Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
RT HON
JOHN PRESCOTT
MP AND MR
RICHARD MCCARTHY
7 FEBRUARY 2006
Q40 Mr Betts: Can I just follow up
the issue of the Transport Fund which you have just mentioned.
A concern some of us have—and, quite rightly, there is an
insistence from the growth areas in the South East that proper
infrastructure is provided for the areas of housing growth—is
that developments like the Northern Way, which again is a great
concept, need to be supported by significant transport infrastructure
improvements if we are going to open up and create potential growth
areas out of some of the more derelict areas of the North that
have been subject to industrial decline in the past.
Mr Prescott: When I developed
the Northern Way concept I looked at it from east to west and
tried to say to the three great northern regions (which is a 15
million market) stop moaning about the North and the South and
get developing the potential of the North without having to look
and complain about what was happening in the South. One of the
important parts of that is that most of our growth in the North
came from transportation connections east and west. They have
not been working too well, some areas are very congested on the
roads and rail, and all these areas could be expanded much more.
We should begin to develop linearly and have a lot of community
developments along that instead of spread out as it has been in
the past, and I think it can connect an awful lot of towns and
cities that will give it a great deal of economic growth in that
area. I think the Northern Way is a very important development.
I am thinking of another one in the South that might give us a
similar kind of thing and I will say more about that on another
occasion. I think the idea of getting people together, certainly
in three regions, east to west, is very much dependent on the
communications structure, but that is why I think regional accountability
is quite important because if you had to decide what is important—is
it a light railway system in Leeds like you have got in Sheffield
or is it more to do with the infrastructure that runs across or
is the road going to the whole port more important than putting
money into something else—I think those are the decisions
that need to be made in the regions. Clearly, transport infrastructure
is quite critical for that, as is the planning of our towns and
developments along that with housing. That is why we have put
housing into more of a regional context now rather than simply
leaving it to the cities themselves to make that decision. That
is an important part of the redevelopment of the North.
Q41 Mr Betts: I have one other issue,
a completely uncontentious issue. I think we probably all accept
that for sustainable communities very often the school can be
at the heart of those communities, not merely for education but
for adult community facilities and as a meeting place and for
many other reasons. Just reassure me if you can, Deputy Prime
Minister, that we are not going to end up with a situation where
schools in prosperous areas, so-called well-performing schools,
can expand at will without any control over them which will effectively
lead to the closure of schools in our more underprivileged areas
and take away the heart of that community and make that community
unsustainable?
Mr Prescott: No doubt you will
be directing that question at where I think it needs to be answered.
Q42 Mr Betts: I am now I think.
Mr Prescott: Well, I am going
to give you my answer my way. I have no doubt in my mind going
round this country that schools in communities are really quite
an important part and they have developed in the last few years.
They have become medical centres, health centres and community
centres. One of the most impressive things I saw going into some
of the primary schools was mothers taking their kids into the
primary school but there was a place for the mother to do her
own training in that to take the NVQs and perhaps go on to be
a teacher. I think they are recognising more and more that the
education system is a crucial part of sustainable communities.
It cannot be divorced from it. It is more and more involved in
community activities. That is my kind of approach to educational
changes.
Q43 Mr Betts: So we are not going
to have deprived communities then put at the whim of one-off individual
changes by schools in the county?
Mr Prescott: I want to see development,
as I said before, with the local authorities. I think the Equity
and Excellence statement you have in Sheffield is a very good
way of bringing all the different parts of the education system
together and to make it work for the community. That is what I
think is a sustainable community and that is why I have argued
that from time to time.
Q44 Mr Hands: I am glad you mentioned
sustainable communities. I want to look at an aspect of the Bristol
Accord on social segregation specifically in relation to many
developments in London and the South East, and in particular in
inner London, developments like the Imperial Wharf development,
where you have got what on the face of it is a contrast and mix
of housing but the reality in my view adds to social segregation.
Because an inflexible target is given—in this case 50% plus
must be affordable housing—you end up with private flats
typically going on the market for £400,000 or £500,000
often up to £1 million and essentially a lot of them being
bought up as pieds a" terre. You have got the most
expensive shared ownership in the country at the same time and
the social housing for rent ends up being very small and has been
complained about by local Labour councillors in relation to the
poor division—
Mr Prescott: What complaint by
local Labour councillors?
Q45 Mr Hands: About the smallness
of the housing units that are provided in the social housing for
rent. The size of them is very, very small and very unpopular
for many of the people living there. It seems to me that a lot
of the policies are actually increasing social segregation. In
the Bristol Accord you are looking to respond to the challenge
of social segregation including on a neighbourhood level but I
think in London that is certainly not happening. I think a lot
of these developments—and admittedly Imperial Wharf is probably
the most stark one of these developments—if anything is
increasing social segregation.
Mr Prescott: I think it is very
important to have communities which are very much mixed communities.
It is part of our policy. In fact, if you look at a lot of council
estates one of the mistakes we made is we made them totally public.
