Oxford-Cambridge Arc

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for introducing the debate. It might be understood from his opening remarks that Buckinghamshire is the only place that is affected by and concerned about the arc, but that is not true. Oxfordshire is just as affected by it and just as concerned about it.

I want to start off with the example of the Oxford to Cambridge expressway, which was an essential part of the arc. That major infrastructure project was handled in the most abysmal way that I have ever seen. From the very beginning, nobody was consulted about it. In my own area, which had a large part of it, I was the first person to bring consultation on the arc to the parish councils in my area: I invited my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) to come with me and address them all at a meeting. By that stage, it was already too late. People had already formed their opinions on the expressway, based on misconceptions and information that came from nowhere. Most of that was wrong, as my hon. Friend was able to point out, but by that stage it was too late.

The other thing that I particularly stress about the expressway shows what could happen with the arc: from one end of the expressway to the other, from the Cambridge end to the Oxford end, there was an enormous difference. At the Cambridge end, most people accepted the need for an expressway to carry the traffic. From Milton Keynes to Oxford, there was no acceptance; there was a completely different attitude. Not once did I hear the Department for Transport, which was responsible for it, making sure that that distinction was well understood. If we are not careful with the arc, unless we go out of our way to make sure that we do things in a different way, we will end up facing similar problems. There is no doubt that road traffic is an issue that needs to be addressed.

With the expressway, we had the ridiculous situation that the whole project was initially paused. That created enormous problems for me electorally. What is the difference between pausing something and abolishing it? It did not make any sense. People were saying that they did not believe it had just been paused; they thought it was just temporary, to take the election into account. It was very difficult to overcome those objections at the time.

The expressway has now been cancelled and the explanation given by Highways England is that it needed the information in order to be able to look at other projects in the area. Why could it not have said that at the very beginning? Why could the whole of the project not have been dealt with in a different way?

I turn to some of the points that have been made about the arc. What is the arc? In the Government’s paper on the arc, it notes that the body that is being put together to try to push it through is made up of three county councils, 17 district councils, six unitary authorities and the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority. That is before we take into account any involvement of different Government Departments. The Minister is an excellent Minister, but he cannot handle all Government Departments at the same time. There needs to be involvement from other Government Departments to make sure that the project works, but that means that the body becomes overwhelmingly large and very difficult to control, which goes completely against the project with which I was involved when I first joined the House—our localism agenda. I still think that localism and involving local communities in the development of projects is a good place to start.

I have been critical of the arc project, but I see the potential in joining up 10 universities or colleges along the route of the arc. I see the potential in joining up things such as Harwell in Oxfordshire with the equivalent in Cambridge and I see the enormous benefit in trying to line up the fusion project in my constituency at Culham, to hopefully provide the energy and critical science that comes from that across the whole of the arc, but I go back to what I said about the expressway—there is no common identity across the whole arc on which a common strategy can be based, which makes it very difficult.

On the 1 million houses, it would be nice to hear from the Minister how that number is made up. At the time the plan was put forward, I tried to analyse where those 1 million houses were going to come from. Some—in fact, the vast majority—are already in local plans; it is not a million new houses that are being imposed on the area, but a million houses in total, some of which are already there and about to go for planning permission. How is the number made up? What additional housing is left and how will that be dealt with?

I do not take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe that most of the housing is directed towards London. There is a very good aim in trying to make sure that most of the housing picks up local development and local growth. The risk is that it will become so attractive to people from London that it will be very difficult to keep that aim going.

I want to ask a little more on the spatial framework. How is it going to work? What rights will local people have to be able to assess the projects that are being put forward? What criteria will they use to judge them? Who will make the decisions about planning issues and what sort of consultation will they have? Without those things, we will have lost a huge element of our localism agenda, which, for me, would be a great loss. I have put a lot of effort into that agenda over however many years have passed—it is a long time—since I first started, so it would be nice to know whether we are keeping some of it and can use it as the basis to make something happen going forward.

To conclude, I see potential in establishing a brilliant arc of science and engineering across that part of the UK, but we need a properly balanced assessment of what that will involve and of the losses that will come out of it for people. As my hon. Friends have already mentioned, these are some of the most sensitive and beautiful landscapes in the country. Think of how Buckinghamshire rolls into Oxfordshire: it is a seamless entity of nothing but beauty. We trash that at the risk of our future as a Government in this country.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

We now go to the leafy glades of Northamptonshire to hear from Andrew Lewer.

[Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con) [V]]

Thank you, Sir Edward. I thank my good and hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) for proposing this timely and important debate on an issue that will have significant implications for Northampton, the town that I represent.

Northampton, and indeed Northamptonshire, are a key part of the Oxford-Cambridge arc. Although Northampton may not have the international kudos of Oxford or Cambridge, let alone High Wycombe, it is none the less a vital component of this overall ambitious investment plan.

