Baroness Hanham
Main Page: Baroness Hanham (Conservative - Life peer)Regeneration
Baroness Hanham Excerpts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government (Baroness Hanham)
My Lords, I expected this to be a well informed and interesting debate. If I may say so, it is an unusual debate for this House, and it is one that perhaps we ought to repeat more frequently. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for having generated it. I acknowledge immediately, as many others have done, that it is his own role, particularly in the East End of London, and his own experience that make him such a powerful voice in these areas. I also thank all other noble Lords who have taken part in the debate.
Although the speeches have concentrated mainly, as one would expect, on the north-west of England and on east London, the question was: what are the Government going to do about the co-ordination of regeneration? The question of the national strategy crops up immediately. The reason why we are not interested in a national strategy is that it imposes a one-size-fits-all concept. What we need to do is make sure that the levers and mechanisms are in place to ensure that a strategy can be localised. I want to spend a few minutes saying what the Government have done over the past few years to lay the groundwork for regeneration and to provide the catalysts.
Twenty-four planned enterprise zones have been set up and they are already engaged in supporting business growth and creating jobs. Noble Lords have mentioned the importance of skills and training and that will be part of enterprise zones. I totally agree that skills and training are vital to the future of commerce and local areas. The enterprise zones employ special business rates. Local enterprise partnerships, mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham and the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, are beginning to work very well. As always with new things, some will do better than others, but many enterprise partnerships are now fully engaged with local authorities, businesses and civic leaders across the country and they are involving their local communities. I want to emphasise this all the time. Regeneration is about local and local people, communities, businesses and authorities need to be taking the initiative in what has to be done while having the background to be able to do it.
We are supporting small businesses by cutting bureaucracy and addressing their challenges. We are supporting housing regeneration with a commitment to bringing empty homes back into productive use. We are still investing over £6.5 billion in housing, including over £2 billion to make existing social homes decent, and we are continuing with the programme of investment through the European regional development fund. More than 45,000 jobs have been created or safeguarded and nearly 10,000 businesses have been created already. So there is plenty for people to build on and I want to reassure noble Lords that the Government are fully committed to regeneration and see it as essential, both in city areas and, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, in rural areas, which in many ways often need as much help as the city areas.
However, the Government do not believe that they should dictate to local authorities. One of the things that has gone wrong in the past is that it is all being done on top of them. We want to make certain that local authorities and local enterprise partnerships know what their community wants and needs and then that they have the tools to deal with it. We do not want to plan and prescribe but we do want to help local people to get things done. It would be fair to say that in the north-west and in east London there has been and is really strong leadership. I have had the pleasure of going up to the north-west to Manchester, Sheffield and Liverpool within the past year or so and I am astounded at the progress that has been made there and the changes that have come about. Some of that has been to do with European funds, some has been to do with government funds and a whole lot has been to do with the leadership that has made sure that those local areas are put to rights, replacing the industries that have gone and starting to look to the future.
There is an extraordinary scale of regeneration taking place, particularly in the north-west and the Olympic area. In both the areas being discussed today a large part of what has happened has been based on sport. Manchester hosted the Commonwealth Games 10 years ago and east London, of course, is doing the Olympics now. In east London the Government have made significant long-term investment and are supporting a transport infrastructure as well as the developments delivered by the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation and all the other developments. My noble friend Lord King rightly drew attention to the fact that all this started with the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and the noble Lord, Lord King, himself. They were great visionaries determined to see things change. That again was the catalyst.
The Olympic host borough unit is a good example of how joint working between boroughs and agencies can bring about change. It is developing a concerted plan to tackle the long-standing deprivation in the boroughs affected, especially raising the skills and education of local people, and the long-term worklessness that has blighted families for too long. I think that proper attention was given to the mayor of Newham who has been very instrumental in what is going on.
The challenge on convergence and the idea that within 20 years communities that host the 2012 Olympic Games will have the same social and economic chances as their neighbours across London is embedded within the strategic regeneration framework. There is a clear action plan to achieve this. It distils an existing set of strategies created by local agencies and the Government into a coherent common agenda to get local residents into jobs and to extend their life expectancy. It is not an ethereal concept as working towards convergence has brought about tangible success stories—not just the schools, health centre and multi-million pound retail centre within the park but the regeneration of Stratford High Street, to which the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, referred, the improvements to the public realm, and the development at Strand East. Convergence is demanding but not easy to achieve.
The handing over of the Olympic park is another example of how the Government have helped facilitate an alliance between the mayor and the Olympic host boroughs, enabling him to set up the London Legacy Development Corporation. That will be the carry on after the Olympics and it is really important that the legacy of the LLDC does its job. We will all have to ensure that it does—as I am sure it will. It is under the eye of the mayor now and it will be very much in his interests that it is satisfactorily completed.
Turning to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, about the north-west, I think that I said how impressed I was by what has been going on there. She asked a couple of specific questions, one of which was about broadband. I am fumbling around with too many bits of paper here. I cannot give the exact position on broadband but the European regional development fund has recently been opened up and the north-west is one of the areas that will benefit in terms of broadband. I am not certain when it will start but I will let the noble Baroness know. Money is available for that and it should come round in the not too distant future. There is not only Manchester; there is the Sheffield enterprise zone. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham referred to Liverpool and other places and the regional development areas there. The noble Lord, Lord Storey, painted a brilliant picture of Liverpool and what has happened to it. It has one of the finest marine areas which is becoming such a success story. I am not in the least pessimistic about what is going on. In fact, I am enormously encouraged because not only is regeneration being galvanised but it will carry on because local people will want to ensure that their particular areas are improved.
I have about a minute and a half so I shall quickly deal with issues raised. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, asked who is responsible when the Games end. Of course, that is the Mayor of London. It will be entirely within his remit and the new London Legacy Development Corporation particularly. On the issue of international trains not stopping at Stratford, we know there is an aspiration that they should, but a decision to do so is clearly a business case. If that is made out, I hope that one or two will stop there. There are lots of aspirations for Thames crossings and I am sure we will all be sitting on the cable car to make sure that we can get from one place to another.
I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Birmingham that the twin-engine approach is right. We need to improve skills and life chances alongside physical regeneration. I have said that and it is obvious to me that there is not much point in having new buildings if we do not give employment and training to local people. I have been handed a note telling me that I have run out of time. It says, “Time up!”, so if I have not dealt properly with any of the points raised and questions asked, I will write to noble Lords. I am sorry that we have not quite had time to wind up the debate in the best way possible, but I thank all noble Lords again for a fascinating hour and a half.