Economic Leadership for Cities

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley—and indeed the arrival of his new colleagues on the Lib Dem Benches. But I was surprised, from his opening remarks, to hear that somehow the clocks started in 2010. In 2010, as you will recall, the Lib Dems did not demur from the coalition Government’s reduction, or taking away, of the regional economic organisations. This of course is another example of stop-go—and now we are going again with more funding and providing more impetus to these areas.

It is, however, excellent that the House of Lords is debating the issues of urban areas. We had a discussion on planning a month or so ago. I believe it would be advisable for the House of Lords to have a Select Committee to review all the relevant aspects of the development of urban areas. There has been a circular note from the Chairman of Committees, the noble Lord, Lord Sewel—and if noble Lords are minded like me that this should be a very topical and appropriate area for the House of Lords, I ask them to write in with their views, as I am doing. If they would like to copy me in with what they say, I would be very pleased.

Another important feature of this discussion is that the Government Office for Science has been producing documents. Maybe these have the statistics that have been referred to. For example, in August it produced The Evolving Economic Performance of UK Cities: City Growth Patterns 1981-2011. There are interesting and surprising results in it. There are statistics of employment, population, output and productivity. The biggest qualitative change seems to have been in small and medium-sized cities, and these seem to be the ones most successful in employment, health, environment and output. The largest cities have either grown, like London, or have, as it were, reduced in northern areas —northern cities—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

Whether or not they are growing or not, there seems to have been a significant growth in inequality in these large cities—also inequality in health. Indeed, Sir Michael Marmot has pointed out that the mortality for males between one part of London and another may be affected by as much as 20 years. In fact—this might have been raised earlier—as Jonathan Glancey wrote in his powerful essay in the book on London’s environment, the morality of London is more like that of piracy than civic duty. I applaud Sheffield for remarking that this is an important area which cities should think about.

Over the past 20 years in the medium-sized cities mostly in southern England—Telford, for example, is counted in the north in these statistics—there has been a substantial rise in population and in output. For example, the economics of these areas has been associated with services, commerce and retail. But a clutch of northern cities have experienced a much lower population growth and output growth, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, explained.

The surprising result of these government reports is the question of whether high-tech cities are the future. Surprisingly, it shows that in the high-tech Meccas of Oxford and Cambridge, where Nobel prizes abound, the average income and growth rate have in fact not been very impressive. The argument given is that a lot of these people work in the public sector and, as noble Lords all know, if you work in the public sector you have pretty low pay. The cities that are in fact growing fastest in population and productivity in income are those such as Milton Keynes and Crawley.

The other feature of these high-tech cities—I have some experience in this area, having been a city councillor in Cambridge and set up a company—is that quite a few companies have been set up and then all sorts of takeovers have occurred. Very few significant companies have grown, so it is very far from the Silicon Valley phenomenon. ARM is of course a great company in Cambridge, as is Oxford Instruments in Oxford. In fact, if you are involved in running a company in Cambridge you will get endless e-mails from people in London saying, “Can I invest in your company?”. However, you know that it is a trap; they want to raise the value of the company and then sell it off. It is all a kind of gambling operation as opposed to a long-term investment using companies to develop services and products. The word “start-up” in the English language now almost means a company that is on a path to making a lot of money for someone who then sells it off.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we are very short of time.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The other important feature of the cities is that we have not yet developed enough of the citywide companies, such as those in France, that are developing cities around the world.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Tuesday 4th November 2014 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

My Lords, I support the amendment. Air pollution in the UK is pretty serious and getting worse. We now have a better understanding that the larger the city, the more cars there are. In fact, cars travel longer distances in smaller cities. There is increasing awareness about air pollution, particularly in London, and the parties involved realise the seriousness of this. Other cities will have to make their own air quality assessments as they grow, so it is surprising that a Government who wish to make the UK seem like a desirable place to live and set up industry have introduced this measure. We know from experience around the world that incoming businesses and industries take a great interest in the environment but, under the Bill, local authorities will not be compelled to produce these assessments.

There is an equity aspect to this. We see large differences in life expectancy across London. Studies carried out every day in London show very high levels of pollution in areas with poorer housing. Therefore, it seems strange that we should be moving backwards in this respect. Websites show that the best city in Europe in this regard is Zurich and show how bad other cities are in comparison. The Government are taking a retrograde step in this regard. That is why this amendment insists that the Secretary of State takes this issue very seriously.