The Oxford-Cambridge investment arc has, at least, the potential to boost recovering growth in my constituency. Covid-19 has underlined the UK’s position as a global leader in the life science industry, and the Ox-Cam arc could be the investment accelerator that will help to create the infrastructure to prevent it from being strangled by its own success. Northampton is the home of Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA. It is within a 75-minute drive of the great universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Cranfield, which I was privileged to visit just last week to meet the South East Midlands Local Enterprise Partnership, another critical piece of the structural jigsaw.

Northampton is a prime location, at the hub of the British strategic supply-chain network, for life-science and engineering businesses. The arc programme provides an opportunity to further realise that and, critically, to address the levelling-up agenda that the Government are championing. Northampton has a rich industrial heritage with great past glories—of which, incidentally, shoes and footwear were just part—and we must now focus our attention on the future of the industries that we do so well here, such as life sciences and high-performance technology. We do not just want the houses therefore; we want the business and the infrastructure from the programme as well.

The all-party parliamentary group on devolution, which I chair, recently produced an inquiry report on levelling up and devolution. Although all that I have heard about the Ox-Cam arc programme—including from my right hon. Friend the Minister—marks it out as ambitious and far reaching, it can also be complex and difficult to navigate, with its plethora of overlapping decision-making bodies—councils, LEPs, the central area growth board and the arc. How, where and with what legitimacy the programme’s decisions are made will be critical to its success. I say that with particular feeling as the first elections for the new unitary authority of West Northamptonshire, under the leadership of Councillor Jonathan Nunn, have just taken place. In our APPG’s report, we concluded that the UK is:

“one of the most fiscally centralised countries in the world and we should look to learn lessons from our international partners, many of whom are governed successfully with a more decentralised model. The UK also has one of the most regionally unequal economies in the world. Greater devolution of responsibility for local economic growth has long been necessary, but it is now extremely urgent.”

There is an opportunity, therefore, to use the Ox-Cam arc not only to recalibrate our economic fortunes but to rewire and improve the way that we make those decisions. To me, that means powers from Whitehall and those formerly held at Brussels—as my years on the European Committee of the Regions followed by years on the Committee on Regional Development of the European Parliament as an MEP have informed me—coming down closer to the people of the area. If that is what this means, then it is generally welcome. However, if it also means powers taken away from local government upwards and outwards to new regional structures—again, informed by my past as a county council leader, regional assembly member and a founding director of a local enterprise partnership—I would be much less happy about that.

The formal consultation on the Ox-Cam arc is about to begin. Details of the levelling-up agenda are about to emerge, into which the promised devolution Bill has either been folded or—let us hope not—buried. So my challenge to Government is to bite the bullet and transfer some of those distant Whitehall decision-making powers into the hands of local leaders, and that way unleash the potential of the Ox-Cam arc into something far more wide-reaching that will truly power the pistons of the levelling-up and devolution agendas in our country.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I call Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi. Sorry, I call Richard Fuller. I apologise. How could I miss you out?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Steve Baker]

It has been an interesting and informative debate. I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Minister for some of the things he said. Before I come on to those, I was grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) reminded us that her constituents are so entrepreneurial. If people have taken enormous risks all their lives, in order to buy themselves a large house in a nice place, they are going to be upset and push back if we build houses in their view. We need to ensure that the system gives them some opportunity to say no and to be compensated.

My hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) was right to chide me that I had created the impression that this was a matter only for Buckinghamshire. He was followed very nicely by my hon. Friends the Members for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) and for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer). It was important that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley set out some of the co-ordination problems, and reiterated the importance of the localism agenda, which, Sir Edward, you will remember we were all great fans of early on when we came here. My right hon. Friend the Minister reinforced the importance of those ideas.

The highlight of the debate for me, if my right hon. and hon. Friends will not mind my saying so, was when my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South expressed a sentiment from my heart to his lips, about the pre-eminence of the name of High Wycombe. I was grateful to him for that. My hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire was right to remind us about the regional development corporations. He spoke most articulately, and I was grateful to be here for his speech.

There was tremendous agreement with the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi). I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that we had better appropriate the slogan “affordable homes for heroes” before the Opposition put it on all their leaflets. I certainly would like some affordable homes for the heroes of Wycombe.

My right hon. Friend the Minister made a very strong case for a doubled economic output, with 1.1 million new jobs. I hope he will not mind my saying that, when people hear of another 1 million jobs, they will wonder about the homes to go with them. He has been clear that the local plans remain the building blocks that drive the numbers. That will be heard across the region, in all the counties. I very much hope that councillors and officials will be reassured by that.

Finally, my right hon. Friend the Minister made the point that he wants to ensure that local people have their say over what is done. That is the fundamental point on which everyone here is agreed; and I am most grateful for that.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

On the part of the pre-eminent town of Gainsborough, I must now put the question.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Oxford-Cambridge Arc.