Coventry City Football Club

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) for securing this debate. I think that he and I would be agreeable to the kind of proposal that the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) made: to use him as part of a cross-party assault on what has gone on in Coventry, which is an indication of the wider and very dangerous disease that exists within our national game.

It is good news, of course, that the Sky Blues are playing in Coventry again. It would be amusing if it was not so offensive to see the Football League clamouring to take some credit for that decision. It has shamelessly sought to do so, but it deserves no credit whatsoever for the fact that Coventry City are coming back to play in the city of Coventry. The people who deserve the credit are many, but the Football League is not among them, I am afraid. The fans have to be congratulated, having organised a pretty effective boycott of the alternative home venue. They have attended away matches, but starved the club of attendance and support at Northampton, and they have done so in a fairly effective way. They must be congratulated for organising that boycott. Many different organisations, the Sky Blue Trust among them, have come together to help the boycott, but the fans in general deserve our congratulations on the campaign they have kept up most effectively.

The people of Coventry in general deserve congratulations and credit for the fact that the football club is coming back to the city, because they have never, with very few exceptions, been conned by the spin and the lies put out by the football club’s owners, Sisu Capital, about what it has been doing and why it has been doing it. The people of Coventry have seen through this pretty clearly, and it has been impossible, despite strenuous efforts and all kinds of expertise being employed, for the football club’s owners to get a grip on public opinion locally. It has singularly failed in that regard. In itself, that is indicative of the kind of people they are and the problems they bring on themselves.

Generally speaking, football clubs are fairly well-supported organisations, whereas local authorities and councils are not usually that well thought of, but I have to say that the council has not come under any real pressure as a result of this dispute, because the people of Coventry have seen through the nonsense and the spin they have been subjected to.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

As the House and most politicians will appreciate, this shows the level of support that the people of Coventry, particularly the fans, gave. Tell me where it is possible to get 8,000 people demonstrating in a city on such an issue. It is utterly amazing to see 8,000 fans demonstrating. Not only that; there were thousands of them doing it week after week. I therefore agree with my right hon. Friend that if anybody pushed for this, it was the fans and the people of Coventry. We agree 100% on that.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I think that they have been the main agents of this partial victory.

Other people who deserve congratulations include the Higgs Charity, which has an interest in the stadium and has been steadfast in the face of intimidation and attempts to distress and bully it. I have got evidence that the Football League effectively joined in that bullying. This local children’s charity has stood fast and refused to get out of the way of Ms Joy Seppala’s ambition to get the Ricoh Arena on the cheap. That was its only crime—it stood in the way of that ambition to gain control of the stadium on the cheap, for next to nothing. We have seen a well-funded Cayman Islands hedge fund seek to take on, intimidate and distress both the trustees and a well-thought-of local children’s charity to achieve its ends, and it has failed to do so. All strength to their elbow for the tenacity shown in resisting that pressure!

Coventry city council, too, should be congratulated. Labour and Conservative councillors have stood together, and I have been able to detect no politicking. Nobody has been point scoring. The entire council—the Labour majority and the Conservative minority—has stood shoulder to shoulder to resist this attempt to gain control of the city’s asset provided for by the taxpayer at great expense. Officers of the council, some of whom have been traduced by this appalling organisation, were congratulated on their work by the High Court judges in their judgments in complete condemnation of what the football club had done. The councillors have done a tremendous job and the council deserves to be congratulated.

Local journalists should be congratulated, too. The hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) talked about the Coventry Telegraph. It has a first-class local journalist, Simon Gilbert, who has brought straight, unbiased reporting to this issue, which has done great credit to him personally, to his newspaper and to journalism in general. He should be congratulated on his in-depth reporting over a long period.

Autumn Statement (Coventry)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

This is one of the few times I have had the honour of serving under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I will start by looking at the background to why I asked for this debate.

The Chancellor said he would eliminate the deficit by 2015, but we heard yesterday that he is going to have to make a further £25 billion of cuts. At the same time, the Government have presided over a cost of living crisis that is affecting ordinary families right across Coventry. Families are on average £1,600 a year worse off. The purchasing power of their wages is down by 5%. Energy prices have rocketed, adding £300 a year to the average family bill. Train fares have increased by up to 6% and bus fares have increased by 2.5%.

