Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Bill

Crispin Blunt Excerpts

Monday 17th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)]

I fear I shall use them, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I am grateful for the welcome I received from my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley), who said how glad he was to see me. It has taken me 15 years to arrive on the Government Back Benches and this is my first speech as a Back Bencher for more than eight years. I enjoyed the fact that the first constituent to seek my help after I was relieved of my responsibilities as one of Her Majesty’s Ministers was a gentleman who needed assistance at an employment tribunal in a case of unfair dismissal. I was able to look him squarely in the eye and tell him that he had to take whatever he got from the employment tribunal, and once that was done, he must put matters behind him and get on with the rest of his career and his life. I have every intention of doing that, and enjoying the freedoms of the Back Benches.

It was interesting to follow the Gatling gun-like delivery of the shadow Chief Secretary, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), who rattled through her speech. When I sat on the Opposition Benches, I heard similar speeches from colleagues about Government announcements that were made but not immediately delivered. When they relate to infrastructure, things take a tiresome amount of time.

I wondered about the economic analysis that underlay the hon. Lady’s critique. What kind of economic la-la land are the Opposition living in that they think the financial markets would have confidence in underwriting the Government’s debt if it continued to be managed by Labour? They had got us into the most appalling trouble by May 2010. It took the formation of the coalition and the urgent need for all Ministers to attend to their departmental expenditure to drive down debt so that the Chief Secretary could deliver credibility to the financial markets and our nation could continue to enjoy borrowing rates that are at an historic low. The difference between us is that if Labour had been in charge, we should probably have been enjoying borrowing rates something like those of Spain, which would be costing us £40 billion a year in the extra interest charges we would have to pay on the monumental national debt that was built up under the previous Government.

Having achieved a level of market confidence, it is absolutely proper that we now look to capital expenditure. That is why in principle I welcome the Bill and the fact that under the so-called Baldwin convention the Government are seeking specific authority for capital expenditure of this type. However, better explanations are required of the detail.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

If business confidence in the previous Labour Government was as bad as the hon. Gentleman suggests, it would have been reflected in interest rates, yet in fact when his party came to power we had interest rates at a record low. I acknowledge that they have continued at that level, but it was a record low that his party and the coalition Government inherited from Labour.

[Mr Blunt]

That would be fine if the markets had not entirely discounted the prospect of the hon. Gentleman’s party being retained in office in 2010. It was perfectly clear that Labour was being sent firmly through the exit door. I assure the hon. Gentleman that if the markets felt there was any chance of the former Prime Minister and his henchmen remaining in office, we should have faced a quite different picture.

Having just held a Ministry of Justice portfolio, I turn to the subject of prisons, which are mentioned in the Bill as a potential source for capital expenditure. There is a case for measures that enable capital expenditure on prisons. There is a very strong case, which I shall continue to press from the Back Benches, for building new prisons, not to increase the number of prison places but to modernise the prison estate and make it fit to deliver rehabilitation, work and security at a sensible, affordable price in a prison infrastructure for the 21st century.

Oakwood prison offers an example. It was built with running costs of more than £10,000 a prison place less than other category C training prisons of its type. With capital expenditure at about £100,000 per prison place, one can easily see the rough order of magnitude in a 10% return on that scale of investment. If we then take into account the fact that we could sell off the old prison sites, that we will not have to deal with the accumulated maintenance deficit in the older parts of the prison estate and that we will get much better implementation of policy in prisons that are built with work, security and rehabilitation in mind, we can see that the case for including prisons in the Bill is extremely strong.

I am, and will remain, an advocate of wholesale reinvestment in our prison estate. It means new prisons that will be more efficient and older ones closing so that we end up with the estate we should have for the 21st century. There is currently a competition process for nine prisons, the second such round of competitions—eight are currently in the public sector and one is in the private sector. All the bids I have seen, from both the public and private sectors, show the enormous benefit of competition in coming forward with better ideas on how to run our prisons.

At this point it would be appropriate to pay tribute to the officials in the Ministry of Justice and to Michael Spurr and all the people at the National Offender Management Service with whom I have had the privilege of working over the past two and a half years. I put on record my gratitude to them and, as prisons are in the Bill, to Peter McParlin, chairman of the Prison Officers Association, the biggest trade union representative in the Prison Service. In an era of considerable change in the service, I commend the constructive relationship and dialogue I had with him and with other union officials and staff, including those from the National Association of Probation Officers.

