One Public Estate Programme

Gregory Campbell Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on such a superb and powerful opening to the debate. In particular, he made the case for social housing and the importance of 100% social housing and affordable housing on the sites released by Government. If he will excuse me, I am going to take a slightly different journey and talk about the opportunities for release of public land in relation to creating jobs, which is an essential part of creating the fairer society that we want to see.

This speech will be an unashamed plug for Plymouth. As many people who have heard me speak in this place will know, I am very proud to be a Janner, very proud to be from Plymouth, and the experience that Plymouth has had, the journey that it has been on, can tell us a lot about One Public Estate and how it fits with other Government programmes and, in particular, the Government hubs programme, which I think has a good opportunity to create jobs in my part of the world.

I was intending to spend a bit of time talking about how fabulous the far south-west is, until I saw the new Minister in his place. I believe that, as the hon. Member for Torbay, he may have an inkling of just how fantastic a part of the world the far south-west and, in particular, south Devon is. I know that he knows Plymouth very well.

I want the Government to start realising at a faster pace their ambition to move jobs out of central London and into the regions, in particular those regions that have missed out on many of the large Government relocations in the past. The far south-west, and Devon and Cornwall in particular, is one of those areas with an appetite for greater investment. There is a willing and skilled workforce who can support our public sector objectives, and there is an opportunity, using the lower land costs, to realise benefits for the taxpayer in terms of not only output, but economic activity and cost to the taxpayer.

We know that, on average, good-quality, affordable business premises in Plymouth and the far south-west are about a third cheaper than similar properties in many parts of the south-east. Considerable savings can be made when we look at costs in central London in particular. I think that the principles behind the One Public Estate strategy support moving more jobs into the regions. Programmes that channel funding and support through councils to deliver ambitious property-based projects tend to work best when there is opportunity, land and a real willingness and drive to do that. The opportunity to work more with local councils should be a thread running through this debate, because from the initial small cohort of councils when the One Public Estate strategy was first formed, we now have, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington said, nearly all English local authorities involved, and entrepreneurial, innovative local councils are driving forward very interesting and beneficial property development.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that he is now going down a route that is particularly advantageous for other parts of the United Kingdom, in terms of not just developing social housing but the economic benefits that can be derived by Government looking at disposing of surplus land—land that will not be required over the next 10 or 20 years—but that that requires intensive consultation with local communities to arrive at the conclusion that he and I seem to draw?

[Luke Pollard]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The important points are what Government land is disposed of, how it is disposed of and where the benefits of that disposal flow. We have seen in Plymouth, a city with a very large military pedigree and current military role, that many of our former armed forces bases have been sold off, but the benefits of the sale have been taken to the Exchequer in London and not delivered to the communities that previously gained employment and investment and a sense of identity from those military bases. I think that there is an opportunity to use much of the surplus land, which is owned by a cohort of public authorities—ranging from the Ministry of Defence and all the weird and wonderful MOD agencies, through to Plymouth City Council and different parts of the Government estate—and to bring services together. If the Government are to realise their ambition of moving from 800 to 200 Government offices by 2023, the idea of creating a Government hub in the far south-west, in Plymouth, where we have already shown, through the Land Registry and previously the Child Support Agency, that civil service and public service jobs can thrive, is a good opportunity.

We lost out on the Marine Management Organisation towards the end of 2010, and many of us in the far south-west still talk about how we lost out on the wealth tax agency in 1979. We were scuppered by the election of a Tory Government who perhaps were not too keen on creating a wealth tax agency—who would have known?—but there is now a real opportunity, and if you will forgive me, Mr Paisley, I will talk for a few moments about Plymouth’s One Public Estate journey.

The unlocking of South Yard in Devonport has been an incredible success. That surplus land owned by the Ministry of Defence was not being used for Royal Navy purposes. It has been repurposed as Oceansgate and, through the One Public Estate programme, is creating new marine jobs. Plymouth has a huge opportunity in marine science and marine engineering, and Oceansgate is helping to unlock that. It is taking far too long to overcome the logistical barriers between the detail of what the MOD might want and what businesses might want, but that challenge can be overcome.

OPE 3, 4 and 5—the funding streams—have helped us to develop our integrated health and wellbeing hubs. There is huge potential here. We have spoken about some of the big, aggregated services, but GP surgeries, mental health support, sexual health testing and social care can all come together at a much smaller, micro level. Indeed, I would encourage the Minister to have a word with his new colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy), about the super-hub project. Plymouth has applied for funding from the Department of Health and Social Care for that project, which would bring sexual health testing, an eight-to-12-chair dental surgery—enabling dental students from Plymouth’s superb dental school to learn and help to treat people in some of the poorest communities in the city, right next to the city centre—directly employed GP surgeries, mental health support and health and wellbeing services all into one building, at Colin Campbell Court, which the Minister may know well. There is a huge opportunity there. Part of the One Public Estate strategy has to be to mobilise and motivate other Departments to make decisions that might be slightly off their usual funding streams if there is an opportunity from doing so.

The other aspect that I would like to mention relates to the better defence estate. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington spoke passionately about some of its successes and some of its failures, and we have had a similar journey in Plymouth. There is the success of relocating the Royal Marines from Royal Marines Turnchapel. Releasing that land and creating what is now a world-class centre for autonomous marine engineering has been a huge success. The new base at Royal Marines Tamar, at the very north of Devonport, has been an incredible success for the Royal Marines. It gives quick and easy access to the Tamar and, through that, to Plymouth Sound and to the training facilities at HMS Raleigh and a superb new state-of-the-art facility for our Royal Marines there.

However, there have also been failures from One Public Estate, and that has largely also been about the Royal Marines, in relation to the closure of Stonehouse barracks. There has been an attempt to rationalise that defence estate by closing the spiritual home of the Royal Marines—the only purpose-built barracks for the Royal Marines that are still in use. Those barracks are not fit for purpose. There is no hot running water in many of the accommodation blocks; the showers and the heating do not work. We should not accept that for our Royal Marines when they are at home. Many of them would accept that when on deployment, but not at home.

Now that we have seen the Government U-turn on their commitment to build a superbase in Plymouth, which would have brought the Royal Marines to our city, I would be grateful if the Minister encouraged his colleagues in the Ministry of Defence to look at how the programme for relocating the 3 Commando Brigade from Stonehouse barracks to a new purpose-built facility can be accelerated. The new date of 2028 means that our Royal Marines will be waiting a long time to have hot water in their accommodation. I think we would all agree that that is unacceptable.

There is an opportunity to create a new Government hub in Plymouth, bringing together civil service and public service jobs from the centre of London to create a new, superb facility in Plymouth. As the Minister will know, Plymouth is a centre that can create jobs not only within Plymouth and the PL postcode boundary, but for the wider Plymouth travel-to-work area—or perhaps the greater Torbay area, depending on one’s perspective—to help us create wider economic benefits for our region. There are many failings of the One Public Estate strategy.