Regeneration

Grant Shapps Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Betts]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. It has been said, in particular about helping with skills and improving people’s availability for employment, that what happened was that people in Newham who got that help then moved to other areas. There are clearly challenges to making regeneration successful. One of the criticisms we made in the Select Committee report was about learning lessons from the past. We should look at where money has been spent—the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) was keen on that in the Committee—and at what was got right and wrong.

We took evidence from Lord Heseltine and went to Hulme to look at the city challenge area which, in everyone’s view, was a success. It was, however, a 20-year project and, to begin with, did not go well. Lessons were learnt from initial failures, but it was a 20-year programme with the public and private sectors working together; it was about not only buildings but skills, employment opportunities and the general environment of the area. It was also a lot about demolition of some really bad properties, and their replacement with new, attractive properties in the private as well as the public sector, as we saw on our visit.

The issue of the long term is so important. The hon. Gentleman is right that we can have long-term projects that still go wrong, but if we do not do things for the long term we will not get some areas right at all. There was a lady in the community centre in Rochdale who said to us—she had not been briefed and she put it in her own way—“It is a bit like going on a weight-loss course. It is easy to get a few pounds and even a few stones off at first, but it gets harder and harder. You have got to keep working at it. If you don’t keep going at it for the long term, you clap the weight back on and all the hard work of the previous time has been lost.” That is a real worry now in some housing market renewal areas—that the investment has gone in but stopped halfway, so some of the benefits will be lost. That lady’s comments always stuck in my mind. She was so enthusiastic about her area because it had been about improvements to the school and to employment opportunities. I remember she said, “I used to be ashamed to bring visitors. In fact, I used to pretend that I didn’t live here. Now when they come to visit, I walk down the street with pride because of what has been done.” That is an awfully good testament to what happened.

We ought to learn lessons from the failures. I am trying not to be party political, and the single regeneration budget had some successes but, very often, it was spread too thinly around the place, to give everyone a little bit but without achieving any long-term benefits. Let us learn from the problems of the past as well as from the successes achieved—that is a bit of common ground with the Minister at least. The regional growth fund was proposed as a possible solution, but Lord Heseltine has told the Committee, absolutely bluntly, “This is not about improvements for housing. There is no money here for those sorts of initiatives.” He told us that, in words of one syllable. He basically said, “It doesn’t matter what the Minister says, I am in charge of this”, and I am sure that the Minister does not want to argue with Lord Heseltine on such points.

[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

wondered whether the hon. Gentleman had noted that two major housing market renewal areas were covered by the £2.4 billion regeneration money.

[Mr Betts]

Some schemes will affect HMR areas but, in terms of pure concentration on regeneration issues, Lord Heseltine was quite clear to us that the focus of his scheme was about jobs and not about improving homes in any shape or form.

[Grant Shapps]

Will the Chair of the Select Committee accept my point that people in regeneration areas really do not give a damn which budget is being used to regenerate the area?

[Mr Betts]

Most of the people that I have spoken to simply hope that some budget is available—that is our criticism about identifying what budgets were available. We had the Growing Places fund which seemed to be mainly about benefiting places that are growing, rather than places of market failure.

I will make one aside, which is probably party political. Yes, of course there are reductions in public expenditure, but is it really fair to have a 19% overall cut in public expenditure in the current spending round, a 28% cut in local authority grants, a 50% cut in funding for social housing investment and a 100% cut in regeneration funding through the HMR scheme all at once? That is to put the situation in stark terms.

Let me continue, however, by saying that the Select Committee recognised some really positive developments. We certainly welcomed tax increment financing and local enterprise partnerships, but we wanted to be sure that LEPs were aware of the need to link into regeneration areas. If LEPs are creating jobs, how can they then help to benefit people in some of the poorest communities? That is a positive point. TIFs of themselves are not aimed in particular at regeneration schemes, but they can of course create projects that benefit people in regeneration areas, although how that funding can then be properly linked is a challenge.

We were pleased by the Government commitment on the European regional development fund and their intention to spend all the ERDF budget. Indeed, the Committee will do a further report on that. That has potential for the gap funding to which I referred. The challenge is ensuring that the funding is used and that it is used as constructively as possible in regeneration areas.

