West Midlands

Debate between Lord Austin of Dudley and Robert Neill

Tuesday 7th September 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Robert Neill)]

I join the other hon. Members who have welcomed you to the Chair, Mr Hollobone. It is a pleasure to see you there for the first time. I am sure that it will not be the last time, and we look forward to serving under your chairmanship in the future.

This has been a useful debate, and I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) on initiating it and on making informed and passionate arguments. I may not agree with everything that he said, but no one doubts his commitment to the region. I accept the genuineness of the concerns raised by hon. Members on both sides of the House about issues that affect their area.

I accept, too, the commitment of hon. Members to the former regional Select Committees. We disagree on the appropriateness of that route, but I want to make it clear that that does not diminish my respect for the work that hon. Members, including the hon. Gentleman, put in at the time.

Several important points were raised, and I shall do my best to deal with them in the time available. I have made notes, and, if I am unable to touch on everything, I will do my level best in due course to get back to hon. Members. I am conscious of the important opportunity provided by these debates.

I do not wish to start with semantics, but it is interesting that the debate is on Government policy on the west midlands. I would prefer to rephrase that to “Government policy for the west midlands”. It is, perhaps, a question of how we see things being delivered. Policy is not an end in itself. It does not exist in a vacuum but is actually a means to an end of improving people’s lives, be that through fiscal stimuli, transport infrastructure, education—all the things about which we have spoken. I believe that that is where we are on common ground. But the Government are saying clearly that they have policies for—not on—various parts of the country. That is important, because I suspect that we differ on the importance of decentralisation to the Government’s agenda. That is clear in the coalition agreement and in the manifestos on which both coalition parties fought the election. I am a little bit disappointed by some comments by Opposition Members, because, with respect, some of their arguments—although not those regarding specifics, which were useful—were deeply old fashioned and harked back to failed solutions. I genuinely do not believe that the way forward is to rehash failed solutions.

It is not always about having a plethora of interventions, programmes and agencies to take things forward and help. As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) said, it is often as much about what the Government do not do and about their giving people freedom and opportunity to seize the initiative.

[Ian Austin]

Which businesses in the west midlands have told the Minister that the RDA should be scrapped?

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Neill]

I will mention the RDA in a moment. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman continues to live in the past. His speech, as Opposition spokesman, was simply a defence of all that went before. It was a Bourbon speech, with respect, pretending that nothing had changed. But things have changed. Whatever the good intentions behind some interventions, the sad fact is that, in many respects, they were not delivering.

We have touched briefly on housing. The fact is that the top-down regional strategies were not delivering the housing that people in the west midlands and other parts of the country need. As a consequence, at the end of the previous Government’s period in office there were fewer housing starts than in any peacetime period since 1926.

[Ian Austin]

There was a recession.

[Robert Neill]

The hon. Gentleman cannot go on blaming the recession. That is a fantasy land. The Opposition like to think that a recession walked in and destroyed everything. No. They mucked up on their watch. The people of this country, including those in the west midlands, are paying the price for the previous Government’s incompetence.

[Robert Neill]

That is why the coalition has made it clear that getting the economy back on a safe track has to be central to what we do. There is a risk that, unless one gets to grips with the deficit of £156 billion, we will not have an economic base enabling us to take forward the initiatives that we all wish to see and which unite people from all parties. We disagree about the remedies, but the need to make some reductions in spending programmes, which have been mentioned, goes back directly—I am sorry to have to say it—to the previous Government’s failure to tackle the deficit. I cannot accept the proposition advanced by some people, however sincerely, that the solution is to carry on spending when the country is already mired in debt. I do not believe that that would serve anyone.

Let me return to specific points raised in this debate. Against the context that I have mentioned, the answer is to unlock initiative, partnership and co-operation. The point was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull that there is no reason to assume that a one-size-fits-all approach will automatically meet all the needs and requirements of such a diverse area as the west midlands. We take the view, as we always have done, that Government office regions frequently do not represent the natural economic units, which may be a much better basis for economic collaboration. That is why we have said that we will not rigidly use those regions as the basis for regional development agencies or Government office interventions, but will instead let the people on the ground, who know their area best, come forward with ideas about the way forward.

I am pleased that some nine proposals have been submitted for local economic partnerships from local authorities and business in the west midlands, in a number of configurations. I can say to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), who mentioned that, as well as other matters, that a Stoke and Staffordshire LEP has been proposed. Those proposals will be evaluated by my right hon. and hon. Friends who are responsible for such matters and they will consider the best way to go forward, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull said.

There has been a positive and rich response from business and local authorities in the west midlands. I am not as disdainful as the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) is of local initiative. The answer does not always lie in sneering at the little people and in the big battalions. Often, local initiative is likely to get more focused results. That is why we have confirmed the abolition of the regional development agencies, along with a plethora of top-down machinery of which they were a part. Although I, too, recognise good work done in individual cases by such agencies, that does not justify the highly centralised remit of which they were part. I want to make some other points, but I shall give way one last time to the hon. Gentleman.

[Ian Austin]

At no time did I argue that local initiative does not matter. The RDAs were based on local people putting proposals to them, just as local people will now put proposals to Whitehall. But let us set that to one side for a moment. If the RDAs were such a failure, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, achieved nothing and need to be abolished, why is he retaining the one that serves his constituency here in London and getting rid of the ones that are much more needed and necessary in the west midlands?

[Robert Neill]

If the hon. Gentleman is going to make a bad point, he should at least make an accurate bad point. The fact is that that is not happening. First, the power is being given for the London Development Agency to be merged into the Greater London Authority, so it does not exist as an RDA. Secondly, it has democratic accountability to a directly elected Mayor of London, which is not the case elsewhere. We are, of course, extending to major cities such as Birmingham and Coventry the ability to have a democratically elected mayor. If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me for saying so, I will not take any lectures from him on that issue.