The
Chairman: The Committee is greatly amused by the
hon. Gentleman’s point of order, but it is not actually a point
of order.
Mr.
Curry: Thank you, Mr. Amess. A couple of days
ago, I was listening to some commentaries on the radio with the
political correspondent from the Manchester Evening News. He
opined that the hon. Member for Eccles was losing interest in politics.
He also suggested that the hon. Gentleman did not care what happened
about the boundary changes if the worse comes to the worse and the
former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government were to
find that her executive decided she should spend more time with her
motorbike— [Interruption]—and
badge.
There is no
point in pretending that the document is not prescriptive. In fact, it
is extremely prescriptive on housing. It says in terms that housing
strategies will be translated to targets in local communities. Now, one
could say that that has not changed; all Housing Ministers have ended
up imposing targets because building houses is an unpopular
activity—my own Government did so, and it is time that this
Government did so, too. It is quite optimistic to think that we can
develop a scheme whereby housing is self-generating. It is worth a try,
but it would be difficult.
Mr.
Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab): I very much
concur with what the right hon. Gentleman is saying. In the unhappy
situation that the Conservative party appears to pay little attention
to the views that he is expressing, what thoughts does he have about an
appropriate mechanism to ensure that housing figures can be delivered
without the consequence of his party’s current policy, which
appears to leave that entirely to local authorities on the assumption
that they would produce the necessary output? He said himself that that
was optimistic.
Mr.
Curry: I think that the right hon. Gentleman would agree
that there is a prior question. The problem is that the robustness of
the statistics on which we base our housing demand calculations is
always questioned. Let us be clear that they have often been robust in
the sense of understanding demand, but we are all used to local
communities carrying out housing surveys that are, frankly, extremely
aspirational in character. If we were to translate them into figures
for housing need, they would be very intellectually un-robust indeed.
We should start by trying to have a more intellectually robust system
for calculating the basis of need.
My second
point about the strategy is that it might take five years to produce.
It will be a fascinating document—I cannot say that it will be
very entertaining, but we all get our pleasures in different ways. The
time taken to produce it raises the crucial question: what
assumptions should be made about public
expenditure?
Dan
Rogerson: On a point of order, Mr Amess. I have been
enjoying listening to the right hon. Gentleman’s contribution,
but given the contributions made by Conservative Front and Back
Benchers, it strikes me that we seem to have moved into a stand part
debate. I wondered whether that was your intention or if we should
debate the amendments as we come to them.
The
Chairman: I have been listening carefully to the
arguments deployed, football interventions aside. The right hon. Member
for Skipton and Ripon will perhaps be mindful, but he is perfectly in
order at the moment. It is still my intention to allow a stand part
debate if the Committee wants
one.
Mr.
Curry: I am grateful to you for that, Mr.
Amess. This is a crucial issue; we all know that we are in a period in
which whoever forms a Government will cut public expenditure expressed
in real terms. Let us hope that we will not have another stupid debate
about that. [Interruption.] There is no point in
the Whip making remarks under his breath; we all know that is a fact.
As a huge amount of any regional strategy relies on public investment,
what assumptions does one make about that public investment? It is a
very good question, because five years is longer than the normal
planning cycle for
spending. There
are also practical issues. Let us take the most bizarre region of
all—the south-east region. How does one produce a strategy for
the south-east that excludes London? The south-east, plus London,
represents a huge chunk of the United Kingdom’s gross domestic
product. Will someone produce a strategy with a great hole in the
middle? How would someone do that, and how would people relate it? The
document says nothing about how regional strategies should be stitched
together. What happens if Yorkshire and the Humber produces a regional
strategy that is at odds with, or competitive with, or does not match
up with or is not part of a wider vision that encompasses the
north-east or goes across
into the north-west? [Interruption.] The Minister
talks about the Northern Way. It has made some progress, but the idea
that the Northern Way is some huge mechanism to link together the
trans-Pennine economies is rather
far-fetched. How
does one produce that strategy in an area such as the south-east? The
question raised by the Liberal Democrats is legitimate: what is the
definition of “region”? What is the economic, social or
geographic cohesion of the regions? They are lines drawn on a map;
there may be units for which it is much more logical to draw a strategy
than those
areas. I
have serious doubts about the concept of the regional strategy and
whether it is practical given the uncertainties about the future of
public expenditure and the inability of any Government to give those
long-term perspectives on the flow of public expenditure. We all know
that nobody can do that. We do not know how the strategies will mesh,
or how the south-east will take account of the fact that London makes a
great hole in the middle of its regional strategy.