Food prices have also increased. The bedroom tax has penalised many in the social housing sector, while rents in the private sector are at an all time high. The benefit cap is also making life difficult for children in Coventry, in particular those in care—the Government are making things harder for around 287 children who have already had a tough start in life.

All that has culminated in large numbers of people relying on food banks across the city, with 67 families receiving food vouchers from the Coventry citizens advice bureau in November alone. Nationally, Citizens Advice expects to allocate over 100,000 vouchers this year.

Cuts could mean that pensioner benefits, such as the winter fuel allowance, could be cut back. As a result of spending cuts, other pensioner benefits are also at risk. Centro, the west midlands transport agency, has to cut £14 million from its budget over the next two years, which will mean reducing pensioner benefits to the statutory minimum.

Benefits for the disabled are also at risk in the transport budget, with Centro having to consult on removing up to a third of ring-and-ride services. Many of my constituents are also facing long delays in receiving their benefits and problems with Atos, which seems to be forcing ill and vulnerable people off benefits and back to work.

Since the Government came to power, the cost of child care has gone up by 30% while wages have been cut by 5%. Moving on to the situation regarding women, tax adjustments made last year raised £14 billion, of which women contributed £11 billion. Given the £11 billion in tax that was inflicted on women and the cost of child care, women are hardest hit by this Government. More women than ever before are on low wages. More women than ever before cannot get a job. More women than ever before are bearing the brunt of cost of living increases.

I turn to the settlement for Coventry. Core funding has been cut by £45 million since 2010. Coventry will face a further £19 million funding cut in 2014-15, which is a 10.6% cut. In 2015-16, the provisional settlement indicates that Coventry will face a 15.2% cut. Government figures regarding Coventry’s spending power do not make sense as they ignore inflation and include funding from council tax and new burdens placed on the council. The council tax base is being eroded; council tax has not increased as a result of the freeze grant, which is storing up problems for the future.

I turn to the impact on children’s services and education. There will be a significant impact on youth services and social care services to support education and the well-being of children, and schools’ basic need grant has been reduced to zero. That may be a mistake by the Government that needs clarifying urgently, because it puts in jeopardy plans to expand our local schools. If what I have said is correct, plans to expand primary schools to meet the demographic changes will have to be cancelled.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

In our casework and surgeries, we are all seeing the effects of what my hon. Friend is outlining. If we couple that huge increase in need, which is apparent to Members of Parliament and is impacting on the services provided by the local authority, with the deep cuts that have taken place and will continue to take place, is there not a substantial magnifying effect of the gap between needs and the ability to provide for those needs?

[Mr Cunningham]

I totally agree with my right hon. Friend. I come back to something that Nicholas Ridley said many years ago—about 25 years ago. He foresaw a time when local councillors would meet once a year and give contracts out to the private sector. If we look at the strategy of this Government and of previous Conservative Governments, we see that they have slowly but surely taken powers away from local authorities. They do so in a number of ways, in particular by slowly but surely cutting budgets and forcing services out to the private sector, and yet the private sector does not always know best.

Also, we have a big issue regarding pensioners, in particular caring for them, that started under the previous Conservative Government and the matter has never been resolved, as far as I can remember. We are still debating changes that should have happened 25 years ago. Instead, 25 years ago local authorities were forced to hand over—or sell, if people want to put it that way—old people’s homes to the private sector. Five or seven years down the road, however, after the private sector had made a profit, the homes closed down. That, too, created a shortage of beds, but more importantly it forced the prices up for care for elderly people.

The whole strategy can be seen. I have always said that this Government think in generations: what the previous Conservative Government leave off, the next Conservative Government pick up. At the end of the day, in local government we will have only one or two little services, while the rest is in the private sector. Mr Ridley’s prophecy is becoming true.

I move on to the impact. Support for Age UK and other local charities will reduce by 22%; there are significant reductions to housing-related support; the housing-with-care scheme in Coventry at Jack Ball house and George Rowley house has ceased; a range of day centres and the in-house, short-term home support service have closed; and charities will no longer get the business rate support that they once had, even though that is meant to be something to do with the Prime Minister’s big society.

If we cut the public sector—the social sector, in particular—we can hand things over to the private sector, or the voluntary sector, but if we hand it over to the voluntary sector, the Government inflict cuts on the voluntary sector. It is an endless cycle of viciousness. If the Government want to get some credibility in local government—even Conservative councils are concerned about what the Government are doing—they need to get a grip and have a good look at what they are doing.