We also very much welcome the extra transitional funding of £35 million that the Government found. That was helpful, because of the despair in some of those areas, where only one in 10 houses are lived in and people are struggling in desperate circumstances. To have the funding simply cut off was a real blow, so it was good to have a bit of money put back in the five worst areas, with matched funding from councils, to help people in such conditions. I am sorry about comments in the press in the past few days from some people, who do not live in those areas, complaining that the Government are funding demolition. Of course they are. If nine out of 10 houses are not occupied and we still have to deal with the one that is, the only logical conclusion is to demolish, and to create the area for future regeneration. Of course that is the logic. The Government should be supported in doing that and in working with councils on the problem—I certainly do so.

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[Heidi Alexander]

I agree that community involvement in regeneration is vital. During my time on Lewisham council, I did huge amounts of work on stimulating genuine community involvement. I go back to the point that I made earlier: with the best will in the world, communities sometimes need other help to get schemes off the ground. Sometimes that involves public money. Sometimes it involves initiating a discussion with private sector partners to get them interested in the area to start off with.

Some parts of the country are being hit very hard in the current economic climate. Before coming to the debate today, I looked at the unemployment figures and researched some of the statistics for the constituencies of other members of the Select Committee. In my own constituency, Lewisham East, 29 people are chasing every job, yet in Rugby nearly three people are chasing every job and the position is the same in Welwyn Hatfield.

[Grant Shapps]

Given that the hon. Lady is now making a very coherent argument about jobs and how important they are for regeneration, can she explain why the Select Committee takes the view through its Chairman, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), that job generation through the regional growth fund—some 360,000 jobs—is not regeneration?

[Heidi Alexander]

Regeneration is about jobs, decent homes, improving the quality of the environment—so many different things. It is not good enough to look at big infrastructure programmes and assert that the economic impacts of those new bits of infrastructure will somehow trickle down to some of the communities that are excluded most from the labour market. Given that I represent a London constituency, that issue is very close to my heart.

When the riots took place last summer, a group of people massed outside Lewisham police station at the start of the problems in Lewisham. They stood on the site of a stalled regeneration project. Although it would be too simplistic to say that if only the regeneration scheme had gone ahead, we would not have had the riots—there is not a direct correlation between all the places where riots happened and all the places in need of regeneration—areas with significant economic and social problems experienced some of the worst rioting. If we are to give hope and aspiration, jobs and opportunities to the next generation, we must invest in the areas where those people live. It is about so much more than putting up shiny new flats. It is about giving people the skill and opportunity to access jobs and about quality of life and life chances. We know that in some parts of the country hope, determination, confidence and ambition are harder to find than in some other places.

All Governments of different political persuasions over the past three decades have recognised the differences in economic and social capital in different parts of the country. Moreover, they have all had some form of geographically based, area-focused regeneration programme or initiative such as city challenge, the single regeneration budget, new deal for communities, the neighbourhood renewal fund and so on. I am not saying that all of them were perfect or that we should not learn the lessons from them. However, I would say that this Government seem pretty unique in not having any form of geographically based area regeneration scheme in place. They might talk about the regional growth fund and say that that is focused on areas that are more highly reliant on public sector employment and that are experiencing problems with the decline in the public sector work force, but we have already covered that territory. As we know, Lord Heseltine, who chairs the board that considers the bids that come in for the RGF, has basically said that they are not about regeneration. I suggest to the Minister— [Interruption.] Does the Minister want to intervene?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for allowing me to intervene. The point about the regeneration fund has been made several times and often misleadingly. Although it is not primarily about housing regeneration in housing market renewal areas—I have mentioned two HMR areas that have benefited from RGF funding—it is indeed about regeneration, as the name suggests. It would be quite bizarre to somehow exclude this multi-billion-pound fund.

[Heidi Alexander]

I was quoting Lord Heseltine when he gave evidence to the Select Committee. Let me quote him again. He said:

“I have said quite clearly that we are not about regeneration.”

Perhaps there is some miscommunication between the Minister and Lord Heseltine.

