Hillsborough

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

That is a matter for individual broadcasters. However, I am sure that if they are watching us or read Hansard, they will reflect on the noble Lord’s comments.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a director of Carlisle United Football Club. The composition of football fans today is rather different from 27 years ago, but I know that I speak for every single football fan the length and breadth of the British Isles when I say that we are pleased and proud that our fellow fans at Liverpool have been vindicated. They have shown up some of the key elements of British society—the police, the media and the legal trade. I am also pleased that nowadays, under our new freedom of information legislation and the mood that goes with it, the Minister is able to make such a Statement, which we all admire.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I agree with the noble Lord. Whichever club you support or wherever you live in this country, football is part of what defines our nation; it is part of our DNA. The exoneration yesterday of not only the victims but everyone who attended the event, or was involved with the football club or with the city, was a historic moment in moving forward in the right manner. I hope that, ultimately, once the CPS inquiry and the two other inquiries are concluded, we can give final solace and peace to the 96 tragic victims and ensure—if I may quote the noble Lord as a final comment on this—that they never walk alone.

Walking and Cycling

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend makes a very important point and I shall certainly follow that up. But I assure her that health is one of the key priorities for the DfT.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that the Forestry Commission provides not only many trees for this country and much timber but thousands upon thousands of miles of forests for the citizens of this country to walk and cycle in, and that there has been a repositioning of the forests much more into the urban areas? For example, when I was chairman, we planted more than 4 million trees in south Lancashire alone. Will the Minister give us an assurance that the Forestry Commission will be considered for some money out of the £300 million pot that is expected in the summer?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I cannot give a specific commitment on how that £300 million will be allocated; that has yet to be decided. If, however, the Forestry Commission would like to make to make a representation I would be delighted to meet with it to discuss its plans further.

Railways: South-West Network

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The whole area has been underlined by the Government’s commitment. The noble Baroness will know that, in 2014, we committed over £26 million of greater investment to improve resilience in the area. The particular line she points out has suffered, but improvements are being put in place. Let me underline again the Government’s commitment to ensure that, following the flooding damage that was done, we are looking at how we can improve further resilience measures, including the raising of rail tracks and control boxes.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, as the House is aware, for the past two months there has been no direct rail connection from Carlisle in England through to Newcastle, Edinburgh or Glasgow. There is no sign of that ending, as far as we know. Can the Minister tell the House what the position is on opening up Scotland from the west side of England?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord raises an important issue about investment across the country and connectivity. I will write to him specifically about that particular route but, again, I repeat the commitments made. The investment we are making in the railway industry, including HS2, underlines the Government’s commitment to improve rail network connectivity across the whole of the United Kingdom.

Police: Officer Offences

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

One role of the PCC is to have exactly that conversation with the chief constable in their area and to make sure that they are aware. When I looked into the detail of those freedom of information requests—which, on face, cause me as much distress as I am sure they cause the noble Lord—I found that in many cases, while there was a conviction for a current officer, that was countered by the fact that they were still undergoing gross misconduct procedures or appealing a particular decision. That was one of the reasons why those figures came out, but those conversations should be going on as a routine matter between PCCs and chief constables to maintain public confidence.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Freedom of Information Act has been important in eliciting information on this question and many others? Will he give the House an assurance that the Government will not weaken that Act?

[Lord Bates]

Certainly for individual forces there can be a great cost of that. That is one of the reasons why we need better systems of central reporting. For example, from next year the annual data return will collect misconduct and conviction numbers. That can be done centrally and therefore there will not be a greater need for freedom of information requests. That will be better all round.

North of England: Transport

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Snape speaks with such authority on transport matters, and I have heard him do so over the past 30 or 40 years. Every time I learn something, and the House learns something as well. I feel a strong empathy not only with his view on transport but with his commitment to the north of England.

I have spent almost 70 years living in the north of England in various places, from Cumbria to Manchester, Yorkshire, and the north-east of England. Even today I travel around by public transport across the three regions of the north of England. I might have some contributions to make that might not have been seen by the civil servants. They have produced a whole set of erudite documents that basically point us in the right direction, and I welcome that.