Finally, there is the impact on benefits, such as the local welfare provision grant, which will also end this month—£1.4 million for Coventry, providing emergency funding to those in direct need.

Coventry City Football Club

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ainsworth]

I will not give way, because I have agreed to give my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South some time to speak, and I need to try to finish up, if I can.

I was asking why, if this is not a land grab, the owners are not prepared to make a reasonable offer. If they did, nobody would be happier than me, the fans and those who were outside Council house today. However, I fear that that will not be the case—that the owners will not make that reasonable offer, and that we will not get our club back until Joy Seppala tires of her losses and sells up. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.

I ask the Minister, what is it that attracts this kind of owner to our national game? Is it time to look at the special insolvency regulations that football enjoys, and to legislate for good governance, as the Football League is proving in this case to be incapable of taking decisions in a consistent way? Or maybe even more radically, but even more productively, we should, in the end, look at the Bundesliga model of fan ownership, instead of the ownership model that applies in this country.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

rose—

Coventry City Football Club

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mrs Main, for presiding over this debate, which gives us an opportunity to discuss an issue of such concern to the city of Coventry, to local people and, most particularly, to Sky Blue fans.

Coventry City football club has been in deep financial difficulty for many years. Five years ago, when it had lost its ground, Highfield Road, and most of its assets, the club was sold to the hedge fund Sisu 20 minutes before the administrators were due to take over. Sisu specialises in acquiring distressed assets, and under Sisu the club’s ownership is multilayered, opaque and partly offshore in the Cayman Islands. It is claimed that Sisu has lost £43 million over the period, but nobody can be sure as substantial management fees of millions of pounds are passed between the layers of ownership and debentures seem to protect unknown investors.

A bitter battle has waged for the past year over the rent and ownership of the Ricoh arena, where the club play. The club’s owners have been on a rent strike. They say they are fighting for a more realistic settlement for a league one club, although Arena Coventry Ltd, which is jointly owned by Coventry city council and the Alan Edward Higgs Charity, believes the agenda has been to destabilise the company and thereby gain control at a fire-sale price. A much lowered rent has been offered, but the dispute continues.

Meanwhile, the fans and the people of Coventry despair as the club’s owners threaten to liquidate the business or move the club out of the city. I am grateful to the Football League, which yesterday, ahead of this debate, issued a statement reiterating its position:

“Any application to move the club to a stadium outside the city would need to be considered by the Board of the Football League. In doing so, the Board would require the club to demonstrate that it had a clear plan for returning to Coventry within a prescribed timeframe.”

I hope the Football League’s rules will therefore not allow Sisu to do anything like what was done to Wimbledon football club.

The Football League has a reform of governance programme under way, on which I would like the Minister to comment. However, the Football League, which is within the democratic control of the clubs themselves, can only do so much. Do the Government believe that will be adequate to address the challenges faced by Coventry City football club and the game?

Although the dispute between the parties over the rent level has been in the public domain for many months, and much innuendo and allegation inevitably surround such disputes, one key aspect has not had any public exposure. If we are to go forward, it must be flushed out. The football club’s owners are seeking to challenge the validity of the original rental agreement made back in 2002, and are using that challenge in an attempt to discredit the city council’s motives for paying £14 million to Yorkshire bank in December for the stadium’s debts. I cannot see what right the club owners have to issue threats on that front as they bought the club more than five years later. They had the opportunity for due diligence, and I would hope that the principle of caveat emptor meant something in that case. If the hedge fund is allowed to reopen the issue, it will be a blatant attempt to profit at the expense of those who built and paid for the stadium: in part, the people of Coventry.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend has obviously done considerable investigation into the matter. I have the impression that the parent company, Sisu, bought the football club to acquire the stadium; that is my view, although I have not gone into it in depth. Has he considered a way forward? Is it worth while exploring arbitration? He will know better than I do; he has dealt with the matter a lot more than I have.

[Mr Ainsworth]

I will come to exactly that point later in my speech. It is a potential way forward that has been put to the club owners in the past few days.