[Mr George Howarth in the Chair]

The Government also suggest that the new homes bonus will help to get the homes built that we all need. That is all very well, but people must be able to afford to live in them. It was interesting that the Prime Minister came to Lewisham to launch the “affordable” mortgage scheme last month. He stood in a development that I, as the cabinet member for regeneration, had promoted. It is a large-scale regeneration scheme with 788 homes, 146 affordable rented properties and 40 shared-ownership properties. That scheme received a grant of £20.5 million from the Homes and Communities Agency. I hesitate to say that the scheme would not have gone ahead had we not got that grant, but I can 100% say that the amount of affordable housing in that scheme would have been less had we not received that grant. When we talk about regeneration, we need to think about giving people the opportunity not just to live next to middle-class people but to live in a decent home and to be able to do well at school, feel good about themselves and to be able to go out there and get a job. I find it ironic that when the Government are launching a scheme about housing, they stand in a development that would not have been so good had it not been for a Government grant, and that that Government grant is a legacy of the previous Labour Government. I am lucky because parts of my constituency are being regenerated, but a number of schemes have stalled.

In conclusion, let me talk briefly about the Milford Towers development in Catford. It is a ’60s block, which looks like a concrete fortress from the outside. There are about 250 flats above a Tesco supermarket and ’60s shopping area. The council is working hard to find a commercially viable regeneration project that will enable people who live in appalling situations to get a new home and move on with their lives.

Earlier, the Chairman of the Select Committee spoke about the lady from Rochdale who talked about being ashamed of bringing people to her home and neighbourhood. I met a lady who works in Tesco and lives in Milford Towers. She said that when her daughter got married, she could not get ready at home because of the state of disrepair of the flats, so she went to somebody else’s house. She did not want to leave on her wedding day from where she lived. That said it all really and shows the need for that regeneration scheme.

We talked earlier about the definition of regeneration. People who live in such an environment are not worried about definitions; they just want their lives to improve and something to change in their communities. It is for that woman and her daughter that I urge the Minister today to look again at some of the Select Committee’s recommendations about the scale of the challenge that exists in some of the hardest-hit areas of our country. Please look again at the ways in which the public sector can work with the private sector to kick-start some of those stalled regeneration schemes, so that we do not lose the knowledge, skills and experience that have been built up in the regeneration sector over the past couple of decades. This is too important to get wrong.

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[The Minister for Housing and Local Government (Grant Shapps)]

Thank you, Mr Howarth, for your chairmanship in the second half of this debate. It has been an enormously good and welcome discussion, and I congratulate the Communities and Local Government Committee on having instigated and written the report and pushed it through to a conclusion, including this valuable debate. It has given us the opportunity to air a subject that, as hon. Members have said, is not always aired as much as it should be. It is a matter that is vital to our citizens and the economic future of the country.

Unlike many Select Committee reports that I have largely welcomed, on this occasion—as a one off, I am sure—I think that the Committee has got it wrong. My reason for that was revealed in the contribution made by the excellent Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), whose opening speech concentrated almost entirely on what one might call the housing element of regeneration, and in particular the ending of the housing market renewal programme. Indeed, he went so far as to say that things to do with economic change in the country, such as High Speed 2 and Crossrail, could not be counted as regeneration. That theme was picked up in other contributions, particularly from Opposition Members, and led to the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson giving the reasons why, in her opinion, the Supporting People programme has nothing to do with how we regenerate communities.

There seemed to be, however, some cross-party agreement about the idea that we cannot just regenerate. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) made the excellent point that we can go ahead and rebuild and reshape the physical nature of a community—I am very familiar with the Stonebridge Park estate, which I know well—but 20 years down the line we could end up with the same levels of deprivation, and if we do not tackle those problems, we will not truly regenerate. The Supporting People programme is an important element of that. I do not seek to wrap it up and claim that the regeneration fund is bigger than it is, but if the £6.5 billion is not viewed in the context of regeneration, in many ways it will be wasted in the overall scheme of what it actually means to change lives and regenerate communities for the future.

[Mr Betts]

I hope that the Minister did not misunderstand the Committee’s comments. No one was denying the benefits of the schemes in the Government’s report, but he says that because a scheme such as HS2 will benefit areas that require regeneration, along with the rest of the country in terms of economic growth, it should therefore be counted as regeneration funding. That is in absence of a strategy for how that stream of funding will connect with other funding and benefit the poorest areas where market failure has occurred. That is the problem with the Government’s approach.

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[Grant Shapps]

I understand the point that the Committee Chair is trying to make, but the problem with his analysis is that he is prepared to completely disconnect the joined-up nature of the economy and its ability to succeed in different parts of the country. After he discussed High Speed 2, it was pointed out that there are severe pockets of deprivation in Birmingham—precisely where High Speed 2 will initially run. I do not seek to claim, and I hope I have not given the impression, that all spending in any area, whether Supporting People, High Speed 2—name your project—is regeneration spending. I seek to demonstrate that such spending is not just incidental to, or a coincidence of regeneration, but a fundamental part of it.

