Examination of Witnesses (Quesitons 460-479)
PROFESSOR NEIL
WARD
7 JUNE 2006
Q460 Mr Betts: Are you saying that
concentration on things like the Northern Way and city-regions
means that the Regional Assembly and the North East Government
Office have given up any sense of being advocates for, or trying
to develop effective policies for, rural areas?
Professor Ward: There is plenty
of talk about rural areas and rural development, but at the same
time the real material, facts of life are different from the rhetoric.
For example, our Regional Spatial Strategy plans for less new
house building, a rapid paring back of new house building in rural
districts. If you think about the North versus the South, one
of the competitive advantages the North has had over the last
10 years has been lower housing costs, cheaper costs of living
to live in the North. For those people who are in, if you like,
more footloose jobs and can locate in lots of different places
there have been competitive advantages in locating in the North.
With the affordable housing crisis that has crept up on us the
gap between the North and South in terms of affordability house
prices is narrowing, and that competitive advantage is being lost.
Housing affordability is a huge problem in rural areas. It started
in the South and now spreads across the whole of rural England.
Q461 Mr Betts: Are your concerns
mirrored by what is happening in other regions as well? We heard
today in a private meeting that in the Greater Bristol area the
people are working effectively together. How you define what a
city-region is, they basically said it is the economic footprint
of Greater Bristol. Most people, whatever they call it, seemed
to accept that was a concept they all understood and it was a
real entity. People have also said to us they felt the RDA in
the region were now more effectively dealing with rural issues
than they were five years ago when there was an agenda and things
were being done. The two things ran in parallel. There was the
development of a city-region type concept in Bristol but an addressing
of rural issues in the rest of the region. If that is happening
there do you think this is just a problem you have got in the
North East?
Professor Ward: No. There are
issues in other regions as well. It is good news that there are
people who can speak favourably about the rural development initiatives
in the South West and the role of the South West RDA but that
would not be representative of all of the English regions. You
can go to several other regions and hear a different kind of message.
What is very interesting from hearing the earlier session is the
extent to which regional development in the South West was about
connectivity and there was a lot of talk about transport and the
relationship between the South East and the South West. There
is a sort of development dynamic which is affecting the South
West of England which is to do with growth coming from the South
East relating to the Bristol City region and deeper into the South
West but probably not spreading throughout. I think it is very
important to think of the rural areas within regions in terms
of their place in the national regional geography as well. In
the North of England we are not seeing that kind of flow. There
is still a flow from the North to the South, there is a North/South
problem in terms of population loss from the North and overheating
in the South. The South West is benefiting more from growth in
the South East than the North of England, which is part of what
the Northern Way is about.
Q462 John Cummings: In your remarks
you have noted that across the North implementation of city-regions
is running ahead of a formal Government statement of its city-regions
policy. Would you happen to know why this has happened? Are there
inherent dangers in anticipating central policy in this way?
Professor Ward: Why it has happened
is a very interesting question. I would say that there is a sort
of technocratic elite which is based in the larger cities and
it suits their interests to talk about city-regions.
Q463 John Cummings: Are you saying
it is city-led?
Professor Ward: Yes.
Q464 John Cummings: The "city"
being the City of Newcastle?
Professor Ward: In the Northern
Way you would look at Leeds and Manchester, and a dialogue between
Leeds and Manchester, as the origins of the Northern Way idea,
thinking about the flows and relationships between Leeds and Manchester,
because there is a lot of rich exchange there. Then there was
a sort of, "Well, we had better think about the M62 corridor
to Merseyside and over to the Hull ports" and there was this
notion of an M62 super-city for a little while.
Q465 John Cummings: The Northern
Way has been with us for a while.
Professor Ward: Yes.
Q466 John Cummings: City-regions
just seem to be coming on stream now. Why are we ahead of the
game in the North East?
Professor Ward: The Northern Way
has been part of a driver for the city-regions agenda, I would
argue. You can see concentric circles. Initially it was about
Manchester and Leeds and then the M62 corridor and there was a
feeling of, "We had better involve the North East as well,
so there was the A1 corridor, but that feels a little bit half-hearted,
and then Tees Valley, and we will draw the line at Carlisle and
that will not be a city-region in the Northern Way".
Q467 John Cummings: Why do you believe
this is happening? Why are we taking the lead in the North? Why
are we running ahead of ourselves?
Professor Ward: I think the city-region
agenda is running ahead of itself and I think it is because it
suits the local interests of the larger metropolitan authorities.
Q468 John Cummings: Do you seem the
same impetus coming from what is awfully termed as the hinterland—
Professor Ward: No.
Q469 John Cummings:— in suggesting
that perhaps the same enthusiasm does not exist within county
councils and in district councils within those counties?
Professor Ward: You can look through
all of the evidence you have received. Interestingly, there were
even people from the professional associations like chief economic
development officers who talked about "over-emphasis on city-regions";
police officers, "an unhelpful complication"; Unison,
"city-regions driving roughshod". The city-regions agenda
comes from the cores of the cities. There is a rationale for improving
cross-boundary working in urban authorities and there is a sense
that something like Tyne & Wear is five authorities when in
the entity of Tyne & Wear as a conurbation, let us say, in
transport planning, economic development, spatial planning, it
is hard to involve all of those authorities and come to a common
vision. I think there is a momentum behind city governance but
the city-region thing is a wider concept and it is drawing in
just part of the surrounding rural areas which is seen as being
about travel-to-work in the commuter zones.