Prescriptive
intentions written in non-prescriptive language lie at the heart of the
document. I have severe questions about whether the whole thing will
work. I
read: “Other
infrastructure needs include: Waste. Water. Minerals. Culture, media
and sport. Environmental
infrastructure.” It
is prescriptive down to its fingertips, despite its claim that it is
not. It will be very difficult to deliver. I just hope it does not turn
out like Gosplan, which took a huge amount of time to develop and a
relatively small amount of time to understand that it could not be
delivered.
The
Minister for Regional Economic Development and Co-ordination (Ms Rosie
Winterton): I have to confess to the Committee that I am
extremely disappointed and dismayed by the Opposition’s lack of
understanding of the importance of ensuring that we are delivering on
the economy not only at national and local level, but at regional level
as well. It is vital that, when we look at some of the strategic issues
that affect the economy, we have the spatial level to do so. It is true
that individual local authorities have an important part to play in
driving through economic development and regeneration. Given the stance
that the Opposition took earlier in pouring cold water over the ability
and duties that we are placing on local authorities with regard to
economy, I am surprised that they are suddenly saying that everything
must be done
now. There
is no doubt whatsoever that some issues are best dealt with at the
regional level. The right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon surely
remembers that Michael Heseltine, when he was a Secretary of State,
recognised the important role that needed to be played at the regional
level when he devolved the Government offices to the regions. There was
a certain all-party consensus on the matter—my right hon. Friend
the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich will correct me if I am wrong. I
think that there was recognition that certain decisions could not be
simply made nationally and forced on the regions and that certain
decisions were not possible for individual local authorities to take
themselves.
Dan
Rogerson: Will the Minister give
way?
Ms
Winterton: I will give way in a second, because I want to
give some examples. On transport infrastructure provision, the right
hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon has just poured cold water on the
efforts of the Northern Way to provide a cohesive economic overview.
Actually, the Northern Way is doing extremely important work on the
benefits of a high-speed rail link to the north. The cross-Pennine belt
has travel-to-work areas and the connections between the ports are
vital. Having a view that crosses those regional boundaries is not only
possible under the legislation, but beneficial. When we look at
large-scale investments, it is important to have a regional
approach. When
we look at countryside protection and the green belts, it is difficult,
if not sometimes impossible, to address those issues at the local
level—it needs long-term planning. The right hon. Gentleman
said, “Oh, these might be five or ten-year looks ahead.”
That is absolutely right, and so they should be. If we are to get that
type of infrastructure planning done coherently, we need that regional
look. Particularly, with regard to the amendments, we need to set the
boundaries, which have been based on a lot economic evidence, while
being able to work across those boundaries. Absolutely nothing in the
Bill will stop that.
The right hon.
Gentleman mentioned a situation in the south-east and London. There are
some good examples in the south-east, such as Thames
Gateway—
Ms
Winterton: Quite a lot of people would be dismayed to
think that, if the Conservative party ever achieved power, it would
think the work in the Thames Gateway a shambles. Some big investment
companies that are putting money in and creating jobs would be
disappointed to hear
that.
Dan
Rogerson: The Minister seems to be labouring under the
misapprehension that my party, as an Opposition party, is opposed to
the concept of regional decision making or a regional tier. In most
democracies, regions are based on cultural, economic, geographical and
all sorts of other factors, which make the regions work and become
recognisable by people. No one is going to die in the trenches for the
south-west region, and that is a fundamental problem. I completely
agree with what the Minister is saying about a regional tier of
government, so she does not have to worry about us opposing that. But
what should those regions be and how should they work? I hope she can
say more about why the Government feel that regions should exist for
ever under boundaries set up, as I understand it, by a previous
Conservative Government, in the days of needing responses to nuclear
threats, regional command centres and so
on.
11
am
Ms
Winterton: I do not know where the hon. Gentleman got the
idea of a nuclear threat. This was about making sure that central
Government departments had at regional level a Government office that
was able to bring together the different strands of policy in order to
look at things like housing, planning and, increasingly, the
environment. This is not about a nuclear threat, which is a rather odd
concept. It is true, however, that there is regional resilience
planning at regional level, which is important. I do not think,
however, that was the overriding reason for devolving
power to Government offices. As I said earlier, the population coverage
tends to be about 5 million in each of the Government
areas—similar to the German Länder. This is about the
right level of population density for proper economic
planning.
