee
on Coalfield Communities
Thank you for the opportunity to provide a response
to the sub-committee on business support for coalfields. The numbering
below refers to the questions raised in your letter of 24 October:
Question 1
ODPM take the lead in coal policy and regeneration.
Although DTI has a Coal directorate which deals with ongoing issues
in the industry, it does not generally deal with closures. Exceptionally,
DTI did co-ordinate a response to the Haskins report on Selby
coalfield closures produced in Autumn 2002 for Patricia Hewitt.
However the response to that report, produced in February 2003,
made it clear that responsibility for co-ordinating this work
rests with the appropriate RDA (in that case Yorkshire Forward),
working with local agencies and OGDs as needed.
RDAs are ideally placed to be able to work with
industry, including coalfields, where closures are generally planned
well in advance, to tackle the problems arising from closures,
working with partners including Government Offices and departments
centrally as necessary. If the sub-committee recommends the setting
up of a working group, I would be content for my officials to
participate.
Questions 2 and 3
The UK Government remains committed to a strong
regional policy aimed at delivering prosperity for all and we
believe that our proposed EU Framework for Devolved Regional Policy
offers the best deal for the UK. Under this proposal, richer EU
Member States such as the UK would fund their own regional programmes
within that EU Framework.
If the Framework were agreed, the Government
would guarantee that, by increasing its spending on regional policy,
nations and regions would receive a level of resources which ensured
they did not lose out from the UK's proposals on Structural Funds
reform, for example from the transitional funding they would automatically
have received from the application of the eligibility criteria
to EU 25 instead of EU15. We would commit to ensuring that nations
and regions have sufficient resources to continue to be able to
promote regional productivity and employment from increased domestic
spending on regional policy, targeted on those areas of high unemployment
and low GDP.
We are currently working to flesh out the details
of our proposal and how we see it operating. This will be the
subject of a more detailed statement on the future of the Funds,
following the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry's September
statement on this issue, which we aim to issue at the end of November.
It is not yet certain that Assisted Areas maps
will continue to be used to determine levels of support, although
it seems likely that maps will survive in some form. The UK will
wish to secure the best deal for those areas of most significant
deprivation. However, there is a long way to go in terms of negotiating
the package of measures available to the UK post 2006 and we cannot
say yet how this will affect coalfields specifically.
I hope that this information is helpful to the
inquiry.
Jacqui Smith
15 November 2003
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