Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Clive Betts Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nick Fletcher]

Maybe we need to sit down with the Mayor of Teesside and see how he worked it out, because I have been told that he has exactly the same powers as Mayor Oliver Coppard and that Mayor Oliver Coppard has twice as much money as he does, yet he has bought an airport and he is moving forward with it.

Regarding the fact that DSA said it did not want the loan in April, this is why I want a public inquiry. I have been very careful about what I am saying, although I know I can say what I choose in this House, because I am telling the hon. Member what I have been led to believe. I want a public inquiry so that the people of Doncaster and South Yorkshire can get to the bottom of this question. If what I am saying is true, it is a disgrace.

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman was just asked a direct question. It does not need a public inquiry to work out what the factual position is. Will he say very clearly what powers he thinks the Mayor has to go in and intervene with Peel, which clearly does not want to engage and does not want to sell?

[Nick Fletcher]

Exactly the same again: Peel did not want to sell to Ben Houchen, but it did sell to Ben Houchen. It is no good sitting there and saying it did not—it did. Oliver Coppard has twice the money and exactly the same powers, and his job is economic growth for the area. Ben Houchen bought an airport off Peel that Peel never necessarily wanted to sell.

I will make some progress. The next question is where we are now. The combined authority failed to set up a mayoral development corporation and Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council failed to start a compulsory purchase order. They both say they cannot, but it is the threat that counts in a business deal. That is why I have championed the Civil Contingencies Act; it may not be viable, but it is the threat that counts.

I have tried to work collegially on this and, to be fair, in week 10, on the Friday before the announcement was to be made, the combined authority came up with a deal to cover Peel’s losses for 13 months. Although that is not a Ben Houchen deal, at least it was something. Peel would not lose any money, it would get the local council, the combined authority and the Government on-side, and it would get me off its back. If, 13 months from now, no buyer had been found and the airport was still making a loss, at least Peel would have tried; local jobs would have been saved during a cost of living crisis, the airport would have supported the local economy through this period and businesses on site would have had time to get their contingency plans in good shape. But no—Peel still says no.

There is something Peel is not telling me, and again, a public inquiry is needed. Why would Peel want to annoy local and central Government, its customers, its staff, the local people and me, when it could have its losses covered, and still say no? There is something Peel is not telling me, so a public inquiry is needed.

In the last week of the initial six-week consultation, the combined authority’s big idea was to put the airport on the market. These are the people in charge of economic growth for South Yorkshire. Five weeks after I, a Back-Bench MP, had written to Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, Ryanair and numerous other airlines, our devolved authority in charge of economic growth went to the market.

I really cannot get my breath, but it is day 45 of this saga, and the combined authority is only just going to the market with our airport. I have tried to be collegial throughout my time dealing with this matter, to show a united front against Peel, but it has been harder than anyone can imagine—not being allowed to join meetings and, when I am, having to sit and listen every to reason why things cannot be done rather than reasons why they can.

Finally, we have three consortia around the table with Peel. Those talks went on through last week, but as yet I have heard no more. There is little time; people are about to lose their jobs. I have to ask whether we would have stood a better chance if the combined authority had gone to the market in week one instead of week five. I am sure we would.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alexander Stafford (Rother Valley) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for securing this important debate and for his tireless work over the past 105 days to save our airport. And it really is our airport across South Yorkshire, with Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham, Sheffield—we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney), near Huddersfield and West Yorkshire, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith) is here to show support and how important the airport is for Nottinghamshire. The airport is a community asset and something close to our hearts. My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley mentioned Concorde and the Vulcan, and it is an iconic and important part of our history and culture.

This is also about jobs, and the economic and social value that the airport brings to our region. There will be many things we disagree on—there already are—but we all agree on one thing: we want to save the airport and try to make it work. No one wants to play the blame game and we all, including Labour Members, want to pull levers to put on Peel the pressure that my hon. Friend for Don Valley was talking about. Let us be honest: Peel is ultimately at fault, as we have seen in Sheffield, Manchester and the Tees Valley, where it wants to close airports and build housing or industrial estates in order to get the rent. Let us be honest about what it is trying to do, and say that we as elected Members want to try to stop it doing that.

In some places Peel has been successful, as we have seen in Sheffield, but in other places it has not been. That is crucial, it is not a partisan point, and we should look at a case study. I was a geographer at school, and we would write case studies and give an example of something. We have the case study of Teesside and the Mayor of Tees Valley, when Peel was in a pretty similar situation—obviously we have more money in South Yorkshire than they do there—and Peel wanted to sell the land for its airport and build houses and an industrial park.

I looked intensely at why Ben Houchen has been so successful. I do not believe it is just because he said, “I want to save an airport,” which he clearly did and has done. That was not his game. His game was, “I want to make the Tees Valley a better place, with better jobs, a better community and better society, and the airport is part of that.” We do not have the same approach. We talk too much about the airport in isolation—of course an airport is important—but we should be talking about how the airport in South Yorkshire is integral to the prosperity of South Yorkshire, and how it fits in with wider plans, whether those are freeports, industrial zones, or bus franchising—Members will know I am a big advocate of that. How does the airport fit in with the wider communication plan? We cannot see the airport in isolation, because ultimately that might fail. We need to see how it combines the whole of our region together.