We recognise that and we desire now to see more mixed ownership.
That is why some of our affordable housing programmes and shared
programmes are trying to get a mix in those communities. I think
it is important to do that. That is what motivates us. With regards
to Bristol, when you say £400,000 houses, I think when you
have a mix in a tower block or on an estate you are going to get
a tremendous amount of difference between what might be the market
price and what people—I think you would probably agree that
people should not be denied living in an area simply because they
cannot find the £400,000. If we can find a social housing
provision that puts a mix together, is that not good for social
cohesion?
Q46 Mr Hands: I think what you are
doing, though, is making very expensive, luxury housing in the
private sector, and, on the other hand, making very small, unpopular
social housing and the way these places are being designed (go
and have a look at it yourself) by the developer means that the
two parts of the development do not mix and do not meet, in most
cases. It has been quite deliberately designed that way. They
also build the private sector part first and, in my view, slightly
mis-sell it on the basis that nobody talks about the social side
that is going to be built later on. I think on the admiral goal
of reducing segregation, which in my constituency, Hammersmith
and Fulham, is a huge problem and a massive issue, your policies
are increasing social segregation because they are not mixing.
Mr Prescott: It cannot be if they
are actually going to live there.
Q47 Mr Hands: But they are not mixing.
Mr Prescott: What you are saying
is they are living there, they are small, they are not as good
and it is the price you pay to build the £400,000 houses.
I would say it is a mix. I do not know about that one, perhaps
Richard might be able to answer you, but go to Greenwich and look
at the site they developed there. When I first came in I did not
want it just to be the Dome that was a reminder of the Millennium
and so we built the Millennium Village. If you go and look at
that, whether it is the social housing or the private housing,
they are properly mixed, they are of good style and good design
and they have won many awards. I do not know about the one you
are talking about but always when you are trying to sell houses
at the market price and you are involved in having social housing,
there will be a difference between them, of that I have no doubt,
but there are the two and three bedroomed houses alongside. I
think mixed development is right and it is one way that we can
get social housing in areas which in the main is beyond the pocket
of many, many people, and it is not their fault.
Q48 Alison Seabeck: I was going to
come back to the European Union and ask you about the investment
by the EIB in sustainable communities and the establishment of
the Expert Working Group and how that was being taken forward
in terms of dealing with the EU work on sustainable communities
and how that benefits the EU citizen full stop.
Mr Prescott: They have got two
financial initiatives, one called JASPERS and one called JESSICA.
JESSICA stands for Joint European Support for Sustainable Investment
in City Areas. What they are really doing is trying to look at
urban development and treat it in a different way and to say that
what we have to do in our cities is have money available for micro
investment for business people themselves, particularly as we
see a whole number of our areas being very much affected by the
global economy. It is in our cities we get hit most, not only
in Britain but elsewhere, so you need to redevelop the business
sector. This is public private finance that helps that business
redevelopment and skills and training. The other one is where
we are looking at how public private partnerships can give extra
money for big infrastructure development.
Q49 Alison Seabeck: Including social
housing?
Mr Prescott: To be honest, that
could be here in this country if we wanted to do that. Indeed,
when we looked at the Channel Tunnel Rail Link finance there was
one stage where we thought we might do it with the European Investment
Bank. They stand ready with quite a lot of money to look at these
infrastructure investments. Certainly the Eastern European countries
desperately want to use that because they can use the investment
money they get and put it together with the private sector and
finance the very large infrastructure investments. That one is
on convergence. The other one is about microeconomic development
and to look at what can be public private partnership investment.
These three instruments are new instruments they have developed
to help urban development particularly. It is a lot of money which
can be used here as much as anywhere else. I want to make the
point particularly about the Bristol Accord because I was reminded
of what was said before, that when you look at London, London
has the highest GDP rating of any region in Europe and yet it
has one of the highest degrees of deprivation hidden within. The
real problem with the European money is they look at the regional
level and it does not take account of the deprivation that is
happening. That is not only happening here; the Mayor of Berlin
told us that exactly the same was happening in Berlin. This is
now geared to direct itself very exclusively to these areas of
high deprivation which have been denied any help because of the
generality of the way we measure GDP. These are new financial
instruments that will help them in urban development.
Q50 Alison Seabeck: It is very interesting
to hear your comments about Berlin and London but Warsaw which
probably seems to be more deprived—
Mr Prescott: It has the highest
deprivation level in Poland.
Q51 Lyn Brown: — Is benefiting
quite significantly from both investment in social housing as
well as things like water treatment works and so on. You said
there is the possibility of scope for the use of these funds within
the UK. Is it possible to use that, for example, in parts of the
Thames Gateway? Would that be an appropriate application for those
sorts of funds?
Mr Prescott: The Thames Gateway
is basically a new area. In the deprived areas in London, they
are designed to do that.
Q52 Lyn Brown: There are deprived
areas within the Gateway.
