Budget (Coventry)

Geoffrey Robinson Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this debate, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) on securing it. There may not be many of us here this evening, but you are still in the Chair, Mr Speaker, and we will be able to speak directly, without a lot of interruptions, beyond this Chamber to the people of Coventry about the list of indictments, which my hon. Friend stated so powerfully, of the effects that the Government’s policies will have on our city, whether or not that is their intention.

My hon. Friend gave a long list of problems that the Government’s policies are creating for Coventry. I will start with Friargate. The inner city of Coventry is pretty well known. During the war, it was the most bombed city in the country, starting with the November raids right back in 1941. Afterwards, everybody thought that they owed a particular debt to Coventry, which was wonderful—I was not there at that time, of course—and the cathedral and the city centre were rebuilt. City planning was such at that time that good money, planning and thinking were put into it. A ring road was put around the city, and to this day traffic flows around Coventry and in and out of it marvellously well.

The trouble is that the city centre has become derelict. People do not eat there socially, congregate there or spend time there. It is desolate, which leads to all those activities that we do not want to see in any of our city centres. We need a revision of the original city planning more than 50 years ago, which is long enough.

Early on, the Government thought of an imaginative and good scheme called the tax incremental financing scheme, which was to be partly funded by incremental taxes from the locality, region or city, but would have Government encouragement and power behind it. No less a person than the Deputy Prime Minister promised that we would be beneficiaries of it. Sadly, however, we are used to his broken promises,. I say this as an admirer of his, but he has made and broken many promises, including on tuition fees. Despite being given a specific promise that we would be included in the eight cities that could contribute to their own rehabilitation, which we desperately needed, we have not been.

I understand that all is not lost. A new initiative—an initiative rather than a scheme this time—has been put forward in which Coventry has been invited to take part, and our council has responded positively. I hope that Coventry can usefully and profitably participate in the city deal initiative. I regret to say that the city centre is a blot on the copybook of our huge post-war efforts to rebuild the country and its cities. We did not succeed with it, and we need to do so in the near future.

Another area of great disappointment has been Coventry’s schools. The cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme has been a great setback. We were on the point of signing contracts, but as a responsible council, Coventry held back, and the Government applauded it for doing so. We urged it to sign the damn things and get the contracts signed, but no, it held back.

Two schools in my constituency were affected. One, Woodlands, is an exemplary comprehensive built after the, war with the usual ’50s and ’60s concrete construction. The other, President Kennedy school—the name tells the date—was constructed on similar principles. Those schools are now in urgent need of replacement, but because the council did not want to behave even slightly irresponsibly and would not sign the contracts, we lost out by a total of £335 million, as my hon. Friend mentioned. I visit those two schools regularly and work with them. The attitude of the Secretary of State for Education towards them is very off-hand. It is not that I mind personally, because it does not hurt me, but he seems to ignore the fact that those schools had a good and reasonable case for making a demand on the public purse.

The Secretary of State wrote in similar terms to Becta and to the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency. In fairness, the Conservatives said before the election that they would get rid of the QCDA—typically, they said that without hearing the case, but at least they had said that that was what they were going to do. The letter to the QCDA was, if I may say so, peremptory and impolite; it was unworthy of him, but at least they had said what they would do. Becta, though, was suddenly closed without anybody knowing anything about it. It seemed as though Coventry was being targeted again—I do not intend to make the obvious military historical reference here—as the centre that had to be hit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South mentioned what the chief executive of the Coventry and Warwickshire chamber of commerce had said. I promise that she is no supporter of mine or of the Labour party. I am pleased to see the Economic Secretary on the Treasury Bench, because I would like her to listen to what the chief executive said. The best that she could find to say was, “If we’re honest”—that is very difficult for Governments to do, as I appreciate—the Budget

“was quite London-centric in many regards and that obviously wasn’t particularly welcomed.”

That is the final judgment of a chamber of commerce chief executive, a representative of the very people the whole Budget was meant to be about supporting.

I put it to the Economic Secretary, who is to respond to the debate, that we desperately need help. We do not want handouts, we want help up. That is what we are after. If only she would meet us halfway, we could still do great things in Coventry, but we need a Government who are capable of responding to the need that exists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robinson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Miss Smith]

I have only three minutes left, but if the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, I will give way.

[Mr Robinson]

The Minister mentioned the west midlands, but could she not say something about Coventry? She even mentioned Birmingham. I made some unfortunate remarks about Birmingham not so long ago—I will not repeat them—but we are talking about Coventry tonight.

[Miss Smith]

The hon. Gentleman pre-empts my next paragraph. I should like to draw his attention to the successful bids in the Coventry and Warwickshire LEP area, including the Elonex advanced engineering supply chain and Alamo Manufacturing bids, which I am sure he welcomes, because they and others will create many thousands of jobs in the west midlands.

The hon. Member for Coventry South said there was little evidence of private sector growth. I simply dispute that statement. The core city deal for Birmingham, which was mentioned by both hon. Gentlemen, will have spillover effects for the wider west midlands region, although I hear the call for me to speak about Coventry in its own right.

The hon. Member for Coventry South raised concerns about the impact of regional pay—those were his words—across the country. I reassure him that the Government are not setting out detailed proposals at this stage, but simply asking the experts how public sector pay might better reflect local markets. He will be aware that the Institute for Fiscal Studies made an estimate of the public sector pay premium—he quoted off-hand some figures in that respect. In principle, the premium has the potential to hurt private sector businesses, which need to compete with higher public sector wages. A premium could prevent them from expanding and lead to unfair variation in the quality of public services.

On public spending, the previous Government left an appalling financial mess behind, which this Government have a moral obligation to sort out. We have delivered a challenging but fair settlement for local government, including for Coventry. The formula grant in Coventry will be £493 per person in 2012-13. The average per person across England is far lower, and it is £200 to £300 per person in some southern areas. That reflects the higher level of need in Coventry.

I thank the hon. Gentlemen for speaking in the debate. I believe the approach set out in the Budget is a strong one and am confident that it will benefit all areas of the country, including Coventry and its environs.