To return to the issue of whether the owners will be allowed to reopen the agreements that existed long before they arrived in the city and took over the club, Martin Reeves and Chris West of the city council and Arena Coventry Ltd dismissed the threats as “desperate stuff”. However, in my view, the club owners must be prepared to justify their threats and allegations publicly or drop the issue if we are to find a way forward. I challenge them to do so.

The Sky Blue Trust, which represents fans, now has more than 800 members, an indication of the growing amount of alarm among fans. I thank the trust for helping and supporting me to prepare for this debate and for all the work that it has done over the past few years. The club has made a proposal that I put to the club owners yesterday: binding arbitration conducted by a well-qualified local man, Dr John Beech, who has a PhD in business strategy from Cranfield university and more than five years’ experience examining football finance.

Board member Mark Labovitch indicated his enthusiasm for that course of action. However, the response that I received today demonstrates how difficult it is to deal with Joy Seppala and her team. It seeks to turn the proposal of binding arbitration into an opportunity to investigate Arena Coventry’s finances and set the agenda for the arbiters. Of course, there is no suggestion that the football club’s finances or ownership structure should be subjected to investigation.

084 Telephone Numbers (NHS)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 24th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ainsworth]

If the Minister does not mind, a number of Members want to intervene, and he will have an opportunity to respond in a moment.

The people affected are disproportionately the more deprived members of our community. It is no longer the case that people who use mobile phones are among the better-off. That might have been the case once upon a time, a generation or so ago, but there is proven evidence that people who do not have access to a fixed line and therefore depend on a mobile phone are disproportionately from the poorer sectors of society. The other people who are disproportionately affected by the excessive charges are those who are concerned about the cost of their fixed lines and have therefore entered into contract agreements that charge for the use of the access numbers for GP surgeries because they do not fall under the contracts. How can we can allow GPs to continue to flout their contracts? Why are we not effectively enforcing them?

At the moment, the Minister is trying to convey to the House that the NHS will not be made unaccountable through his health Bill, and it would really help his argument if he made an effort to show that he is prepared to make the NHS accountable, as it currently is. I would therefore like to know what he intends to do about this. I want him to issue new Department of Health guidance that makes it clear to the GPs who are effectively trying to deny it that the use of such telephone numbers is in breach of their contract and that they must comply without further delay and migrate to an 03 number or provide a landline equivalent. He must not take no for an answer.

I wonder whether all the changes that the Minister is imposing upon the NHS are affecting PCTs’ ability to enforce what they are supposed to be enforcing. I want him to ensure that PCTs, to which he appears to have passed the buck of responsibility for this, enforce compliance by GPs. GPs must stop evading their responsibilities, under the very principles of the NHS, to enable people to access services without enhanced costs.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Has my right hon. Friend been able to measure the profit being made from the poorer members of society, who are most likely to need the services? That might be difficult; it might be a question for the Minister. Less well-off patients are clearly being exploited, so does he have any idea how much they are being exploited by?

[Mr Ainsworth]

The GPs will deny that there is any profit and will say that they provide an enhanced service for which the customers pay. But if there is profit in the partnership at the end of the year, it returns to the doctor, so potentially there is a profit, and that would clearly be in breach of the contract. People could be provided with access to their GP services without any enhanced charges, but GPs, because they have chosen to enter into the contracts, are passing the costs on to their patients.

West Midlands and Coventry

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Cunningham]

I do not know about good news. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the economy goes up and down in patches, so we cannot ever predict what the future will hold. We like to think that things will improve, but we will have to see—I do not want to diversify too much and get on to Europe, but after what happened on Friday, I will be very careful what I say about the future, frankly.

Returning to the Coventry situation, the city has embraced new technologies and is leading the way for the whole of the UK. A Coventry coach company has won £3 million of new contracts and taken on 40 new staff. It will produce the UK’s first electric bus—we hope so this time, although we have been down that road before. Only last week, I visited the Institute of Digital Healthcare, which was established in 2010 and is a five-year, £4 million project, which will have a real benefit for patients and their care support networks. I advise any of my colleagues that, if they get the opportunity to go up to the university of Warwick, the IDH is well worth visiting. It will address a number of health care issues, including the use of monitoring and communication devices to support people in their own homes, the development of new platforms to measure, analyse and communicate health data to support health care and to promote well-being, meeting the information and training needs of clinicians and health care technologists and improving the targeting of activities by health and social care teams.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to emphasise some of the positives, but there are some huge negatives, as he is aware. I do not know whether he read the report only the other day in the Coventry Telegraph about the massive increase, because of the rise in unemployment, in the cost to the Government of benefit pay-outs in the city, which is not out of line with what is happening elsewhere and is by no means the worst. That in itself is an indication that the Government will not get the deficit right, despite people being thrown out of work because of the austerity programme.