I regret that the amendment does not refer to noise, because the situation in the UK is pretty bad in that respect. If you drive round Germany, you see notices on the road advising you to drive slowly to reduce noise. The North Circular road is extremely noisy. People accelerate between traffic controls and the residents have to put up with that noise. There is no attempt in this country to tell people about the danger of noise pollution and how they can moderate their behaviour to reduce it. Local authorities are not encouraged to do that. Part 5 of this schedule takes a regressive step in not insisting that local authorities not only designate noise abatement zones but inform people how to reduce noise in these areas. I hope very much that the amendment will be carried.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I think there are some limits to how far we would necessarily take this as a general model in this area. The noble Lord will be well aware that all efforts to agree speed limits within the European Union and to deal with the problem of cars going extremely fast are blocked by the Germans, who have a very powerful lobby, not unconnected with BMW and Mercedes Benz, which insists on having cars which are extremely powerful, which we all know also produce more pollutants when they are being driven very fast. They are driven very fast across Germany, rather more quickly than they are allowed to be driven through other countries, so Germany is a mixed example, I think.

This government proposal is not to lower air quality. I recognise in the admirably clear speech of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the much wider issues which he is raising about the Government’s overall strategy on air quality. This is a deregulatory measure which simply aims to remove the requirement for a further assessment when an air quality zone has already been agreed. The Government give active support to local authorities when it has been decided that a low emission zone or strategy is the appropriate action. We have so far funded 15 separate low emission zone-related projects or feasibility studies for our local air quality grant scheme. We have also disseminated the results that have come from these studies as good examples for local authorities. Since 1997, over £52 million has been spent to support local authorities in delivering low emission strategies, including feasibility studies with low emission zones and the uptake of clean vehicle technology and programmes to change behaviour.

There is regular feedback from local authorities, and an independent review of local air quality management in 2010 indicated that this requirement for a further assessment, or a second round of assessment, did not add to the understanding of local air quality and actually delayed the production and implementation of local action plans required under the Act. This was confirmed in a consultation with air quality stakeholders in January 2013. I refute the argument that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has put forward—that this is an attempt to weaken the local air quality regime. This is very much an attempt to support what local authorities do and to speed up their implementation of such zones when they are agreed. The Government continue to give active support in this regard. I recognise what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about the overall problem of air quality. As I sat listening to him, I recalled that, as a boy, when I first came to a choir school in London, I was here just in time for the last great smog, in 1953 I think it was. Air quality has improved a little since then, and life expectancy has improved with it.

However, this change is a limited one, as are many others in the Bill. It will allow local authorities to prepare and implement air quality action plans more quickly and to avoid duplicating information gathered either in the earlier, detailed assessment stage that is required or in the preparation of the air quality plan. That is the limit of what we are attempting to do here. We remain actively committed to higher air quality throughout Britain. We have supported local emissions zones: I have just been handed a note which remarks on the local emissions zones in Oxford, York, Bradford, Southampton, Birmingham and Hackney. With that reassurance, I hope that the noble Lord will be able to withdraw his amendment.

G8 Summit

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Will this report be in the Library?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I do not know whether it is yet in the Library. It was published two days ago. I will do my best, looking hopefully at the Box, to put it in the Library as soon as we can. I must say that I have been briefed by a number of officials who are working incredibly hard for the G8 exercise. I am very grateful that one of them has been able to spare a bit of time out of her 14-hour day to come here and assist me in this and I wish to add my compliment on her remarkably clear handwriting.

The G8 is an informal directing group and the discussions within the G8 then feed out to others. On the final lunch the secretaries-general of the IMF and the OECD will be there and the tax transparency agenda will be carried on quite largely through the OECD. The land ownership agenda, which was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will be carried out partly through the Food and Agriculture Organisation. Discussions are part of a very intricate network in which we work as we can with others. There are a number of associated conferences now. We have had a Foreign Ministers’ G8 with very active engagement from the Russians on issues such as Syria and elsewhere. We do not always agree but we are actively discussing these issues. There is also the Science and Innovation conference mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The Nutrition for Growth compact has been signed by 24 Governments from the developed and developing worlds, 22 business groups, four science organisations and a number of major international non-governmental organisations.

Sessions at the G8 will cover the global economy, including trade, and the very important bilateral negotiations which have been taking place between the EU and Japan and which will be taking place between the EU and the United States. There will be a session on international political issues and foreign policy, a session on countering international and cross-border terrorism, a session particularly devoted to tax and transparency, and a final lunch at which the delegates will be joined not only by the secretaries-general I have mentioned but also by a number of other senior figures from Africa and South America.

The Prime Minister has focused on the three Ts—trade, tax and transparency. I have already spoken about trade. We very much hope that we will be able to get back to a global trade agenda with the World Trade Organisation. However, some of the leading members of G20 have not been particularly co-operative on a global trade agenda which is why we are having to pursue regional trade negotiations. If we are able to achieve a trade agreement between the United States and the European Union to follow those with Japan, Korea and Canada, we will have made a major contribution to global economic growth. This is about the rules which shape global trade and the fairness and openness which characterise them.