A number of us have been fighting for this rebalancing of the British economy for many years, so we welcome this. The Government are pushing at an open door, as they have already seen in the Manchester area. Manchester is an exemplary authority. When one gets off the train at Manchester Piccadilly, goes down to the Metrolink, gets on the tram and goes past the Roman walls and past the former cotton mills, which are now flats, meanders around the Manchester Ship Canal, goes down by the dockside, and sees MediaCity, one can see the transformation. It is the future. One can see industry, jobs, culture—with the Lowry and the Imperial War Museum North—and it is quite amazing. So the will is there in the north. I single out Manchester, but I could speak of Leeds, Hull or Liverpool, which are also vital to the north.

I see the north as a whole, and understand the modern industrial thrust of that “rugby league belt”, as some of us call it. However, the north is more than that. While I mention modern industry, the north cannot be seen without the north-east of England. This cannot be a patched-on bit of the northern plan, but I am afraid that many of us with links to the north-east of England believe that it is. I shall come back to that in a moment. The north is also a tourism area, with five national parks. There is huge earning potential and a huge potential for jobs.

At least two people here will know whom I am talking about when I mention my friend Eric Martlew, who, until he retired, was the excellent Member of Parliament for Carlisle. He told me that for many years there was a gap at the top of the M6, from the north of Carlisle for six or seven miles to the Scottish border where you met the M74. Eric was very keen that this stretch of road should be made into a motorway. He went to see the director of the Highways Agency for England, who said to him, “Well, Mr Martlew. I’m not sure why you are so worked up about this stretch of six miles. After all, it is a cul-de-sac”. It was said in jest but it makes a point. As the noble Lords, Lord Inglewood and Lord Jopling, reminded us, the north of England does not end at Manchester, Leeds, Hull or Liverpool, important though those cities are. I wonder what the citizens of the other big towns of the north—Preston, Lancaster, Carlisle, Bradford, which I know are cities—or Middlesbrough feel about being left out, because many of us feel that there is a danger that they are being.

I share the scepticism about HS2, popular though it might be. I am of the same view as my noble friend Lord Beecham. While it is going to be great for towns such as Manchester and Leeds which are linked directly to London, I do not think for one moment that many of the HS2 trains will stop between Manchester and London. Some of them might stop at Crewe but the timings are based on non-stop travel. The travelling time from London to Manchester is currently two hours and eight minutes, and HS2 will knock one hour off that. It is a big time saving. If we look at Liverpool, a city roughly the same distance from London—it is not quite the same size as Manchester but it is not far behind it—the time saved will be only half an hour. However, I believe that it will be much less than half an hour because it will involve a change at Crewe. If you have to change at Crewe, you will have to allow a sizeable time to make the connection.

What is true of Liverpool is even more true of Preston, Lancaster and Carlisle. At the moment there is an excellent fast service, which is non-stop after Warrington right through to London. If HS2 is implemented, the old west coast main line that we currently use will be dominated by stopping trains as you move further south, and we will lose the fast service to the south. That concerns many of us in the north.

I want to deal with one other point. Reference has been made to the roads and especially to the A69 and the A66. I do not demur greatly from what the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said about the A66. I use it regularly. Long stretches of it are now dual carriageway, as they should be, and travelling on it is much easier. Equally, the A69 should be dualled, because the A69 between Carlisle and Newcastle is the link—I pause here just for a minute to make the point that not many people appreciate that Edinburgh is to the west of Carlisle. Once you start to realise that, the geography changes and the road changes. The great advantage of the A69 is that it is very rarely closed due to inclement weather such as snow or high winds, because there is not very much of a high area for it to go over above Greenhead. That is the one plus that it has.

I want to finish by returning to Cumbria. I declare an interest as a non-executive director of Sellafield. I want to raise the issue of transport and access on the west coast of Cumbria. Sellafield is the largest industrial site in Britain—it is probably the largest industrial site in Europe—with 12,000 people employed on the site. There is transport congestion for people trying to get there and get out in the morning and at shift changes. It is a real problem. But the problem is going to worsen dramatically. Hopefully, NuGen will get permission for the new nuclear power station, Moorside, immediately adjacent to Sellafield. Three reactors will be built and thousands of workers will have to travel there to build that plant, which will take many years. What plans does the Minister have to improve the A595, either north from the motorway or south from Carlisle? Something desperately needs to be done if we are going to make life tolerable and possible in that part of the world.