[Mr Cunningham]

I saw that article in the Coventry Telegraph, and I am also aware that my right hon. Friend’s constituency is probably the top of the list; my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) is second and I am at the bottom somewhere. What I am saying is that, despite the Government’s measures, there are things happening in Coventry. That is the message that I am trying to get across.

Some hon. Members will remember the major improvements planned for the Coventry to Nuneaton rail corridor, which is known as the Nuckle project. It will help to improve accessibility and encourage increased use of the train for journeys that might otherwise be undertaken by car. When Warwickshire county council has received outline funding approval, it will aim for final approval by the end of the year or the start of 2012.

On Friargate, a recent meeting with the local enterprise partnership revealed that the project is making reasonable progress. It is an office-based project with residential, retail, car parking and delivery facilities, and an acclaimed arrival point for rail passengers. It, too, is expected to start in 2012 and has the firm backing of Coventry city council.

We have seen Coventry and the west midlands benefit from private sector investment. However, I am deeply concerned about the prospects for young people throughout the region and, more generally, about the loss of skills in various sectors. We have already seen a fall in university applications of more 19,200 in the west midlands region. We have also seen a fall in the number of skilled graduates in medicine and nursing who can find work in their qualified field because of public sector cuts, and that is against a backdrop of high youth unemployment.

Budget (Coventry)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

This is the first time, Ms Dorries, that I have been involved in a debate chaired by you; it is a pleasure to see you in the Chair.

Coventry has had a long and significant economic history, which continues to shape and influence the performance of the local economy and could provide the foundation for its growth. The steady waning of coal mining after the second world war, together with the more rapid decline of our motor industry in the 1970s and 1980s, hit Coventry particularly hard. Coventry’s economic output is now 8.5% lower than the national average, and for Nuneaton and Bedworth it is now 35% below the average, yet Warwick performs 17% better than the national average.

Since the millennium, Coventry has benefited from significant redevelopment and regeneration, and the public sector has been crucial in that process. Coventry has a particularly youthful age profile, and scores well above average in measures of economic adaptability. Rates of growth were increasing before the recession, which suggests that the structural change is largely complete. The city holds many competitive advantages for research and development, engineering and niche manufacturing. However, unemployment is a growing worry. The latest figures from the House of Commons Library reveal that Coventry has 10,324 unemployed job seekers, and things are likely to get worse as the year progresses.

Coventry is famous for making cars, but it is public sector workers who drive much of the local economy. As we know, Becta and the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency are being abolished. It may have seemed the easy option to get rid of these education quangos, but they employ a combined total of close to 800 people. Many are former teachers. The relocation of the QCDA cost the Government more than £44 million, and it came at a personal cost to many of the staff who relocated from London.

We cannot ignore the strain on the private sector. Friends Life, formerly Friends Provident, recently announced that it plans to close its offices in Coventry by the end of the first half of 2012. There are 428 jobs at stake, and staff will be badly affected. That brings total job losses in Coventry to around 3,000.

I turn to the scale of the grant reductions that Coventry faces. Because of the cuts, the city council is being forced by the Tory-led Government to cut as many as 500 posts over the next 18 months. The amount of money that the council spends in the local economy will also be dramatically reduced. That, too, will have an impact on council staff. The front-loading of cuts means that staff losses will be required in the early stages of the spending cuts. That will affect families throughout Coventry. The overall impact is that Coventry city council is expected to lose about £45 million over the next few years.

The cuts will have an impact on the economy of the west midlands. They will have a significant knock-on impact on local businesses and employment in the region. We can see what is happening in other sectors as the cuts and reforms begin to bite. For example, cuts of more than 20% to the West Midlands police equate to 2,500 jobs.

There are two parts to the Department for Communities and Local Government cuts for Coventry council. It will lose formula grant of more than £19 million, and specific grants in excess of £17 million. The city council will not be able to continue providing services at the same level. Because of the latter cuts, there will be far fewer grants and they will have a lower overall value. It is a matter of great concern that many grant streams will end.

