Planning: South Somerset

Debate between Jim Shannon and Marcus Fysh

Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak this evening on the planning situation in South Somerset, where my constituency lies. I declare an interest, in that my family own a house in the district. I will talk about a planning saga a little less than a mile away that has been going on for a long time.

Essentially, the community to the south of Yeovil, in the Cokers, as it is known, has time and again felt left out of the planning process going on around it. Some might know that the Liberal Democrats have been in power in South Somerset for a very long time. Yeovil was Lord Ashdown’s constituency from 1983. He won the seat having built up a power base in local government. One way or another, many of the individuals in local government are still around in the council. Essentially, South Somerset District Council, which is the planning authority, now has a plan in place, but many people say that it is failing because it does not have a five-year housing land supply. As a result, speculative development has been coming forward.

As a district councillor, I was partly involved in the deliberations around the creation of the local plan and in the planning inspector’s process, so I know the detail of it very well. It was always quite odd to me that the council wanted to push through a higher number of houses than there was evidence for—as I showed at the time—but the planning inspector let the council do so, because the guidance says that if a council wants to do something, we broadly let it. As a result, many people in the district feel that their voice is not being heard very well. The Yeovil area has an area committee system—Area South is the committee that makes planning decisions there—and many of the key committees are heavily dominated by the Liberal Democrats, although we are trying to do something about that and have had quite a lot of success getting Conservatives involved in recent years.

The district council has been seeking bolt-on development to existing towns that often do not have the infrastructure required to cater for such development. The council has not thought more holistically about the potential for new towns on, for example, the A303. It could capitalise on the investment we will be making in the A303 corridor scheme to dual the road all the way between the M3 and the M5. That kind of plan would be a logical way of trying to achieve these ambitious housing numbers. I favour providing enough housing for a new generation to be able to own their own homes, which could also provide business opportunities. There is a huge amount that we could do if we took that holistic approach and looked at ambitious schemes such as garden towns in appropriate locations such as the one I have suggested.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

rose—

[Jim Shannon]

The link is the planning department. I congratulate the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Fysh) on securing this debate and telling us about the problems with the planning department in his area. My local council planning department also takes its own interpretation of planning law as gospel, without giving appropriate weight to job creation and the local economy. Does he agree that weight must be given to the letter of planning policy, but also to the spirit of its aims, such as improving town centre facilities and aiding job creation? With that in mind, I support the hon. Gentleman’s argument.

[Mr Fysh]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention; it would not be an Adjournment debate without a strong contribution from Northern Ireland. I agree that focusing on and intensifying development in town centres is one of the answers both to finding more housing and to getting more people living in town centres, which means they will be there for the businesses in those locations. Having more eyes on the street makes town centres safer and more people will want to visit them. He is absolutely right. I would love Yeovil to be that kind of town, and part of that virtuous circle.

Not so very long ago, the Conservative party manifesto included the idea of a community right of appeal. There is an understandable impetus not to make things too onerous for developers and to ensure that decisions can be made in a timely fashion. I support that, but it is also key that proper evidence is used to make these decisions in the right way. It is my opinion that, unfortunately, evidence in South Somerset has been cooked up for various outcomes—pre-cooked over decades to make certain things happen that, frankly, the Liberal Democrats have wanted to happen for one reason or another. The community has completely lost confidence in the Liberal Democrats’ ability to make the right decisions on its behalf.

UK Helicopter Industry

Debate between Jim Shannon and Marcus Fysh

Tuesday 24th January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the UK helicopter industry.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. The helicopter industry is a strong existing centre of research, innovation and excellence on which we must build, using the tools emerging in the Government’s industrial strategy to secure our strategic ability to produce helicopters and other defence aerospace products. My constituency is absolutely central to that industry in the UK.

Yeovil has a long history of involvement; we have been making helicopters for many decades. Many will have heard of the company Westland Helicopters, known as Leonardo now that it is owned by the Italian Government-controlled firm Leonardo. It was initially involved in making fixed-wing aircraft, and has latterly focused more on helicopters. Our area takes great pride in the firm; pretty much everybody in my constituency is connected in some way to someone who has flown a Westland product, had a hand in making one or worked for a Westland supplier at some point in their life. It touches everybody.

