Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280-289)
YVETTE COOPER
MP
25 JANUARY 2006
Q280 Ms Barlow: Are you considering
placing an obligation on them of buying only legal timber?
Yvette Cooper: We are not proposing
additional duties on local government in this area at the moment.
Q281 Ms Barlow: I find it hard to
understand how you can defend allowing local authorities to purchase
illegal goods and encourage the damage in trade. We have already
got a Code for central government. Would it not be relatively
simple to regulate this by saying that local authorities only
had to provide legal timber?
Yvette Cooper: We have the procurement
strategy that is in place and that does set out the way in which
procurement is supposed to take place. We do try to give local
authorities as much flexibility as possible in terms of the way
in which we respond because they are democratically accountable
to their local communities. We are not proposing additional obligations
on them at the moment, but I will go back and look further into
the detail of the procurement strategy that is in place for local
government at the moment on the basis of your question.
Q282 Ms Barlow: Have you been talking
to Defra on the issue?
Yvette Cooper: Obviously there
were discussions with Defra before the procurement strategies
and so on were introduced. The discussions we have had most recently
with Defra have been around the Code for Sustainable Homes which
obviously does include a reference to sustainable timber as well.
Q283 Ms Barlow: It is a reference,
but should it not have a minimum requirement for at least legal
timber? We have been told there is no problem with supplies of
certified soft wood timber and it is not expensive.
Yvette Cooper: In the Code for
Sustainable Homes?
Q284 Ms Barlow: Yes.
Yvette Cooper: We will certainly
look at that as part of the responses to the consultation which
we are consulting on at the moment. If you wanted to send in a
submission on behalf of the Committee, obviously that would be
taken very seriously. It is out for consultation at the moment.
Q285 Mr Caton: Let us go back to
transport infrastructure, Minister, which you have already mentioned.
This Committee heard from Sir John Egan during a previous inquiry
that the reason for building new communities in the Four Growth
Areas was to house people drawn to London to work. He was particularly
concerned that transport systems for the Thames Gateway should
be established as a matter of urgency and that is not just about
providing infrastructure in the communities themselves but also
the road and rail infrastructure that takes people into the centre
for work, which I think you have recognised in what you have already
said. Existing systems are already at breaking point during peak
hours. Given the lead-in time needed for new roads or for increased
rail activity, what is your Department doing now to address this?
Yvette Cooper: Obviously one of
the major programmes of investment is around the Channel Tunnel
Rail Link, and the domestic services from Ebbsfleet through to
Stratford and King's Cross are obviously extremely important and
I think they also explain why the private investment in Stratford
is now coming into Stratford, because that infrastructure is already
being put in. We have things like the Fast Track Programme in
Kent and also the extension of the DLR to City Airport. I think
there is a wide range of investment in infrastructure for the
Thames Gateway already taking place at the moment and there would
be areas of the Thames Gateway which it would not be possible
to develop without that underpinning infrastructure, that is certainly
the case.
Q286 Mr Caton: So Sir John Egan should
not be worried that the transport infrastructure is not going
to be there when the houses are built?
Yvette Cooper: We do have transport
infrastructure under way. It is certainly true that we want to
be able to increase investment in infrastructure, we have always
said this and I said that earlier to the Committee, but in the
Thames Gateway there is a huge amount of investment in infrastructure
going on already and in transport infrastructure in particular.
Q287 David Howarth: Let me make one
last point on sustainable communities and it is something we have
had some representations on so it would be useful to hear your
comments. It is simply the question of demolitions and the policy
which appears to be that the Government wants to see houses in
the North demolished and built in the South. I do not want to
get into the whole thing about Ringo Starr's childhood home and
certainly I do not want to get into criticising Liverpool City
Council. I was just wondering what your present thoughts on that
were and whether there is any monitoring of its effect. The Royal
Town Planning Institute said to us that it appears to be a waste
and it cannot really be justified in environmental terms. In environmental
terms and resources terms it looks to be a peculiar policy.
Yvette Cooper: There has been
a ridiculous amount of exaggeration about this whole issue. The
Pathfinder programmes are dealing with areas which are suffering
from serious long-term low demand, where often you have seen long-term
population decline, where former industries have moved out, jobs
have moved out and people have moved out as well. Liverpool itself,
for example, has seen about a 50% population decline since the
war. When you have those sorts of big population changes that
has an impact on housing markets as well and so there are some
areas where you see serious low demand which leads to streets
of boarded up houses or streets with intermittent boarded up houses
and all sorts of problems with crime and vandalism as well. The
challenge for the Pathfinders is in how to bring people back into
those areas, how to make those communities thrive again, how to
get the housing market going in those areas. The majority of homes
that are affected by the Pathfinder programmes are being refurbished
and so they are putting the majority of the approach into the
refurbishment of homes. Sometimes they are looking at quite radical
refurbishment, things like knocking two houses into one or doing
complete redesigns inside. Some of the work that Urban Splash
and Tom Bloxham have been doing in Manchester is obviously one
way of doing refurbishment. In some areas they have taken the
decision to put lots of investment into refurbishment already
and they have decided that part of the problem is they might have
houses where there are no gardens, for example, or some of the
Sixties tower blocks have been set out for demolition and so on.
I think it is right that the Pathfinders should be able to take
sensible decisions about what is the best way forward for those
areas, but certainly the emphasis is on refurbishment rather than
demolition.
Q288 David Howarth: Some people say
that this policy is a kind of poor substitute to having a proper
regional policy and all of that is right but that is not sometimes
said. I am just wondering what evaluation is being done of this
policy as opposed to other sorts of regeneration policy. Does
it work to get people back into city centres compared to other
possible policy options?
Yvette Cooper: What the Pathfinder
programmes are doing is they are looking at the housing market
and the local economy and local social issues as well. They are
not simply looking at what has happened to the bricks and mortar,
it is just that that is the bit that happens to get reported in
the papers. The Pathfinders themselves are looking at a wide range
of issues. What you find with a lot of the economic regeneration
schemes is if you do it in isolation then in the long run it is
not sustainable. So you have examples where you do a lot of work
to support economic regeneration in an area, you give local people
skills and improve training and what happens is they get a job
and move out because they do not want to live in that area because
of problems with housing and so on. So you have to deal with the
housing and the economic regeneration at the same time. Equally,
if you just improve the housing and do not do anything to get
people jobs you are still not going to solve the problem. You
have to look at the two things together. I think we have a strong
regional policy and regional approach and that included the Regional
Development Agencies, which are critical, and the Northern Way
Strategy, which is all about boosting the economic development
of the North. We are seeing people move back into the North and
we are seeing population growth in the northern regions which
is partly as a result.
Q289 Chairman: Thank you very much
indeed. We have covered a lot of ground. We are most grateful
to you. You have invited us to make some additional submissions.
We will certainly make some strong recommendations and suggest
that you were the instigator of all this!
Yvette Cooper: Thank you very
much.
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