Regeneration

Jessica Lee Excerpts

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.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Thank you very much, Mr Howarth, for calling me to speak. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon.

I apologise to all present for my late arrival for this debate. It was not without sending a note to the Chairman in advance to explain, and indeed the reason I was detained is entirely material to the speech that I will now make.

I was on the way to Downing street for an appointment at 2.30 pm to hand in a petition. It is a petition prepared by my local newspaper, the Ilkeston Advertiser, which has been running a campaign to reopen the train station in Ilkeston, one of the two towns in my constituency of Erewash. This is a long-running campaign by the newspaper; indeed, it has been a community campaign for many years. The reason it is relevant to this debate is that we have already heard about a number of different aspects of regeneration, but for me infrastructure is at the heart of regeneration and it is a key element of what we are trying to achieve around the country when we consider regeneration.

I will expand on that point about infrastructure and say why it is relevant to my constituency of Erewash. Ilkeston is now the largest town in the country without a train station and, as I have already said, it is one of the two towns in the constituency of Erewash. The lack of a train station in the town brings difficulties because it deprives people in my area, particularly young people, of the mobility to go out and seek extra training and new jobs. They could get to both Nottingham and Derby much more quickly if they had the mobility that a train service offers. Of course, a train service would also bring visitors, shoppers and new businesses into the town and, in my view, the resulting opportunities would be endless. Derbyshire county council, which is doing a great deal to try and press for this project, says that there would be 150,000 extra journeys if the project were successful, which would bring massive economic benefits to Ilkeston and indeed beyond. So I have started my speech by referring to what I regard as a key component of the whole concept of regeneration, which is mobility for people, and that mobility is achieved through infrastructure.

In many other ways, my constituency is quite blessed in terms of infrastructure. The M1 motorway runs right through the heart of my constituency and, as I have explained, we are near to both Nottingham and Derby, and we are also near to Sheffield. However, in terms of social mobility and particularly for young people, train travel is extremely important, and local rail services—along with longer-term and larger infrastructure projects such as High Speed 2—are key in achieving that social mobility. I will certainly continue to do all that I can to campaign for the train station in Ilkeston to reopen. I can tell all right hon. and hon. Members in Westminster Hall today that our campaign group has been lucky enough to have had a meeting with the Secretary of State for Transport on this matter, and we are waiting for a response from her. I look forward to receiving her response and I know that our campaign has backing from across the community in Erewash.

As I am not a member of the Select Committee, I have not been involved in producing the report on regeneration, but I have really enjoyed listening to the speeches from members of the Committee and I have been very well informed by them. For me, what is really required is the fusion of national vision and local implementation. I suspect that the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) and I are probably not too far apart about where we want to get to, but my intervention on her earlier was to make the point that regeneration is about empowering people by setting them free and trusting local communities to make the decisions that are right for them. That is because the key components of regeneration vary greatly around the country.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I noted the point that the hon. Lady made in her earlier intervention. Does she accept that some previous schemes, in particular the housing renewal areas scheme, put local residents at the heart of the partnerships to regenerate their areas? Localism is not something that this Government invented.

[Jessica Lee]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, but she may not be surprised when I say that she is tempting me down a path that I am afraid I will resist going down. That is because what is required is a broader approach, which I see being presented through a wider context such as the Localism Act 2011. The emphasis on infrastructure is also important, and I see the coalition Government proceeding with that and putting it in place throughout this year and next year. That is what I hope we can achieve in Erewash.

[Mr Binley]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and it is good to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth.

We were involved in the previous Government’s sustainable communities project, which did not have much local involvement at all. It reported directly to the relevant Minister; I think that the first one was Mr John Prescott, as he then was. Lord Rooker was responsible for the report that started that project, but when he was asked about local involvement at a meeting, he said, “Our job is to push through the Government’s plans.” That attitude concerns me enormously, and we need to learn from it. Does my hon. Friend think that that is a proper view to take?

[Jessica Lee]

I essentially agree with my hon. Friend’s points. Local communities have a better understanding of their needs and of their vision for the future than do civil servants and politicians based a long way away—certainly far from Erewash—down in London. I accept that a number of factors are involved, but having strong local leadership and empowering it must be at the heart of what we are all trying to achieve.

I thought that it would assist if I set out this afternoon that it is never just one aspect of such leadership that is required, but a number of different cogs in the wheel. My constituency is very varied, and pockets of it have some of the highest levels of social deprivation in Derbyshire. Erewash is in the south-east corner of the county and, historically, it was in some ways neglected by the county council. Now, however, its needs are recognised and understood, and strong leadership is in place. For example, our local enterprise business partnership—the Erewash partnership—is made up of representatives from across the board, including local government, large companies and small and medium-sized enterprises. Together, they create a robust networking organisation, which brings strong business support for new start-ups and beyond. It is an organisation with vision, and has won national awards for its success. It grew organically, and has always been supported by the local council, which sees that it is a successful formula. Such decisions are best made locally, and not far away in Whitehall or Westminster.

We have also had the benefit of other projects. The Long Eaton townscape heritage initiative has drawn on the constituency’s background. Erewash is in the heart of the east midlands, and lace making, textiles, furniture making and upholstery are an important part of our heritage. It is difficult for me to get through a speech in the House of Commons without reminding Members that we have the one remaining traditional lace factory in the country—Cluny Lace—which made part of the lace for the Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding dress. I will not cease to mention that.

My point is that that heritage has perhaps gone. Local businesses have moved into the service industry, and we have a lot of support for high-tech firms and SMEs moving in. The heritage of train building is extremely important to the area, and also to my family—my grandfather worked on the trains all his life. The local council was able to support the local community, by understanding that heritage and implementing appropriate regeneration in the town centre, to give it a vision and make it an enjoyable place to live and work. That project is ongoing.

The feeling is equally strongly in Ilkeston. The Minister will be pleased to hear that we have set up our town team there and have submitted—as have many other Members—a bid under the Portas pilot scheme. We have our fingers and toes crossed. The project brought together not only the local authority and the local enterprise partnership but transport groups, Able Disabled Ltd, Wash Arts, and other small businesses, to provide what is required for regeneration—vision and strong local leadership, as I said originally.

I attended this debate because I wanted to point out that regeneration has to be locally focused. It has to be what is right for a local community, and if communities are empowered with the right structure, opportunities and funding, that can be achieved. We will certainly continue to do all that we can in Erewash.