Regeneration

Debate between Heidi Alexander and Jessica Lee

Thursday 19th April 2012 Westminster Hall

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I have enjoyed the debate so far. We have heard excellent contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. I particularly enjoyed the enthusiasm shown by the hon. Member for Northampton South (Mr Binley) in talking about the potential of regeneration to unlock the futures of the next generation. That is what we are talking about when we talk about regeneration: how we can improve parts of our towns and cities—our country—for the next generation. I also enjoyed the speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). I agree with all that he said about how funding dedicated to regeneration projects has fallen considerably. No matter how the Government try to dress that up, the facts speak for themselves.

My own view on the regeneration strategy produced by the Government is that it is woefully inadequate. When I first read the document last year, I genuinely thought that pages were missing from the copy that I had been given. The document contains three and a half pages of text and then a series of tables. The tables are primarily about policies and initiatives that have already been announced by the Government. The information has pretty much been cut and pasted from different Departments’ websites and put into those tables. If that is the Government’s strategy, if that is the sum total of the Government’s interest in regeneration—three and a half pages of fresh text—I am concerned about it.

The best description of the strategy was given to the Select Committee by Neil McInroy, chief executive of the centre for local economic strategies:

“If one of our junior members of staff had written this after two weeks, I would be disappointed.”

It is fair to say that we did not really hear anyone speak particularly positively about the document when they gave evidence to the Committee.

To call this “community-led” regeneration and to talk about what the Government are doing to support community-led regeneration adds insult to injury. Giving communities the power to do something is very different from giving them the means to do it. There can be all these fancy initiatives, but if the communities themselves do not have access to land and resources and the know-how, knowledge and skills to make things happen and to work with the myriad different players involved in regeneration—the public sector agencies and the private sector—that will not happen. That is my concern about the strategy that the Government produced.

So I ask myself this: when the Select Committee did its report, was the Government’s response to the Committee’s report any better? I do not think that it was. The Select Committee called for the Government to produce a national strategy for regeneration, and the Government said no. The Select Committee called for the Government to evaluate their new approach to regeneration. The Government talk about giving local authorities a toolkit of options to work from in bringing about regeneration. The Select Committee said, “Can we evaluate this new approach?” The Government said no. The Select Committee suggested that the Government commission a study of stalled regeneration schemes across the country to understand the scale of the problem that the country faces. The Government said, “No, it is for local authorities to identify those schemes that have failed.” I could go on and give a very long list, but I will just say this. We also said to the Government, “Please review how the knowledge and skills that have been built up in the regeneration sector but are ebbing away at the moment can be captured.” We suggested that the Government look into that. They said, “No, that is for the sector itself to do.”

In their response to the Select Committee’s report, the Government talk about a “localist vision for regeneration”. If people want that translated into plain English, I suggest that it is the “washing your hands of the problem” approach to regeneration or the “sink or swim” strategy for regeneration. That is fine if all areas have the same ability to swim, but as we have discussed, some areas suffer from the effects of deindustrialisation. Some areas will not be as advantaged as others in terms of the metropolitan area in which they are located. Perhaps they are areas that provide employment to the main city. Some areas do not have the same ability as others to get on and attract the private sector investment that is necessary.

That is the problem with the Government’s strategy as it stands: it does not give anyone confidence that the Government accept and understand that the country’s current economic problems are affecting different towns and cities and different parts of the country in different ways.

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

On that point, is not the entire purpose of localism that people do respond? Communities have different needs, but setting them free and empowering them through the Localism Act 2011 and other measures means that local decisions can be appropriate to a local community. The Big Brother approach is not the correct one; the state does not always know best. That is a fundamental difference between the response and approach by the current Government and the response of the previous Labour Government.

[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.