I turn from my former responsibilities to the application of the Bill to my constituents. Reigate plays host to some serious national infrastructure. We have two prisons, but we are adjacent to Gatwick airport, the M25 runs through the middle of the constituency, and the London to Brighton main line is another key piece of infrastructure. The constituency has been under constant developmental pressure throughout my time as Member of Parliament. The borough of Reigate and Banstead has more than met the housing targets imposed by the previous Administration. It is not housing we are short of; it is infrastructure. For example, we are woefully short of primary school places, the M23 has yet to be finished and brought to an end at the Hooley interchange, and there needs to be a reorientation of the railway line that cuts across the London to Brighton main line and runs between Guildford and Tonbridge.

I share the criticism of others about the delay in the decision over the future of airport capacity in the United Kingdom. For me, the answer is blindingly obvious: we need an airport in an estuary that can operate 24 hours a day and that has the capacity to deal with the primary needs of the United Kingdom, which is to have a proper hub airport. That has been fairly obvious since people were looking at Maplin Sands about 50 years ago. Frankly, it is about time we got on and made the decision. I seriously regret its being put off for another three years.

I will conclude by expressing my concern about housing appearing as infrastructure in the Bill. I do not think that housing is infrastructure. The financing of housing should come from other mechanisms. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will understand my concern about housing appearing in the Bill in conjunction with the Chancellor’s remarks about the green belt and the potential threat to it. I will be examining the Bill very carefully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). I thought the beginning of his speech was unusually partisan. He is normally a man who seeks consensus, and I hope that for the benefit of the north-west region we can agree today about what is important.

Members of all parties welcome the Bill, but it is frankly too little and too late, to reformulate what is now an established mantra. It is the product of two pretty much wasted years. There has not just been wasted investment, which could have started to move the country forward, but the result of the delay has been far too many wasted lives, particularly in my constituency and among young people. I hope that the Bill will not be a mirage, as the regional growth fund has been—I will come to that a little later.

The Chancellor can call the Bill plan A, plan A-plus or plan A-plus-plus, and we can call it plan B—I do not really care. However, it shows real acknowledgment by the Government that cuts alone will not get us where we need to be so that our economy can start to fire, people can be employed and we can produce the growth that our country so desperately needs. It is too little, too late, but it is certainly welcome.

The reality of our economy is stark. It shrank by 0.5% in the second quarter, we are back in recession and growth has flatlined for the past two years under the coalition. In the north-west, unemployment was more than 9% between April and June. Only in the north-east and Yorkshire is the figure higher. Employment has to be our top priority, because we are in danger of seeing another lost generation of people who cannot get into work. Long-term unemployment is at a 16-year high and the number of people working part time has gone up by 2% in the past year. Many people are desperate for full-time work but simply cannot find it. In my constituency, 2,350 young people are currently unemployed, of whom 1,500 have been unemployed for up to six months, nearly 500 for between six and 12 months and 360 for a year or more. We all know from our previous experience what happens when a generation feels that it has no hope for the future. We have seen the impact that it has on our communities, so we need to get moving.

The regional growth fund, which was heralded as something that would provide investment in infrastructure and jobs, particularly in the north-west, has been an absolute disaster. It simply has not worked. After two years, only 88 of the 236 offers of funding—a third—have been finalised, and just £60 million out of what was going to be £1.5 billion has got to the front line. Some of the projects carried a cost of more than £200,000 for each additional job created. In short, the scheme has been too expensive and too lengthy, and the National Audit Office has said that the administration of it has been pretty much a disaster. If this infrastructure programme has any of the same qualities, it will not achieve what the Government, and certainly the Opposition, want it to.

Where should the Government focus their support? Certain areas are crying out for attention. I disagree with the hon. Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt), because I think housing is a key part of our infrastructure. In Greater Manchester we have 100,000 people waiting for homes, and we have 25,000 empty homes, including 6,000 in Salford. I do not just want new build; I want us to be able to refurbish those homes, which people are desperate to occupy. The sooner we can do that, the better.

Let us be careful, however. Reforms to the planning system have been discussed over the past few weeks, but we have to build not just houses but communities. We have seen what happens when we build houses on barren estates without putting in place schools, shops and leisure facilities. The use of section 106 agreements will be reduced, and we will not have the community infrastructure levy. I am seriously worried that we will just have a lot of boxes, which do not make communities. That must be taken on board in the changes to the planning system.

[Mr Blunt]

I have heard the remarks that the right hon. Lady and the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) have made about housing, but housing is not infrastructure in any strict sense of the word. Infrastructure is there to support the people who live in that housing and the businesses in which they work. Does she accept that if we bring housing into the definition of infrastructure, we reduce that definition ad absurdum? I completely accept her points about the importance of building communities, but that should be addressed in a proper housing and planning strategy. Infrastructure, in a proper sense of the word, is different.

[Hazel Blears]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern about his local green belt. If he can encourage his party’s Front Benchers to invest more in brownfield sites in the north-west, where we can build communities, I will take on his housing allocation tomorrow to ensure that we can house our people.