Mr Prescott: Indeed and what I
was doing when I was not at your Committee whenever it was in
October I was discussing with the prime ministers in those Eastern
European countries how this facility could be developed to help
them because their main concern was how the regional policy was
going to help them once they entered the Community. They have
now entered and it now takes place in 2007 or something. That
is the very thing that they are most interested in—how do
they redevelop their city economies. It is not just agriculture;
how do they redevelop the rundown manufacturing base and encourage
the redevelopment of the cities, and they are very much interested
in these instruments. They are not limited to those countries;
they are open to any country that can meet the criteria of the
cities.
Q53 John Cummings: Ministers agreed
in the Ministerial Accord, Deputy Prime Minister "the importance
of fostering skills for successful place-making and the value
of co-operative activity." Could you tell the Committee what
are the skills required for the creation of sustainable communities
and are they in short supply? If they are, why are they short
supply?
Mr Prescott: I am not so sure
it is in short supply; it is the short supply of getting them
to co-operate. Often architects do not talk to planners, planners
do not talk to local authorities and none of them talk to the
highways agencies. If you go to all of these professional bodies
none of them think in the context of sustainability. What we are
trying to say is there is an added value here. If you can begin
to think of the planning and everybody gets actively involved
in it, then we will get more sustainability. They should be thinking
of all these factors that make sustainability. It is about the
public investment as well as the private investment. It is where
the schools are and the housing is and all that. Good design should
be a very important part of that. What we decided to do was we
established an academy in Leeds with Professor Peter Roberts and
we said to the Bristol Informal: "Look, you have got to get
these skills together if you want sustainable communities."
In fact, I feel it is a bit like comprehensive education, quite
frankly, where we built the buildings but did not say what should
be in inside, but leaving that aside because it is on another
track, it is the same thing with building communities. We do not
think it is in a sustainable way so we have established an academy.
The European nations of the Bristol Accord thought this was a
very interesting idea and what they would like to do is to reproduce
that idea. So if you want sustainable communities the professionals
play quite a part in it. But they need to be put together in a
more integrated way, integrate the thinking, and look at what
the priorities are. We think this academy is going to make a contribution
to that.
Q54 John Cummings: So you will be
moving this forward within your Department?
Mr Prescott: Not only that, we
have established it. The headquarters is in Leeds and we have
asked the regional development agencies to look at how they might
in each of the regions begin to develop those skills that are
necessary to look at it in a sustainable community way. In Europe
they are prepared to put some resources into it. The Commission
is now set to report back in June on how they might put these
sustainable skills on a more European basis.
Q55 Sir Paul Beresford: Could I go
back on the same theme to what Clive was talking about. There
is a deep concern along the way which he was trying to lead you
and really that is that there is more than just your oar in the
pool and they are not all running in the same direction and they
are not even running at the same time. We saw an example of that
last night.
Mr Prescott: Is this on the sequential
test point?
Q56 Sir Paul Beresford: No, this
is on schools and sustainable communities. We saw an example of
the way in which your Department has lost a lot of its power.
We had one of your junior ministers putting the local government
report and the grant, much of which is not in your hands any longer;
it was much more in our hands when I was a Minister.
Mr Prescott: I heard you say that
on the news. We have spent far more money than you on local authorities
and we have got more devolved powers.
Q57 Sir Paul Beresford: I am not
talking about the money, I am talking about your hands and your
grip on it. You seem to have lost the power to be able to steer
it because there are more oars in the pool, as I have said, than
yours. When we asked Mr Miliband about it, particularly in regard
to Thames Gateway he said: "The revealed preference of government
is not to be the most perfect joined-up organisation in world
history." We are certainly seeing this happening. How are
you going to deal with it?
Mr Prescott: Look, I think it
is in the evidence what we have done since 1997. I will compare
it to the last three years you were in post. What we have actually
produced in ideas, resources and achievements is very, very considerable.
If you are saying do we have to have more co-operation in sustainability?
Yes, we do. If you are saying do we want the local authorities
to play a greater part in delivering some of our targets? Yes,
we do. We are the one department that has to co-ordinate quite
a lot across government. You could have just acted on one and
said do hospitals, do education, do local government or, in your
time, do housing, when housing investment was cut by half (we
have doubled it). When you look at these things that we have done
I am quite prepared to have a comparison and I would say that
we are quite an influential department in government and we do
very well on resources. That can certainly be compared with other
departments and, indeed, the past administration, so I take that
as a measure of our influence in this government in developing
sustainable community policies and working with other departments.
Q58 Sir Paul Beresford: Yes, I hear
what you say but it does not answer the question. It is an answer
to another question. The question I was asking was really that
your own Minister has actually stated that it is not working.
Mr Prescott: I do not think he
said that at all.
Q59 Sir Paul Beresford: He said:
"The revealed preference of government is not to be the most
perfectly joined-up organisation in world history."
Mr Prescott: Not the most joined-up?
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