Cost of Living: Energy and Housing
Debate between Barry Gardiner and Baroness Stuart of Edgbaston(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for North Dorset (Mr Walter)—or rather, I do not thank him because I am trying to wean myself off the subject of Europe but I cannot, given his speech. It is 39 years to the day since the United Kingdom, by a majority of two to one, decided to remain in what was then the European Economic Community. It is interesting to remind ourselves that in March of that year Harold Wilson declared:
“I believe that our renegotiation objectives have been substantially though not completely achieved”
and that the Government would recommend a vote in favour of continued membership. As I was reading that, I wondered whether there is not a Prime Minister somewhere who might be tempted to use a similar phrase not too far ahead in the future. As the hon. Gentleman was speaking, I checked the turnout in the European elections. For different reasons we may have started on the same side on the subject of Europe and are no longer on it, but does he not share my extraordinary distress at the turnout? This year it was 19.5% in the Czech Republic, 28.9% in Hungary, 13% in Slovakia, 25% in Croatia, 22% in Poland, 20% in Slovenia and 36% in the UK. The turnout in the referendum 39 years ago was 67%. That shows us a disengagement and democratic illegitimacy that national Parliaments will not address. That is not the subject of my speech, however. What I really want to talk about was not in the Queen’s Speech: cities.
I care deeply about cities and I want, in this context, to talk about the core cities, particularly Birmingham. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), the Chair of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, said in his final sentence that the real problem we have not addressed is devolution in England outside London. At the moment, we might be slightly more concerned about devolution in Scotland and the vote in September. I am concerned about that, but the truly unfinished business, which none of the party political manifestos, as I see them emerging, have so far addressed and neither did the Queen’s Speech, is the question of what we do outside London.
One of my great regrets is that towards 1999 and 2000, there was a huge tension in the Labour party over whether to go for regional government or city regions. In the end, we went for neither. That, combined with the abolition of regional development agencies, has meant that we now have a situation where the local enterprise partnerships that have replaced them might not have the capacity to deal with that issue. They may be too small in their configuration to be truly strategic.
With the exception of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who I would not dream of offending as he is in the Chamber, there are only a few people who understand the problem and are putting forward plans. I would like to mention Lord Heseltine and Lord Adonis. On the Government Benches, the Minister of State, Cabinet Office, the right hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark), who has responsibility for cities, understands what needs to be done, but I am not sure whether he has been given the means to do what is required.
There are two things I need to say in this context. First, I am German by birth. Actually, I am Bavarian by birth. Bavaria has a population of 12.5 million. It is in itself a federal structure made up of seven units. Its capital, Munich, has been a socialist city since time immemorial and it is surrounded by a conservative state. It is so conservative that when the Christian Democrats win it is not a question of whether they win but by how much they win. The important point is that I understand subsidiarity, federal structures and the importance of cities in generating wealth. Cities are the engines of economic growth—they do not reflect the national economy.
Secondly, I am a Birmingham, Edgbaston MP and my predecessor was a man called Neville Chamberlain, who was the son of a man called Joe Chamberlain who died 100 years ago. Joe Chamberlain was a Unitarian who did not approve of statues, so Birmingham does not have a statue of him. However, every day I go up the stairs to my office and there in front of me in the Committee corridor is Joe Chamberlain with his orchid and a monocle. He turned what was then one of the country’s worst governed cities into one of the best in three years. He did that after being elected as ceremonial mayor and making himself executive mayor. He municipalised water, which, as a public good, was not allowed to make a profit. He municipalised gas, which was allowed to make profits that were used to subsidise the business rates. He had a huge housing programme and he went for free education across the city. He failed in his attempt to make education completely secular and non denominational; something which, more than 100 years later, Birmingham may regret.
The key thing was that he was a local leader who gave up the town hall, with regret, to go to Westminster. He was said to have made the weather. How many civic leaders do we have these days who we can say are making the weather? We can say it of Ken Livingstone or Boris Johnson, but the names of Richard Leese and Albert Ball ought to be rolling off our tongues in the way that the names of Cabinet Ministers do. But they do not.