Perhaps that is where the Government disagree on a fundamental level with the Committee’s report. I believe that economic regeneration, and regeneration overall, are two sides of the same coin. Unless we build an economy that is capable of producing jobs, generating wealth and therefore benefiting all the citizens of our society, and unless we can do that across the country, rather than just in one corner or area of it, we will never get out of the problems so eloquently described by hon. Members today. The mayor of Newham addressed the Select Committee and said that after all these years of huge public spending, the outcomes are not much different.

[Simon Danczuk]

Does the Minister understand and accept the difference between economic development and regeneration?

[Grant Shapps]

Here we have the fundamental difference of view. I think that we cannot simply do regeneration to people or communities. When we try to do regeneration without improving the economic viability of an area, it simply fails and 10, 20 and 30 years later we are left in the same mess that we were in initially. There can be no finer illustration of that point than the housing market renewal programme. As I listened to some of the contributions from across the Chamber, my blood was starting to boil. The description of the housing market renewal programme that I heard this afternoon was so distant from the reality on the ground over the 13 years for which it was in place—in fact, it was slightly less than that—as to be a grotesque bending of the truth.

This is what one independent group called Save Britain’s Heritage highlighted about the housing market renewal programme. It said that Government inspectors condemned whole rows of terraced houses based on 10-minute visual inspections, even though it would have been cheaper and much more sustainable to refurbish those houses. In fact, the Select Committee in, I think, 2005 said that the designation of areas for demolition in effect increased deprivation in those areas. Many social landlords prepared the ground by voiding and boarding up properties. In turn, that undermined the housing market values. My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey)referred to the hope value—he did not quite describe it in that way—of the private sector waiting for the public sector to come in and improve its returns. The Select Committee describes that as deliberately managing decline to make the notional benefits of wholesale demolition and redevelopment more attractive, ensuring larger windfall gains for the state.

Managed decline was precisely the right description of the housing market renewal programme, which I believe was a national scandal. In fact, I would go as far as to say that the housing market renewal programme was ultimately a huge disappointment. I have the figures with me. It destroyed 10 times more homes in this country than it built. Nothing—no programme—did more to destroy homes and communities in this country than the Luftwaffe in the second world war, but the housing market renewal programme did more housing destruction and community destruction than there has been at any time since the war.

[Mr Betts]

I want to say how fundamentally I disagree with the Minister. I just wish that he would make the visit that I made to Merseyside and talk to people about how the programmes there were developed in consultation with and with the agreement of the local community. The problem, of course, is that before we do the rebuilding that the Minister is talking about, we have to do the demolition. The rebuilding has been stopped to a large extent because the Government have now cut off the funding. That is the reality of the situation, is it not?

[Grant Shapps]

The reality of the situation is that more than 10,000 homes were destroyed by the housing market renewal programme and just 1,000 homes were built. That is the reality of the programme. The Chairman of the Select Committee should be aware that I have visited Liverpool, Sefton, Hull and Stoke-on-Trent on numerous occasions. I went to Stoke-on-Trent to launch the £35 million, doubled up by local spending to £70 million, in order for there to be an exit from the housing market renewal programme. I recall that I met a woman there who described the programme: how people had come in from outside, it was called a consultation, but the community hall was so full that the meeting had to be broadcast outdoors. They were told that their streets would be knocked down. They are still suffering to this day from the damage that the housing market renewal programme did. It was a national disgrace, and I was pleased to bring it to a close. The programme was an enormous mistake.

[Heidi Alexander]

The Minister talks about a national scandal. Does he agree that it is a national scandal at the moment that people are living in homes on streets where houses have been knocked down? They are living in blighted communities. Although the Government have put forward a transition programme, it is a drop in the ocean compared with the resources needed to deal with the problems that exist today in those communities.

[Grant Shapps]

Perhaps the hon. Lady is not aware of just how much time I have spent with and energy I have expended in these communities over the five years for which I have been either the shadow or the actual Housing Minister. I appreciate that she is right to say that people were left abandoned and stranded in empty streets after the disastrous demolition and managed decline programme that was housing market renewal. The Government managed to bring in money to close that programme and ensure that anyone who lives in a street that is largely empty will now be rescued from that situation. It was very much a rescue programme for a disastrous Government scheme.

