Economic Development (North-East)

Debate between Alan Campbell and Nicholas Brown

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

But the representative business organisations in the north-east are organised on a regional basis. I have no quarrel with local business people and local councillors wanting to do their best for the local communities, but I simply say, on the basis of considerable experience, that it is unfair to ask local representatives to deal on their own with a problem of such scale. They have no money and very little in the way of powers. It is not clear where their advocacy, which is the principal thing they will be doing, will be directed. Who is the responsible Minister? Will it be at Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State level or Minister of State level? Will it go to the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills or both when this regional office is opened somewhere in Yorkshire—for the paper to rattle around in? There will be a lot of talking, but the ability to do something seems to be receding. That is a very dangerous thing for our region.

Engagement with the private sector in the region by Government is now very weak. This is part of a national problem. Even very large private sector businesses are finding it difficult to know where and how to speak to Government, and I would urge the Minister to take that point back and reflect on it. There must be better ways of dealing with these things than those currently in place. I also think that it is a mistake by the Government to have ended the pre-legislative scrutiny arrangements that we had in place under the previous Labour Government. That was a relatively open process which was widely welcomed, particularly by business, as was the opportunity to express a view before proposals were firmed up as legislation.

The Government have a poor strategy for disposing of One North East’s residual responsibilities. Of course, everyone wants the assets, but there are liabilities and continuing investments that have not yet come to fruition. Default responsibility seems to be ending up in the Department. There is now no integration of economic development with transport strategy, and no forum for discussing port strategy, although, as I mentioned, we have some very exciting developments at Tees port, with a relatively new distribution business, with Tesco and Walmart. There is real potential in the region.

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned the importance of transport. He knows as well as I do that one of the ways to unlock the economic potential of the eastern part of the region is to upgrade the A19 around the Cobalt business park and to allow the development north of the Tyne. Was he surprised to read in The Journal that the Government’s answer to securing the funding is that half of it should come from local businesses? Is he aware of any businesses in our region that have the £74 million—in small change—that the Government would like them to chip in to allow the upgrade to happen?

[Mr Brown]

Not immediately. I am more than happy to ask around on behalf of my hon. Friend and the Government, but I suspect that the response that I will get from local businesses is: they pay their taxes and they are entitled to road improvements from those tax payments in just the same way as other parts of the country expect these things. The local authorities and representatives of regional organisations were particularly strong on the importance of the A19 corridor, and they were aware of the potential for a bottleneck in the dualled tunnel under the Tyne and its effects at the Silverlink roundabout, as well as at the roundabout further north. I was able, in the last Labour Government, to secure an agreement with the Secretary of State for Transport that any underspend in what was then our little regional pot could be carried over and spent on the improvements that my hon. Friend has just advocated—perfectly correctly, because they are important to the flow of traffic. All that—local discretion and end-of-year flexibility—has been taken away. The idea that local business men should put their hands in their pockets and pay for that themselves will be met with outrage, if the Government ever get round to asking them.

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[Mr Brown]

It is true that the liquidity crisis is largely the fault of Tory bankers rather than Labour politicians, but I am making a more modest argument focusing on economic development in our region.

[Mr Alan Campbell]

On the issue of the alleged overspend, does my right hon. Friend recall ever being lobbied, in his time as a very good regional Minister, by the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) for more money to be spent to upgrade the A1?

[Mr Brown]

I do; I recall our regional debate in Middlesbrough town hall, at which the right hon. Gentleman spoke long and persuasively about the importance of upgrading the A1 north of Newcastle. Indeed, I have a press release from the Conservative Government in 1994 announcing that it was going to take place, so perhaps there is just a delay between the announcement of the policy and its undertaking. The right hon. Gentleman would have been slightly more credible in his request had his party not been committed even before the election to cancelling all our motorway infrastructure plans—and, indeed, all our major highway investments. Such a cancellation would present a bit of an obstacle if he wanted to advocate the greater connectivity of the great constituency of Berwick-upon-Tweed with the rest of the northern region and, indeed, the rest of the United Kingdom.

I thought that we had a way forward, which would have been to try to meet the Department for Transport halfway by taking money from the discretionary regional transport fund and trying to upgrade the A1 incrementally, starting with the accident black spots, and by cutting a deal with the Department that if we paid our half, it would pay its half. That would have taken longer, but the sums of money involved would have been relatively small, year on year, and we would have got the work done. We could then have built on that, and met the right hon. Gentleman in his constituency—indeed, we would have been able to drive up there—in a timely way. So I did have a plan for taking that forward. I accept that it was not ideal, but most people thought that it was the best way to set about dealing with the problem. In less constrained times, it might be the way forward.

I want to draw my remarks to a conclusion now, because I know that other hon. Members have a few points to make. It is my view that the direct involvement of a regional Minister worked well for our region. The Prime Minister has said that he wants to appoint area-based Ministers from among his team, and I urge him to get on and do that. The structure that would work best for our region would involve a regional Minister, a single private sector-led development agency, some regional presence by large UK Government Departments, strong private sector engagement and collaborative working across the agencies. This would preserve what we had before the general election. The focus should be on private sector priorities. I urge the Government to look again at the poor use they are making of scarce resources in the north-east, and even at this late stage to consider different structures more appropriate to the particular economic development needs of the north-east of England.