We have also discussed tax. Britain has a particular responsibility here because of the number of overseas territories and Crown dependencies which have become offshore financial centres. The Prime Minister has been in contact with all of our overseas territories and Crown dependencies. They have now all agreed on a number of measures. Bermuda is still discussing the question of a multilateral convention on mutual assistance on tax matters but we hope to resolve that issue with Bermuda before we have sorted out the complete agenda for the G8.

I was asked about the fourth money-laundering directive. This is an EU measure and proposals are currently being negotiated by member states and the European Parliament. They would require that companies obtain information on their beneficial ownership, hold this information and make the information available to competent authorities. The European agenda, the global agenda and the G8 agenda overlap and complement each other. In all of this one has to recognise that tax sovereignty and global markets do not go easily together. That is why we have to pursue these international negotiations on tax transparency in order to regain a degree of our tax sovereignty. The Government have been relatively successful over the past three years at regaining tax from multinational companies. I am told that HMRC has collected more than £23 billion in extra tax since 2010 through challenging large businesses’ tax arrangements and tackling transfer pricing issues, and we continue to hope that we will raise a good deal more through tax transparency.

As noble Lords know, transparency is about not only tax but beneficial ownership. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked particularly about transparency over land tenure. The problem with land tenure in developing countries is that often records do not exist, so in terms of technical assistance, as part of bilateral or multilateral aid programmes, helping these countries to establish clear records of land tenure is a necessary part of what we do to establish who owns what, where foreign companies are buying in and how far we protect local farmers on their own. There is very careful work on greater transparency with less developed countries, starting with proper land records.

On 22 May the Prime Minister announced that Her Majesty’s Government intend to sign up to the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which was set up to tackle corruption, to improve the way in which the revenues from oil, gas and minerals are managed and to ensure that people across the world share in the economic benefits of natural resources in their country. A lack of transparency there, as with land transactions, is very much part of the obstacles that we have to overcome in ensuring that free trade and open markets benefit everyone, including the poor and weak countries, which are often open to these sorts of extractive industries in particular.

The lunch on Tuesday will focus particularly on Africa, looking at the millennium development goals and, as we have already mentioned, talking about the larger issue of nutrition. I am disappointed that we are not paying more attention to population on this occasion. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, is disappointed that we are not spending more time on climate change, although there will be preparations for a major conference in 2015 under different tutelage—the UN Committee on Climate Change—which will be a main focus.

With regard to our political discussions, I was asked particularly about Syria. At Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, the Prime Minister said:

“We should use the G8 to try to bring pressure on all sides to bring about what we all want … which is a peace conference, a peace process, and the move towards a transitional Government in Syria”.—[Official Report, Commons, 12/6/13; col. 331.]

This has been a worthwhile debate. I was nervous that the agenda of the G8 was so wide that I would be unable to cope with many of the questions that would come in. I sat here trying to imagine the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talking to his Soviet colleagues during the Cold War about eastern and western approaches to weather forecasting and whether there was a Marxist approach to it as well as a capitalist one.

We have looked back to the previous UK-sponsored G8 in 2005. Gleneagles was a great success and helped to push the G8 on to the development agenda to a much greater extent than before. It is still managing to push that forward. This Government, as the Nutrition for Growth compact shows, are still attempting to use the combined efforts of the developed democracies, non-governmental organisations and international organisations as such to promote a more open global market and a more equitable global society.

We look forward to a successful G8 summit next week. This is of course only one in a long series of heavy intergovernmental negotiations, but Her Majesty’s Government are using this opportunity to press forward what I hope all noble Lords will agree is a very worthwhile and constructive global agenda.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Will the Minister respond on the issue of water? This is the United Nations International Year of Water Co-operation and the water issue has not really had the emphasis it should have had, as was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord McColl.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has sponsored one or two conferences on water in the Middle East in the past year with the support of the Foreign Office. We are all well aware of the many complexities of water. Those of us following the argument between Ethiopia and Egypt over the dam on the Blue Nile will know that water wars are not necessarily too far away. There are a great many complications and the Government understand that not only clean water but also cross-border water supplies are very important matters for us to deal with. It is not neglected simply because it is not a major item on this year’s G8 agenda.