I disagree with the conclusion that some people have drawn that the toolkit of different methods available—now open—to all local areas to manage the problem left by housing market renewal and failed regeneration in the past can be ignored. I am talking about the heart of where these problems exist—places such as Sefton—where at local level people have decided to use programmes such as the new homes bonus so that they can borrow against that money, flatten an area and bring in developers to create new housing there. That is being done not through some enormous Government scheme, with money that we cannot afford, but by using the initiatives that are in place. The initiatives are in the toolkit—initiatives such as TIF 1 and TIF 2.

Another initiative is the regional growth fund, much discussed this afternoon. I noticed that it was entirely dismissed by Opposition Members. That is quite bizarre. We know that, for example, both Hull and Wakefield—housing market renewal areas—have been specifically helped by that funding. It is not true to say that only 20% of that funding has been pledged or allocated; £1.7 billion has been allocated or is under provisional allocation, so that figure is entirely inaccurate.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I want to clarify that I was not suggesting that round 1 money had not been allocated. I was pointing out that although the money has been allocated, it has not necessarily been received by the intended recipients.

[Grant Shapps]

I can bring the hon. Lady right up to date on this. There have been 176 bids in relation to the first 2 rounds, and conditional allocations of £1.4 billion. She may well be right to say that not all the money has been paid out. Just as it takes time, as she argued earlier, to do regeneration, it also takes time, as she well knows, to spend money even on very worthwhile causes. None the less, the purpose of the regional growth fund is of course to try to rebalance the economy. If people do not accept, as the Government do, that we have to fundamentally shift and change the dynamics of the economy to make areas that have been regenerated continue to work in the future, perhaps it is difficult for them to understand why we think that the regional growth fund is essential.

It does not stop there, however. We have talked about the £35 million doubled up to £70 million of public money that has gone into bringing the disastrous HMR programme to an end. We are in the process of legislating to localise business rates. That is an enormous potential benefit for towns, cities and areas across the country. It will not, as it has sometimes been characterised, disadvantage deprived areas of the country. In preparation for the debate, I got hold of this list. We can look back at previous changes that would have occurred if business rates had been localised and look at the additional power that the measure will therefore give local areas. It is interesting to note that Liverpool would have had a 37.2% change in its business rates from 2005-06 to 2009-10. If it were able to keep that money, it would be 37% better off than under the old system, whereby all the money is centralised and then doled out. The figure is 38.2% for Knowsley, 36.3% for South Tyneside, 31.1% for Manchester, 26.9% for Sunderland, 26.8% for Sefton, 26% for Doncaster, 25.1% for Middlesbrough. The point that I am trying to make with those figures, very graphically, is that another policy that will provide the tools to local areas to enable them to regenerate in a manner appropriate to them is the localisation of business rates. It is absolutely critical to regeneration and, for some reason, entirely overlooked in the response.

[Simon Danczuk]

The figures that the Minister presents show those cities during a period when they were being regenerated by a Labour Government, and that is why they were successful in increasing the business rate take—they were being helped and supported in regenerating by a Labour Government.

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which may just describe a fundamental difference in belief and understanding between the Government and the Opposition about what drives an economy. If by regeneration, the hon. Gentleman simply means how much public money we can pump in to create public sector jobs in order to continue to sustain an unsustainable future, then perhaps he makes a point. My understanding of economics and the economy says that unless we are able to create wealth in this country and produce jobs that are not simply the Government employing people but the private sector employing people, we will never see real growth.

It is good to see that 500,000 new jobs have been created in the economy since the election and that unemployment has fallen this week. That shift is fundamental; it is important and it happens through regeneration, which excludes things such as the regional growth fund. It includes the enterprise zones, to which hon. Members have referred. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) made some good points about whether such schemes can end up displacing activity, but I do not believe that that will be the case. Hertfordshire, in my part of the country, does not have an enterprise zone, and I do not think that all of our businesses will get up and move to an area that does. Enterprise zones are about creating the right economic dynamic for new businesses, which is really important.

Local enterprise partnerships are a really important driving factor. In trying to understand our approach to regeneration, hon. Members talk about having some big Government document. Essentially what the Select Committee report says is that our document is too thin. From what I have heard and read in the report, it says, “What we need is a big document. If we had a big document somehow the country would regenerate better.” That has been tried and it has failed time and again. What we are giving the communities in this country is the ability to run their own regeneration policy and to do it through schemes such as the enterprise zones and the local enterprise partnerships, which make a real and sustainable difference.