[Mr Betts]

I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is asking for. He must accept that the airport in Teesside is costing an awful lot of public money. Presumably he is happy for the Mayor of South Yorkshire, if Peel agreed, to put in just as much money, perhaps £20 million out of the £30 million a year. He then argues for franchising. Does he accept that choices have to be made? The Government have not given the Mayor an unlimited budget. Presumably he wants everything to be spent out of that £30 million, when that clearly is not possible. Is he saying we should give Peel an open cheque and it can have what it wants? That is what he seems to be saying.

[Alexander Stafford]

The hon. Gentleman has brought my speech on a bit, because what I am asking for is vision. I am asking the South Yorkshire Mayor for a vision of South Yorkshire. I want to know where South Yorkshire will be in five, 10 or 20 years’ time, and what my children will experience when they grow up in South Yorkshire. I do not want them to have bus franchising here or an airport there. I want to hear,

“South Yorkshire is going to be a better place, and this is how we’re getting there.”

We are talking about money and bus franchising, but ultimately we need that to feed into a wider vision. The whole point of the South Yorkshire Mayor, or any Mayor—I still have great reservations about the mayoralty, because I do not see that vision coming.

We speak about being unpartisan, and I will pay credit to what happened in Manchester, as well as in Tees Valley and the west midlands, where the Mayors have visions of what they want their regions to look like. I do not know what vision our Mayor has for our region. He probably wants to save the airport, and we have talked about bus franchising, but that is not a vision. In order for the airport to work, it needs to be part of a wider vision of prosperity. It is about how Sheffield is linked to Doncaster, and from Barnsley down to Rotherham, and how each part of it fits that vision. When the Mayor has set out the vision—I hope that it will be a good vision—he should use the levers of power available to him to make it a reality. He should say to the people of South Yorkshire, “I have my vision and this is where the airport fits into it. These are the levers—the powers and the £900 million given to me by the Government—that I will use to make that vision happen.” He may or may not say, “We need to save the airport,” but I want to see how that fits into the vision and how it all goes together.

We have already heard about the Civil Contingencies Act, the £20 million loan and lots of things. That is too piecemeal. The failure here is not necessarily the failure of the airport. The failure is of vision and of the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority. The success in the Tees Valley is because its Mayor has a vision, knows what he wants to do and is combining those. We do not have that in South Yorkshire. That is the ultimate failure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Jarvis]

I recommend that the hon. Gentleman spends a bit of time with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) to get a sense of the realities of local government finance. The reality is that the revenue that the Mayor has at any one time to expend is very limited. The hon. Member for Don Valley mentioned the £30 million of gainshare; there is a very strict split between capital and revenue.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East made the point that there are a range of other financial commitments that the mayoral combined authority has to service. There are other infrastructural investments that have to be made. The job of the Mayor is to look at things in the round and work out what money is available and where it can best be deployed.

The hon. Member for Don Valley did not mention the sum of £20 million, which is a very significant commitment from the mayoral authority. As I have said to him previously, in April 2022, when we had gone into purdah and I was going to be Mayor for a couple more weeks, the Peel Group indicated that it did not wish to continue developing the loan proposal at that time. That was an offer in good faith that had been worked up between senior officers in the mayoral combined authority and senior officials in the Peel Group, but they took the decision that they did not want to continue those conversations. That is the reality of it.

[Mr Betts]

Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment that parts of South Yorkshire sometimes think that the way forward is to have a row with other parts of South Yorkshire rather than working collectively, as the Manchester authorities appear able to? This is not about Doncaster’s airport versus Sheffield’s trams. Sheffield is a major city. Major European cities have light rail systems; Sheffield needs and wants a light rail system. It should not be about having one or the other or fighting over the scraps; it should be about arguing collectively for extra money for the infrastructure that we need in each of our areas. That is why Sheffield MPs are here tonight to support Doncaster Sheffield airport—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I am getting confused about who is intervening on whom. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) has the Floor. The hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) has intervened on him. Have I just let the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) intervene on the hon. Gentleman intervening? Aargh!

[Mr Betts]

I am sorry if I confused you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I hope that I did not confuse anybody else at the same time. I was intervening on my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) to ask whether he agrees that it is unfortunately all too common among some people in South Yorkshire to start a blame game between the constituent parts of the authority, rather than working collectively as Sheffield Members are here to do tonight.

[Dan Jarvis]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s important point. The truth of the matter is that every Member of Parliament in South Yorkshire wants Doncaster Sheffield airport to stay open. We all want that, which is why we are collectively frustrated that we have not had the opportunity to get around the table with a Minister and voice our concerns in that kind of forum. It is a good thing that we are having this debate tonight, but let us be honest: it is only a quirk of fate that we have been able to have this elongated discussion. It is only because today’s business ended sooner than normal that hon. Members have the opportunity to put their concerns on the record.