Regeneration

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

I join the noble Baroness in paying tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, for introducing this debate, and for the enthusiasm and energy with which he chairs the all-party group on this hugely important subject. As the noble Lord rightly said, I am going to concentrate on east London, where I am mainly involved, but I could not help reflecting while the noble Baroness was speaking that when he asked, “Who is the Minister who goes to bed on Sunday night and gets up early on Monday morning ready to concentrate?”, I used to be that Minister. One of my responsibilities was to decide what to do about Manchester Exchange railway station, which was crumbling away. The pillars were rusting, so were we going to put a lot of money in—£250,000—without having any idea of what we were going to do with the station? I know it is now a very successful exhibition and conference centre, and I am very pleased that the extravagant decision which I took then has worked out so well.

I also feel I know quite a bit about MediaCityUK, because I served on the Communications Committee of this House under the noble Lord, Lord Fowler, in which we reviewed the charter of the BBC. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester showed his total partiality at all times when interviewing BBC people to ensure that they were going to move to Manchester and Salford, where MediaCityUK now is. I feel as though I have been there before.

However, I want to speak about east London, because I have had a strange involvement with it. I worked with Michael Heseltine as a Minister when we first came into Government—he is now my noble friend Lord Heseltine, of course—and his energy and enthusiasm was considerable. The first thing we did when he became Secretary of State was to get in a helicopter and fly over the whole of that dockland area. There were 5,000 derelict acres within a mile and a half of some of the most expensive real estate in the world, which was the City of London. After our helicopter flight, we came down and got into a bus with some of the most militant left Labour leaders of the various boroughs that existed in that area who were absolutely determined that nothing interfered with their own sovereignty over those areas. From that came: the Local Government, Planning and Land Act; the creation of the London Docklands Development Corporation; the creation of two most remarkable chairmen and deputy chairmen in the shape of the late Sir Nigel Broackes and the late Lord Mellish, who many of your Lordships will remember as the deputy chairman. He took on the hard left at some pain to himself, and with real difficulty, because he saw the benefit it was going to bring, and the life that he could bring to an area that was so totally derelict at that time.

It did take considerable investment. Having set up the development corporation and given it the planning powers for the area of the Docklands that had previously derived from five different councils that could never agree on what should happen, one figure sticks in my mind. The investment required in one particular area meant we were spending £500,000 per acre—a lot of money on those days—to deal with the contaminated land problem, before you could even start thinking about any construction. Subsequently there was Canary Wharf and the various other wonderful developments that exist there. I remember also on the housing side that we lined up five different volume house builders and gave them each land to build 500 houses. I do not want to dwell on Labour but they were all Labour boroughs at that time, of a complexion that I hope the Labour Party has now well left behind in its present creation. They said to us, “People do not want to own their own houses. They like being council tenants and we look after them.” That, of course, was the source of the power of much of the leadership of those councils. When the opportunity arose to buy 2,500 houses for sale and with preference given to the people living in those London dockland boroughs, the queue down the road on show day was a mile long, formed of people who were determined to have the chance they had never had before of owning their own homes.

Subsequently, when I came out of government, because of my previous involvement in the Docklands area I was approached to look at the possibilities of 100 derelict acres on the Royal Victoria Dock. I did not really know the Royal Docks very well at that time. They were one of the wonders of the world in Victorian and later times with a 1,000-acre estate and 250 acres of enclosed water—the largest enclosed water space in the world—where 150,000 people worked in their time. This was hallowed land for all those people who had worked in the docks for generations in east London. It was also derelict. When I first went to the 100-acre site on the north of the Royal Victoria Dock, the only living things I saw were two foxes. Now, after much pain and struggle, if you go there now you will find a million square feet of exhibition space, a 5,000 seat convention centre, six hotels and three DLR stations. At this very minute, the Crossrail line is starting to be dug that will come right through and surface at the Royal Victoria site.

It is rather appropriate that we are having this debate. Tomorrow the Emirates Air Line, which is the cable car that runs from the O2 to the ExCel centre, will open. It owes a great deal to the enthusiasm of the mayor, who managed to persuade the Emirates airline that it was a wonderful thing to have its name on it and to put up the money to help to build it. That will be another asset to the site.

It is interesting to see the challenge. Picking up on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, having gradually got that critical mass together, east London is where it is all now happening. When we started out on this venture, and I talked about the possibility of an exhibition centre and we talked about the Royal Docks, there was a tremendous west London bias in this great city of ours and people said, “Nobody will ever go there”. A lot of people said, “Where is it?”. They thought that it was somewhere near Southend. There was quite extraordinary ignorance. Even now, you will find quite a lot of people in London who have never been to Canary Wharf, and hardly know that it is there. It is now the great growth area, as the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, said. That whole area, with the Olympics, other developments, London City Airport, the university and with Tech City, brings a critical mass together.

I was delighted to see, because I obviously have to declare an interest with my involvement in ExCel, that while when we started on the convention centre London was 19th in the world for its share of international convention business, in our third year we had already gone from 19th to ninth. We are now seventh in the world; that is competing with Atlanta, Munich, Barcelona, Paris and the major cities of the world. This is a great opportunity. It will grow because the other merits of London mean that it must be in the top three. Now that we have a major convention centre, I hope that we shall see not only business for the convention centre but the added value—the multiplier—and benefit that it brings in, perhaps by bringing in a medical convention with 20,000 or 30,000 consultants and their families.

The particular pleasure that we all have is that it is taking place in the most deprived London borough, Newham, with the co-operation of a very energetic Labour Mayor of Newham, Sir Robin Wales, who has done an outstanding job for his borough. Yet there is so much else to do. Standing on the balcony of ExCel, for the past 20 years I have looked out at the other side of the dock. There is a site with nearly 100 acres that have lain derelict. They were owned by the LDDC, then by English Partnerships, then by the LDA, then the GLA. This is a failure to get the drive together. Now we see the opportunities.

My concern, shared by practically every noble Lord in this House, is how we are going to earn our living in the world in the future. One of the things that we have to do where we see opportunities for growth is to make them work. It is not a question of which Minister will be responsible for this, because we have got a mayor. Where you have a mayor, you have an extra dimension. Cities which fail to choose to have a mayor are missing out in a big way because that is where the opportunities will come. I hope that we shall see the sort of leadership that the mayor has shown to be possible in east London reflected across the other cities of our country, which we know need that growth so badly at present.