I have heard some very impassioned speeches this afternoon about what is happening in different parts of the country, including Northampton Alive, which shows how communities can and will, if they have the leadership and determination, come together to regenerate.

[Mr Binley]

The Minister is most generous in giving way and I am grateful for what he says because it will work well at home. Does he recognise that our enterprise zone, which is the largest in the second tranche, is specifically for precision engineering and high technology? In order to fill it up with 400 companies, we have to go and sell abroad, because we have not got those companies that would want to move in this country anyway. The enterprise zone is a major driver to get inward investment into this country from the developed nations.

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[Grant Shapps]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and completely gets it. The point is if this country is to thrive and survive it needs inward investment. It is a fantastic example of how a community can get together and work right the way across the local economy to bring in people from all different aspects—the local council, the county council, the MPs, the councillors, the business people, the academics—and actually grow an economy.

I am only a third of the way through the list of different things that I wanted to highlight let alone the many pages that are highlighted in this toolkit. UK Regeneration is a private enterprise that is able to raise money from the private sector and then get involved in regeneration. It is raising £30 million from Barclays Capital to regenerate areas in Nottingham. I understand that some people find it difficult to appreciate that to invest privately can be good not just for private investment but for regeneration. It is absolutely working and it is happening on the ground and we have heard the scale of ambition from UK Regeneration. The Empty Homes Agency is working hard to fill empty homes. In the context of regeneration, I am surprised not to hear from Her Majesty’s Opposition, or perhaps in the report, more of a welcome for the fact that 20,000 homes that were empty are now full. Since the election, the number of empty homes has fallen faster than at any time since 2004, because our regeneration policy, which says, “Let’s stop knocking down homes and instead fill the ones that are there,” is starting to work.

City deals—one has just been agreed in Liverpool, and more are coming along—are enormously important in delivering exactly the kind of localism that I know the Committee welcomes, because it has investigated how localism, which did not exist previously, could operate. When one adds up things such as local enterprise partnerships, enterprise zones and city deals, one starts to appreciate that it is a massive transfer of power. I know that it is difficult to lose the idea that everything must point to Whitehall and Westminster: “When is the Minister going to come up with an enormous report to back all this up?” Actually, transferring those powers to our great cities will enable a lot of regeneration to be done much nearer the ground.

[Simon Danczuk]

rose—

[Grant Shapps]

I want to finish, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

The Portas pilots were touched on but not mentioned in great detail. They are an attempt to get behind the regeneration of our town centres. Again, interestingly, the Select Committee Chairman did not refer to retail regeneration of run-down town centres large and small throughout this country. To me, that is what regeneration is all about, which is why I am proud that we have launched the Portas and that 371 towns have applied. They will have the opportunity to be Portas winners, and even if they are not, they will have the opportunity to take part in their own regeneration.

Brief reference was also made to the national planning policy framework, which is an enormous fillip for those who are keen for regeneration to take place in this country and who want to make it much easier. We have the get Britain building fund for housing and the Growing Places fund. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) mentioned a road in Park Royal that was driven through, enabling much more private sector investment. That is the fund available. It is large—hundreds of millions of pounds—but again, the report barely refers to it.

Decent homes funding was mentioned by several hon. Members, including the Opposition Front-Bench spokeswoman. I absolutely agree that it is a huge priority. That is why, given that the decent homes programme failed to finish on target for 2010, I am proud that we have put another £2.4 billion into finishing the task. It still will not be quite finished, but given the overall economic circumstances, I would have thought that that said a huge amount about our approach to improving homes and regenerating communities. I have discussed how the new homes bonus can be used.

I had hoped to have time to mention all the comments made by hon. Members that I thought were good, but I see that time has beaten us. This Government are absolutely passionate about regenerating this country. We could not be more attached to its importance. We have considered what happened in the past; I think that my earlier comments show that I have considered in great detail the No. 1 so-called regeneration programme in this country, the disastrous housing market renewal programme. If Her Majesty’s Opposition’s response to the report is to call for more of the same, I say no, absolutely not. We will not continue to devastate communities in that way. Instead, we will hand them the power, the tools, the knowledge and, for many of the schemes that I have described, the money to get on and do it themselves.