Behaviour Change: Science and Technology Committee Report

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Wednesday 11th July 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

The Minister has talked a lot about evidence and performance but there are people in Whitehall who say: “What has data got to do with policy?”. Data and information are very important. We receive very little information from government. They want to give us a good form but does not the Minister think that the programme of examples that I tried to give him of telling people much more about the information will help to make decisions? That is largely absent from the government response?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I take the noble Lord’s point that perhaps the government response should have taken more care with the question of data. There is another debate to be had—I encourage all Members of the Committee to participate in it more actively—about government data collection, government data sharing and access to government data which relates to the census and questions of privacy. We all need to engage in that debate because government is now collecting a great deal more data, as are private actors. Government behaves with much more caution about the use of that data than Tesco or Marks and Spencer. As with obesity, there are important questions as to how far we lower privacy issues in government in order to gain benefits in public health and elsewhere.

I mentioned the White Paper Test, Learn, Adapt, which has been recommended by Ben Goldacre and Tim Harford. That suggests to me that there are those in the media who recognise the importance of government data and at least think we are attempting to move in the right direction.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, talked about corporate power and how to confront it. That is also part of a much larger issue. We are left with business and the media setting a large amount of what becomes the social norm. The power of advertising—and advertising is absolutely about covert nudging as opposed to overt messaging—is an issue that again we cannot answer here. It is fundamental to our debate about the balance between government, society and market, in which that we all need to engage. I look forward to the noble Lord’s next written contribution on that fundamental issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, talked about the international dimensions of behavioural influence and cultural change and whether we should be following US research. There is a fair amount of independent research in this area. The German Marshall Fund does some very good research, which I follow. There are some mildly puzzling outcomes. From the surveys that I have seen, the most pro-Western public in the entire Middle East is the urban population of Iran. Whether or not that suggests that the behavioural impact you should be having is to impose sanctions on the regime, it raises some very large questions about what policies and interventions you pursue and what you get back in return. I will feed that back in.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, raised a number of questions about transport, which I have touched on. Government studies have shown that cost, time and reliability are clearly very important factors. There is some evidence for providing better, simple information. The new signs at bus stops which tell you when the next bus will arrive increase the number of people who wait for the bus. That is another nudge if you like. Information helps.

David Halpern, the head of the Behavioural Insights Team, is very interested in the built environment and how far it impacts upon behaviour. That is a really difficult, long-term issue, the sort of thing that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was talking about. Redesigning public spaces and how you design footpaths and cycle ways help with this, but part of the answer to improving the urban environment and encouraging people to walk rather than use cars is persuading them to live more closely together and not to wish to live 10 to 20 miles from where they work.

Another area in which the provision of information would help—and here government has a great deal further to go—is on the concreting of front gardens, which over the past 20 or 30 years has contributed very substantially to the problems of urban flooding. The provision of information about the utility of digging up your front garden again and providing green spaces through which the water can drain is clearly something that government can do without enforcing it.

I love the term “cognitive polyphasia”. We are all stuck with that. As someone who, when in opposition, campaigned for the pedestrianisation of further squares in London and, in particular, of Parliament Square, I am conscious that there are a number of people who think that it is very good to have pedestrianisation so long as they can still get their limousine to take them to St Margaret’s for weddings and do not have to spend two to three minutes longer in their taxi from Smith Square. Individuals often resist things that in the long run will be to their advantage.

This is a broad initiative of government—I stress of government because it is not a partisan move from this Government. We all want to find ways in which the range of government interventions—from information through to pressures and financial disincentives to tighter regulation and, in some cases, prohibition and penalties, as in seat belts and some areas of health—will help to change behaviour. That is not something that the Government can do alone. We have to work with publics whose attitudes are often highly contradictory and whose willingness to accept evidence when presented as mediated through the media is sometimes relatively limited.

What I hope that the Committee is persuaded of, into which the report provided a useful insight, is that this is one of the many tools available for government which helps government to be more self-conscious. The Behavioural Insights Team is in the Cabinet Office to provide a resource across government and its many departments to encourage them to use more of those interventions to affect behaviour. On that basis, I give way to both noble Lords.

UN: Specialised Agencies

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Lord Hunt of Chesterton

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I will gladly commit to considering that. The British Government, here as elsewhere, are very concerned about transparency. I apologise: I should have taken up the point that the noble Lord made about transparency of data. Data are extremely important in many of these areas. We are doing our best to provide better data. In the multilateral aid review, a great deal of emphasis was placed on how much data are available about the effectiveness of work on the ground, in-country, by particular agencies. That is very much part of the way forward.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Could there not be a commitment to be more IT? We are in an IT world and I would like to be able to read more stuff from the Foreign Office on my BlackBerry. How about that?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I promise to write to the noble Lord on that. I have now extended my time. In spite of the fact that we are running a little short, I should probably draw my remarks to a close. Again, I thank the noble Lord for raising this issue. We ought to spend more time looking at how international agencies work. They play a very important part in holding the world together and I agree with him that we pay much too little attention to the work that they do and to assessing its quality and how it might be improved.