The vulnerable people of Coventry will be hit a number of times by the Government’s deficit reduction plan. Pensioners were dealt a blow by Government when the winter fuel payment was slashed by up to £100. How can those who are disabled or who live in care homes take part in the Government’s big society once the mobility component of the disability living allowance has been removed? Has the Minister considered the effects of reduced local government budgets on the cost per placement of patients on independent care providers such as Southern Cross? Notwithstanding the burden on the NHS, local hospitals will be expected to deliver far-reaching reforms to patient care as their budget decreases and demand increases. How can the Minister justify removing the provision of face-to-face legal advice for the poorer residents of Coventry in favour of a cheaper phone line?

I am deeply concerned about local provisions for our young people. Building Schools for the Future is to be abolished. That will result in a loss of £300 million to the local economy in construction, which can be added to the cuts in the council’s budget We await the James review—it has been a long time coming—but that is of no comfort to schools that are in desperate need of repair. From this year, the Connexions careers service will operate on a budget that is more than 70% smaller than in April 2010. The service gives young people the skills and confidence to get into the workplace. Its downsizing will doubtless contribute to the high youth unemployment that the region has experienced.

The coalition Government admit that Sure Start will suffer real-terms cuts. Ministers refuse to deny that this will result in the closure of Sure Start centres. However, Sure Start centres in Coventry will lose nearly £600,000, which will be a great blow to young families. Services for young people face other financial pressures. Coventry’s children, learning and young people’s department has announced a further £1.2 million loss because of the ending of the 5% standards fund.

Crucial retention funds that the council had relied upon will not be continued in the next financial year. The largest proportion of JSA claimants in Coventry are aged between 18 and 24. Given what I said about the Coventry’s youthful profile, there is no reason why our young people should not be given the opportunities that they need as it will strengthen Coventry’s regeneration.

All these changes will have an irreversible effect on the economic growth of the region. The leader of Coventry city council estimates that up to £25 million will be taken out of the local economy. The public and private sectors will not be able to invest in the regeneration of the region and its infrastructure.

There is an urgent need to address infrastructure issues. We need an increase in train travel between Coventry and Nuneaton, and Coventry and Leamington. The go-ahead for a new station at the Ricoh arena is vital to Coventry’s economy. Equally, we are waiting for the Friargate development to go ahead; again, it could have a big impact in revitalising the city centre. Revitalising the city will obviously create jobs.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

I raise the question of what I fear is the impending sale of the strategically important land at Ansty. If a developer gets hold of that land, the possibility is that it will sit on it, waiting for the maximum return. That will probably be through housing rather than what it was meant for, which was job creation in the high-tech manufacturing sector.

[Mr Cunningham]

My right hon. Friend anticipates me, as I was just coming on to that.

The abolition of RDA funding means that there is little to lever in private sector investment for large-scale redevelopment projects. Although the prospect of 10,000 jobs in the enterprise zone is welcome, questions arise on the implications for other employment sites such as those at Ansty and Browns lane. In answer to my right hon. Friend, I am sure that he will remember, as will my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), that we lobbied hard to get the Ansty site as a technological centre, and the city and the west midlands invested a lot of money in it—if my memory serves me correctly, the investment for the infrastructure was somewhere in the region of £5.9 million. It is vital that the Minister clears up the future of that site. A lot of taxpayers’ money has been invested in it and some companies are operating from it at the moment. How does the development of that site square up with the proposal to create 10,000 jobs at Coventry airport? Although my hon. Friends and I do not deny that such jobs are needed, we need the issue to be sorted out one way or another. The public in Coventry want to know why some of those jobs cannot be located on the Ansty site. My right hon. Friend, therefore, raises a vital point, which is of interest to a lot of people, particularly those in Coventry.

My next point relates to the impact of the Localism Bill. Local people seek assurances from Government that there will be no fire sale of employment sites in need of overhaul, such as the Ansty and Browns lane sites, to help address the deficit. I have dealt with the Ansty site, but of equal importance is the Browns lane site, which was once a manufacturing site for Jaguar in Coventry—let me just say in passing that my hon. Friends and I are glad to see that Jaguar is reinvesting in the west midlands and in Coventry.