With the greatest of respect to the DCLG teams on either side of the House, DCLG questions is hardly the big ticket seller. Anyone who seriously suffers from insomnia could not be better advised than to take a lesson on how central Government is funded. There is nothing designed to send someone to sleep faster than being given central Government funding formulae. Yet funding is where the money lies. Remember the line about Watergate? “Follow the money.” When we follow the money, we will also find where the power is. This is why the money that comes from central Government cannot be at the grace and favour of Westminster or Whitehall, which decides by pitting city against city or rural against urban. Our big cities need independent funding streams.
The council tax model is beyond repair. Previous speakers talked about how great it is that council tax is not increasing. In our big cities we have a history of council tax being artificially held low. Governments of both parties have talked about re-banding, but then lost their nerve. We are not re-banding, unless the Secretary of State tells us that we are. On top of that, we have a cap which says that beyond a certain level we are going to need—[Interruption.] Yes, it is a cap. It requires a referendum. I recognise that it is a cap in everything but name.
Ms Stuart
If the cap fits, I wear it.
The funding streams for our cities are not working, which is a problem. I want to spell out some stark facts. I can pick any set of statistics and paint whatever picture of Birmingham I choose. It could be the most enterprising, the fastest growing and the most amazing city that has everything: theatre, football, ballet, orchestras. You name it, we have it. On the other hand, we have just about everything that is dark. We have the fastest growing population under the age of 25; 40% are under 25 and 30% are under 15. On family patterns and in terms of family sizes, we are Bradford. In terms of skills gaps, we are Leicester. In 18 months’ time, on the current trajectory, the city could go bankrupt. This is not just scary talk; it is the truth. What does that mean? In order to give our cities proper power and to make them work properly, we have to look at different ways of dealing with them.
We are told that Deutsche Bank is coming to Birmingham and creating 1,000 new jobs, but I have talked to Network Rail in the context of Birmingham New Street and asked what has surprised those most involved in the five years of the New Street regeneration. I was told that it was the increase in regional commuting. We have a city with ten constituencies, of which two are consistently in the top three of youth unemployment and general unemployment: Hodge Hill and Ladywood. We then create 1,000 jobs for Deutsche Bank in or on the edge of Ladywood, and all that happens is that we bring in employment from Warwickshire, Solihull and Worcestershire. The problems building up in the city are not being addressed.
There are some things that Birmingham can do by itself. I am working on something called the Birmingham baccalaureate, which is trying to combine the English baccalaureate employability skills with what local employers want to make sure that when we create jobs, we also create the kind of jobs that they will respond to. For our cities to grow, we must make sure that the wealth that is generated in the cities stays in the cities.
That takes me to the one thing that grieves me the most in the last five years: the wretched imposition of police commissioners, whom I would abolish tomorrow without shedding a single tear. We made having directly elected mayors the subject of a referendum, which was a big mistake. If we want to devolve power in England outside London, we need strategic directly elected mayors. We need them to work on boundaries that are beyond the local authority boundaries. If we look at the Birmingham city boundaries and at the NHS commissioning boundaries, the latter go by patient flows around the hospitals, which are not respecters of local authority boundaries.
We may think cities are about buildings. They are not. They are about flows of people. It is our job to provide the structure for the flows of people, and to make cities thrive and be economically successful. What I really want—it was not in the Queen’s Speech—is strategic elected regional mayors. I want direct flows of finance to go to the city units. I do not care whether it is a property tax, a percentage of VAT or whatever; they need a consistent and reliable stream. That is a challenge for all of us as politicians.
My last point is that we need to realise that doing the same everywhere is not only not fair, it is inappropriate. Divergence and differentiation—horses for courses in different places—is something that is politically difficult to accept but, in terms of devolving power properly, is the right thing to do.