Mr.
Jackson: The Minister is advancing the argument that we
should look at the record of the past to judge the efficacy or
otherwise of the clause. What does she make therefore of the figures
that show, with the exception of the north-east, that regional
economies grew faster in the period 1992 to 1999 than they did in the
period of RDAs in 1999 to 2006, and that the United Kingdom now has the
widest gap in economies between regions in the whole of the European
Union? It has widened further in the past 10
years.
Ms
Winterton: I would challenge what the hon. Gentleman says,
because if he looks at the difference, for example, between the
competitiveness of Yorkshire and the Humber and of the
south-east—this is true of many of the northern regional
areas—it has lessened since 1997. There has been a profound
effect on the least well-off economies. Since 1997, the gross value
added per head of all English regions has improved relative to the EU15
average. We have seen a narrowing of the gap in GVA growth rates
between the greater south-east and the other English regions. That has
reversed a trend which had been in place for 80 years.
I have
done a lot of work on the regions, and I would be surprised if, when
the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts, he does not accept, as do many
of his Conservative councillors and councillors from all parties, that
this kind of integrated spatial planning is necessary. The
difficulty—this is where the sub-national review comes into the
equation—is that when we looked at the whole issue of regional
government, I supported that proposal, because I thought that it was
the ultimate regional accountability. However, the electorate did not
think the same way, so we have to look at how to build in the input
from local authorities in the area. That is why the regional
development agencies and the leaders’ boards have to agree the
overall regional
strategy. That
is why this clause is so important and why the Opposition parties are
wrong in not recognising the importance to the economy of this kind of
planning, particularly during an economic downturn. What is coming to
the fore is the need to be able to look forward over the next five to
ten years to what is our regional economy going to look like, what
skills we will need, what planning policies, what housing policies, and
what industrial strategy we will need. It is not possible simply to do
that at local authority level. This is an extremely important
clause. What
happened previously was that regional assemblies were dealing, to an
extent, with one part of the issues—transport and
planning—local authorities were dealing with housing and the RDA
was looking at regeneration. The importance of this measure is that all
of those are being brought together in one strategy, because there is
increasing recognition that transport, planning and housing are crucial
to the development of the economy. That is why opposition to this
clause betrays a lack of understanding of the need to regenerate our
regional economies. I am particularly surprised at the opposition
from the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon, because I always
worked on the assumption that he recognised the importance to places
like Yorkshire and the Humber of that kind of investment
strategy. Mr.
Curry: There is a difference between supporting an
investment strategy and having doubts about whether we need some
super-duper global plan to deliver it. A huge amount of what the right
hon. Lady has said prompts the question of what kind of public finance
is going to be available over future years.
The right hon.
Lady mentioned skills. What assumptions will those drawing up the plan
be entitled to entertain about the funding available, for example, for
colleges of further education, which are major providers of skills?
What assumptions are we entitled to entertain about the volume of money
which local authorities might be able to dispose of, for example, for
their transport and highways budgets, or, for that matter, for national
road building? What assumptions are they entitled to entertain about
the funding available for major infrastructure projects, such as a
high-speed link, for
example? Public
expenditure accounts for a huge proportion of the gross domestic
product of all the regions, just as public sector employment is
probably the second or third biggest employer in every region. I do not
see how you we plan unless Government gives us some working assumptions
about the public funding available, not least because so much public
funding and private funding are linked together—one is the
catalyst for the other. There are huge assumptions here, and we have
not been given a clue about
them. Ms
Winterton: This is complete nonsense. Is the right hon.
Gentleman committing his Front-Bench team to say that, since local
authorities should be the only ones doing economic planning, they are
going to be given a forecast of 20 years of actual public expenditure?
He is entirely missing the point of a regional spatial strategy, which
is about saying, for example, in the Yorkshire and Humber area, what
the future possibilities are in green technologies. What does the
region need to plan for regarding skills? What does it need to plan for
in transport? We need to shape economic thinking, showing inward
investors that we seek to provide, within the region, the right
economic conditions and the right education, bringing together the
universities in the way we have been, looking at research and
development for the future.
The
right hon. Gentleman knows what happens if such a long-term strategy is
set out. Implementation will be geared towards the relevant amount of
public expenditure, but his argument and attitude is, “Unless
you can put a figure on every single part of the strategy, we should
not do anything. Let’s not have a go and think about the real
economic forward planning; do nothing because you can’t put an
exact figure on every single part of
it.”
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