The Localism Bill also applies to the Coventry airport site, which is a proposed enterprise zone. Some major environmental issues will arise from the development of that site and the Severn Trent site. People will be testing the Localism Bill to see whether the public will have a major say in any development initiatives. Many people in Coventry are worried about the use of greenbelt land for example. We will soon find out whether the Government mean what they say about localism.

The Government need to address the balance of housing and employment. The highest rates of unemployment are generally found in the neighbourhoods that were based around the mining and manufacturing industries of the past. That highlights the key role that places can play in creating and sustaining unemployment. Areas housing large numbers of unemployed, low-skilled and vulnerable residents cannot generally attract business investment.

I will finish here because I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West wants to speak and we obviously want to give the Minister time to answer our points.

Policing (West Midlands)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Bob Ainsworth

Tuesday 16th November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Cunningham]

My hon. Friend makes a very interesting point. Anyone who works in local government, as I have, can tell us, as can experience, that an arbitrary cut across the board can be very punitive and disproportionate. What we have here is a punitive and disproportionate measure, because like is not being compared with like. That is one of the major problems with the proposals.

In the west midlands city of Coventry, as many as 40 police officer jobs will be lost over the next four years. These are only rough figures, and I am sure that they can be changed and contradicted, but we have the resources only to make some rough guesses about what is likely to happen. A combined total of about 29 police officers and staff could lose their jobs in each west midlands constituency before March, according to the chief constable, Chris Sims. If we look at the figures for police officers in Coventry, in 1997 there were 628; today, there are 843. That shows that the previous Government certainly tackled some of the crime problems in Coventry.

Let me take hon. Members back to 1997 and the years prior to that, which I certainly remember. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) will substantiate what I say next. During the Thatcher years, we had a problem in Coventry with youths terrifying neighbourhoods. My right hon. Friend experienced that in his constituency, and I am sure that he will recall that we had a number of meetings with the then Home Office Minister Lord Ferrers and my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), who eventually became Home Secretary, on issues such as witness protection. In those days, in line with the record of the previous Conservative Government, people were left to their own devices. I remember visiting some flats in Stoke Aldermoor, which was in my constituency at the time, and seeing that old people there had steel doors for protection. We did not have an adequate witness protection scheme at that time; as a consequence, old people, or anyone, giving evidence had to face the person they had accused in the anteroom before they went into court. They were terrified. If they did give evidence but the culprit got away with it, they got a second visit. That gives us a rough idea of what things were like before 1997, and we should not forget that.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East will also remember that we heavily lobbied Ministers to bring in antisocial behaviour orders, which everyone—certainly everyone on the Government Benches—describes as discredited now. At the time, however, they came as a welcome relief to those families and neighbourhoods, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend will confirm that.

[Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to recall that the entire antisocial behaviour agenda was led in large part from Coventry, as a result of some of the very serious problems that we had on one or two council estates. People were systematically intimidating others and believing that “on their manor” they could do what they liked. The ASBO agenda was all about breaking the power of those local thugs to impose themselves on the neighbourhood in which they lived.

[Mr Cunningham]

I thank my right hon. Friend for substantiating my argument.

Another measure introduced locally in Coventry was area co-ordination, which, for example, allowed the council to appoint wardens, who in turn got involved in local communities, won their confidence and gave them the confidence to go to the police if there were serious problems. Right hon. and hon. Members may remember that, at that time, a lot of members of the public were reluctant to talk to the police because they were intimidated and knew exactly what would happen to them.

It is worthwhile mentioning such things to encapsulate what happened before the Labour Government got anywhere. These days it is easy to rubbish everything that we did, but, on the contrary, we did a heck of a lot to make life easier for people in some neighbourhoods.

[Mr Cunningham]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, but I do not see how cutting police numbers makes their working with agencies more effective. The hon. Gentleman will have to work that one out for himself.

[Mr Ainsworth]

The hon. Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris) makes the same claim as the Home Secretary—that, in some way, there will be no impact on the street as a result of the cuts. It is nonsense to say that we will be able to get police out of the back office and on to the streets and that we will be able to cut the number of police by as much as is proposed for the west midlands without there being an impact on our neighbourhoods. That is ridiculous—it is nonsense. Surely my hon. Friend agrees.

[Mr Cunningham]

It has to be. That is why—[Interruption.]