Q470 John Cummings: What do you believe
the dangers are in anticipating a central policy in the way this
is occurring in the North East?
Professor Ward: Well, you never
know when your minister is going to be moved and have to deal
with something else! I think there is a rather delicious irony
that David Miliband is now responsible for rural affairs and rural
development, so I am sure he will find it interesting engaging
the city-regions from a rural development perspective.
Q471 Dr Pugh: You are putting forward
an extremely heretical hypothesis, a very interesting one too,
but you are suggesting that it is a kind of conspiracy hatched
out in the town halls of the major cities. Are you convinced of
that and have you got evidence of that, or is it more likely that
it is simply a scheme thought within Whitehall as a good thing
to go for?
Professor Ward: I would not want
to argue that it is just cooked up by metropolitan authorities.
It suits a particular interest there in terms of gaining more
investment.
Q472 Dr Pugh: There could be a bandwagon
worth joining?
Professor Ward: Absolutely, yes.
It has also won hearts and minds in the centre of government,
it is a big fad at the moment. The number of little pamphlets
you get that tell you the city-region approach can solve social
exclusion, poverty—
Q473 Dr Pugh: Going to the evidence
base for a moment, if we may, surely it is the case that if a
city declines rapidly then so does the hinterland and so do many
associated towns in the area because they are all affected by
it, and therefore if you put it in a negative way it is in the
interests of everybody to have prospering cities within the region.
Professor Ward: Yes. Urban/rural
relationships are very important and one of the most important
ingredients of the economic development prospects of rural areas
is their relationship with neighbouring cities. The difficulty
is when you have got this notion of a city-region which is bounded
and there is an idea of inside and outside the city-region. When
we explored the city-regions in the 1960s they had comprehensive
coverage, everywhere was in one city region or other in the model,
but that is not the model now.
Q474 Dr Pugh: Are you suggesting
they are falling between the interstices of the city-regions so
there could be appreciable economic growth which will not receive
sufficient attention from the Government because there is an emphasis
on the city-region agenda?
Professor Ward: Yes. I think those
voices will be marginalised around the table. The development
of the North will be all about cities. If you think about the
North of England as a single entity, try and transcend that idea
of the three regions and take away their boundaries and look at
the North of England, one of the distinctive common features of
the North of England is the Northern Uplands, which are sparsely
populated and very attractive to migrants from the South or from
elsewhere, and there is lots of potential for business growth
there. It is not ever going to drive the national economy but
it can contribute to the development of the North and it is very
hard to articulate that kind of message when—
Q475 Dr Pugh: Would it help everybody
if we did have not fuzzy boundaries and a lack of clarity but
a map in which England is defined and city-regions shaded and
coloured and we would all know where we stand?
Professor Ward: I would not be
particularly excited about that. I am not convinced on the very
idea of city-regions. If we are going to go along that road and
we are going to have a national framework for city-regions, which
is being talked about in the ODPM report, then there does need
to be a national rural counterpart to that which is about rural
development in these areas beyond.
Q476 Dr Pugh: Since you see the influence
of Westminster to some extent in forwarding this agenda and popularising
this agenda, would you argue that Westminster should back off
a little bit and leave regional policy more to the regions?
Professor Ward: Regional policy
does not feel as if it is of the regions. That is not how it feels
in the North. Our regional agencies feel like they are agents
of the centre rather than of the region.
Q477 Mr Betts: I did not follow your
comments about Tyne & Wear. You said there was a case for
having something but I was not sure what the something was.
Professor Ward: Within the city-region
agenda there is a lot that is very interesting, and I could get
quite excited about, which is to do with thinking more carefully
about how cities work, overcoming the problems of cross-boundary
working. Tyne & Wear has five authorities. You talk of Newcastle,
but there is North Tyneside, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland.
There are five authorities. There was once a metropolitan authority.
I would not want to argue against a city-region agenda which is
about thinking how those urban authorities might think and work
more collectively as one.
Q478 Mr Betts: That is exactly what
is happening in the Greater Bristol area, as I understand it,
it goes from Manchester and they want an executive board essentially
dealing with transport issues, economic issues, skills issues,
that transcends one local authority boundary and is part of a
slightly wider economy.
Professor Ward: Yes.
Q479 Mr Betts: So you have a problem
with that?
Professor Ward: No, I have got
no problem with that. What is happening though is city-regions
are being talked of more broadly than that, bringing in parts
of the rural hinterlands, and as a governance structure and a
means of prioritising investment that almost replaces the region.
The Regional Spatial Strategy for North East England talks about
two city-regions being the priority, that is Tees Valley and Tyne
& Wear, and includes the surrounding rural hinterlands which
are quite attractive areas and there are lots of people who want
to move to those and invest in development.
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