I very much welcome the Government’s conversion on this, but hope that they will understand my main point, which was really reiterating the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood. The north is a whole. We have a large tourist industry, especially in Cumbria and the Lake District—I declare another interest as chair of the Lake District National Park Partnership—which brings billions of pounds in earnings to the region and sustains tens of thousands of jobs. If we are to be sustainable in the face of climate change, we need a proper rail link with Manchester Airport, and possibly Newcastle Airport, and much more co-ordination. For example, I believe that if you fly into Manchester Airport after 9 am, you cannot get a through train to Windermere in the centre of the Lake District. That does not make sense and we ought to be getting our act together in that respect. So I wish the Government well but they should not forget to look at the north as a whole. I would particularly welcome—not now necessarily—the observations of the Minister on how we are going to tackle the transport problems around the Sellafield area.

Rainforests

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma]

My noble friend has put the case perfectly for why we need to work incredibly hard. That is why the UK has supported developing countries to participate in the United Nations study on the economics of ecosystems and biodiversity which estimates, as I have said, that the financial cost is immense but the cost to species is even greater, and the initial long-term impact will be on us.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

My Lords, does the Minister appreciate that one of the largest single sources of global emissions is actually deforestation, often illegal logging? The British Government took the initiative a number of years ago to push for reforestation, and we are one of the few countries in the world with experience of it. Can we have an assurance from the Government that they will redouble their effort for reforestation as well as stamping out illegal logging?

[Baroness Verma]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. It is about working with other countries, which we are doing aggressively. We have worked very closely to get all our partner countries to sign off the new EU timber regulation that came into force last December. It is about being persistent in our argument. I agree with the noble Lord that it is really a devastation to all countries if we do not tackle this issue right now.

Public Bodies Bill [HL]

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hoyle]

That might be the view of the noble Lord, but I am afraid that he is not living in the real world. How can he be when he has made a statement like that? Let him look at what has been created by RDAs. I will not speak for very long, because my noble friend Lord Campbell-Savours made a very powerful case. However, I believe that we are talking to people who will not listen to the arguments that we are putting. I am pleased that the noble Lord intervened from that side, because he is the first to do so: it has been only us speaking.

The RDAs have done a wonderful job. I have a copy of a letter that was addressed to my noble friend Lady Royall. I was critical when the Minister was winding up last time and said that he was not answering the debate. He has now taken the trouble to try to answer the debate and I thank him for that. It is not always done. Having said that, I do not agree with most of the answers he gave; he will not be surprised about that.

I could go through every paragraph of the letter, but it is too late in the evening. I will refer to one paragraph that deals with the independent evaluation by PricewaterhouseCoopers that demonstrated that every pound spent by RDAs added approximately £4.50 to regional economies. In the case of the north-west, the figure was greater: £5.20. However, no answer is given in the paragraph. It simply states:

“We appreciate the work they have done”.

The issue is not whether we appreciate the work they have done, but who is going to pick up the mantle and do the work in future. There is no answer to the question of where we will get replacement agencies that will secure that kind of growth. As has been said often tonight, we are going back to localism instead of looking at regions as a whole.

The regions did benefit. The noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, said that he had an interest in Barrow-in-Furness. When the floods hit Cumbria, the RDA brought help to local businesses in need within four days. That was not matched by any other body, and it will not be matched by any new bureaucracy that is going to be established.

I will repeat what has been done for the north-west by the Northwest Regional Development Agency: 220,000 jobs have been preserved, 23,000 new businesses have been created and £3.2 billion of private investment has been brought in. These are huge sums. The agency has looked at the region as a whole. If we split it up, we will not get that sort of aid.

I will not go on. I thank the Minister for replying, but ask him to reply also to the debate tonight, because too much is at stake in the regions: too many jobs and too much inward investment. Why should the RDAs be destroyed because of a political decision that I believe is wrong? Not only do I believe that it is wrong, but many other Members of the House believe that, too. More importantly, people and businesses in the regions believe that it is wrong. If the Minister is saying that we can do the job with other organisations, can he tell me what funding will be given to the new bodies? As I understand it, there is no funding, and if there is no funding they will not be able to do the job. Will the Minister reassure me that adequate funds will be made available?

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

My Lords, I support the case made by my noble friends through their various amendments. In doing so, having spent many years in public life, I reflect that there are certain constant difficulties and challenges. In our previous debate on this issue, I remember the case being made for the establishment of the northern development agency, including the northern part of the north-west and the north-east of England. The one overarching pressure on the NDA was how to challenge what was clearly going to be a devolved nation in Scotland. That was a very powerful problem. Unless you live in a frontier-type economy, you do not really appreciate the rather different problems that might be experienced compared with the rest of the country.

I remember how the development agencies in Scotland in the early 1980s constantly tried to offer inducements to companies in the north of England to relocate in Scotland with grants, which the local authorities—because there was no development agency then—could match. That was one of the prime reasons for the almost universal support for the agency in the north of the country—a point made by my noble friends Lady Quin and Lord Beecham. That problem will still exist. It is eight miles from Carlisle to the border and it is easy to relocate if you get financial inducements. We have to face up to that challenge. Therefore, I park with the Minister the thought that that problem will not go away.

Perhaps I may raise two specific issues. My noble friend Lord Beecham pointed out how important tourism was becoming to the north-east of England. It is just as important in the north-west, especially in Cumbria. Work was initially carried out on how to create more jobs and attract more visitors to Cumbria, and I mention Cumbria and not just the Lake District. As an aside, perhaps I may say how pleased I was that the Government decided to shortlist the Lake District as a possible World Heritage Site—I declare an interest as chairman of the bid—and how important that will be in creating jobs and stimulating the economy. I remind the Minister that Cumbria has more than 40 million visitors a year and that 32,860 full-time jobs are dependent on tourism. It adds £2 billion to the economy.

In order to succeed, you need leadership, and sometimes that involves investment. Of course, since the North-West Development Agency has gone, the funds have dried up for Cumbria Tourism. It has already had to reduce its staff from 45 to 19, so there is a serious problem there. However, it is not only a problem of attracting tourism; it is also a question of trying to compete against the equally attractive tourist resorts just over the border in Scotland. That takes me back to the problem of living in a border economy—things are different compared with other parts of the country.

I conclude by raising the issue of the assets and contractual commitments of the development agency. In a letter to me dated 1 March, Robert Hough, the chair of the Northwest Regional Development Agency, said that he believes:

“Any ongoing contractual commitments beyond March 2012 are likely to be transferred to BIS, other Government Departments or possibly a national residual body”.

I raise a specific point with the Minister that disturbs me greatly. It is why, in a sense, I am opposed to this move that the Government are proposing this evening. One of the problems of the north-west of England is the amount of derelict land. I believe that it has more derelict land than any other region in the country—all the disused coal spoil heaps and the industrial bases. The Northwest Regional Development Agency’s economic appraisal came up with the conclusion—surprise, surprise—that the way forward was to green these areas, to enhance their environment, to make them more attractive to inward investment, and to improve the health and the lives of the people who live there.

As a result, the Northwest Regional Development Agency entered into partnerships with the Forestry Commission, the Wildlife Trusts and local authorities. As a result, there has been a huge greening in the north-west of England in the old industrial areas. I repeat what I said before, but it just gives me so much pleasure to say it. Over recent years we have planted over a million trees in Wigan, over a million trees in Moseley, over a million trees in Ellesmere Port, 2 million trees in Vale Royal, and 2 million trees in Warrington. This is a mammoth undertaking that has revolutionised the environment and will do so increasingly in that part of Lancashire. It will also make it more attractive potentially for inward investment.

This was done through partnership, commitment and investment by the Forestry Commission, and through long-term leases with various charities and local authorities. As a result, the Northwest Regional Development Agency has an ongoing commitment to the year 2029 of roughly £6.6 million. Who will pay that money? Who will accept the liability? How will the funds be paid to the main recipient, the Forestry Commission? I seek assurances from the Minister on that issue because it is very important as we go forward, and it exemplifies my point that this proposal has not been thought through, the ends have not been tied up, and, certainly, I cannot support the Government tonight.

[Lord Prescott]

My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to talk about the RDAs; I played some part in their creation a number of years ago. I must apologise to the Committee because I am not as briefed as perhaps I should have been. I was in the Council of Europe today and I realised that the debate was on this afternoon. We need to understand what was inherited when the Regional Development Agencies were created. People have so easily forgotten. We were talking about 3 million unemployed, about massive disinvestment in public services, and about a growing disparity and growing inequalities between the north and south in jobs, education and investment. If anything was to be done about this, we felt that we had to do more than simply leave it to the market. What was the solution? The noble Lord, Lord Lawson of Blaby, was the Chancellor in charge of a great deal of the economy at that time and the results that we were left with were quite disastrous, frankly. I will not repeat them, or go into detail, but it was totally unacceptable to us. We came to power doing something about employment.

The employment was not just in the north and south, although the disparities had grown. I recall, when I produced my alternative regional strategy, going to the northern region and saying that we were going to have a regional development agency for every part of the UK. It was suggested to me that as a northern politician I should just think of the north and not the south. It was a very complicated meeting, but I pointed out that with a million unemployed in the south, we could not be indifferent to that, whatever the growth rates and differentials between each of the regions. We needed to develop the expertise, the partnership and the public and private sector, and set a body up that could take a regional analysis to do something about it. This was welcomed by business. In fact, business today still has very warm words to say about the RDAs, particularly when compared with the organisations that the Government now propose to set up if they abolish the RDAs—and they are on the way to doing so.

It was important that business chaired every one of the RDAs. We thought that it was very important to have business chairmen who got the co-operation of the local authorities and the various bodies and developed, as their first priority, a regional strategy for the assets of a region to see how they could best develop them to the advantage of the region, and not to compete, as was often the case in regional policy before. Governments, including Labour Governments, went round offering bags of gold to industry to move the motor car industry from A to B. That was basically the strategy. In some cases, that brought jobs, but it did not deal with the most important thing: to develop the assets of the region and the economy.

If you look at the record, the judgment of the Audit Commission, parliamentary groups and businesses themselves looking impartially at each of the regions has been that the RDAs did a good job. They helped to reduce unemployment. A lot of the 2 million jobs that we produced at the time were public sector jobs, let us be honest. I do not think that a public sector job is wrong. When so many thousand jobs went in the north-east, it was stated that they were state jobs, as if something was wrong with someone who was employed as a public servant, whether they were in a hospital, a school, another public service or even just emptying bins, for God's sake. They were in a job and were an essential part of economic development. Yes, a lot of them were in public service, but that began to have its effect in the economy. It lifted demand. It had a consumer effect. It gave more confidence. The development agencies over that period were a success. You can always ask how much that cost. You might ask yourself how much it saved when mass unemployment gives you a heck of a cost, never mind what you might feel the excessive administrative cost is of what is called a quango. They were bodies that did their job. That was important.

What worries me now is what the strategy is. A noble Lord said that we should look at what happened in Scotland and Wales. I remember arguing about this in the other place. They said, “We are going to abolish the Scottish and Welsh development agencies”, and they did not. As soon as they came to power they realised their success and the demand from the local and regional area to keep their RDAs. Admittedly, the Government recognised that at the time and refused to abolish them. Why did they not abolish them? Because they were doing a good job. Why did we think the RDAs were needed in the English regions? Because they had done a good job in Scotland and in Wales. They had improved their economies while ours had gone down and down, and it seemed that a significant feature of that was the regional development agencies, so we wanted them in all our regions. Even if the growth in the south-east was always higher than in the north-east, there was still a need to develop the regional assets. Regional development bodies can do that, and they did.

The only time there was any move to make some change was after the Toxteth riots in 1981. The noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, was sent up with a busload of bankers to look at what they could do in Liverpool. One result was that they developed these garden centres—I cannot remember their name.

Intellectual Assets: Crime

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

I think that I will refrain from rising to that one. The noble Lord is quite right that this is one of the reasons why we have fixed our eyes on this threat. It is real. There is evidence that theft has taken place and it must be stopped, so there is no dispute between us. In my original Answer I was saying that we are trying to put a value on the losses. In other words, we are doing some historical work but also looking at the trend lines to be able to know more than we do at the moment about both the volume and the nature of the threat we face.

[Lord Clark of Windermere]

My Lords, the Government very sensibly in the spending review announced an increase of expenditure on cybertechnology and cybercrime. Is the Minister confident that there is sufficient co-ordination within Whitehall to ensure that that money is spent correctly, and will she advise the House which is the lead department in Whitehall on this issue?

[Baroness Neville-Jones]

My Lords, the lead department is the Cabinet Office and I am the Minister responsible in that department. The answer to the noble Lord’s question is that we are extraordinarily aware, as I am sure the previous Administration were, of the need for co-ordination. We are building on what the preceding Administration did to strengthen the co-ordination, but we want rather more than that. We want a single strategy that all the departments follow, and do not want simply to co-ordinate existing efforts but to have everybody involved in an overall strategy in which they each pursue their delegated part.