It is also worth pointing out that my constituency contains the royal naval air station at Yeovilton, which flies a lot of those machines and has done for many decades. Soldiers and sailors in our armed forces know very well how important helicopters are to their safety on and around the battlefield. I particularly do not want to see a repeat of what happened in the Iraq war when armed serving officers essentially said that they did not have the battlefield helicopter support that they needed, which exposed them to unnecessary casualties from improvised explosive devices.

About 3,000 jobs in Yeovil depend directly on Leonardo, and there are more in the supply chain. It is a multi-billion-pound firm in terms of revenue generated a year, and the biggest Italian inward investment into the UK. It has an iconic set of products, including, over the years, the Westland Wessex, the Sea King, the Lynx, the Merlin and now the Wildcat. In all my dealings with the Italian management, they have shown themselves to be willing to invest more in the industry to support it. I would like our Government to step up and think about how we can make more of that good relationship with Italy.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. The fact that there are not enough Members here to back it is not an indication of the interest in the subject. Does he agree that it is essential that the skills of our workforce are not wasted? The Minister must fulfil the Government’s obligations to source locally rather than outsource, and a clear message must be sent about the possibilities of producing in Britain, the importance of a skilled and expert workforce and opportunities for apprentices in Great Britain, here at home.

[Marcus Fysh]

I absolutely agree with that sentiment. It is essential that we build on the highly skilled workforces in the UK. There is one in Yeovil, and I know that there are others within the industry in other parts of the UK. We have a great opportunity to construct a proper modern industrial strategy for turbo-charging skills development and apprenticeships.

[Marcus Fysh]

Yes, absolutely. It is an important national industry, and I want to see it mentioned specifically within the industrial strategy. I have been working hard—I thank the Minister for her engagement with me over many months, since she was appointed, as well as the former Minister—on how we can make the industry a part of the industrial strategy. I welcome the support of everybody across the political spectrum to help the industry go from strength to strength.

The issue is about how we go forward. We have a strong local cluster in the Yeovil area, which at the moment can produce helicopters end to end, making all parts. I would like that to continue. There is a live issue involving the Wildcat airframe jigs, as anyone who has been following it will know. It is a relatively small issue within the overall scheme of the industry, but it is an important signal that we want to be able to manufacture helicopters end to end in the Yeovil area. It would give the community a lot of confidence that we mean business about ensuring that the industry is as strong as possible for the future. The question is how to preserve the industry and take it to the next level.

I believe that joined-up thinking and a clear plan for infrastructure and skills development is essential and should be promoted through the industrial strategy. It is about raising the competitiveness of the whole industry environment in the Yeovil area, and indeed in the south-west. The thing about competitiveness is that it is both an internal and an external matter. From an internal point of view, our local industries should focus, as they are doing, on continuously improving their competitiveness, but it also helps to have external players involved. Yeovil made a fundamental mistake some years ago by not inviting Ford to come and manufacture cars in the town. That would have been good to have as a discipline.

The issue is also about promoting innovation within the industrial strategy. I welcome the Government’s strategic partnering arrangement with Leonardo to consider developing its existing platforms as well as how we can make the products of the future, such as unmanned aerial vehicles, and all their potential technology spin-offs, including battery development and so on.

It is also very important to promote inward investment, and since I was elected I have tried to create a step change in the way the town thinks about such investment, and to get it to grab opportunities to diversify its industries. That is because Yeovil very much grew up as a company town. There was a time some years ago when out of 30,000 residents 10,000 were employed at the Westland site. That number has come down over the years to about 3,000 now, but Westland remains a very important player locally. Nevertheless, the more that we can try to diversify, the better health the industry will be in.

The UK helicopter industry has very serious competitive strengths, in design and engineering, and in specialties such as the manufacture of blades and gearboxes. In addition, Yeovil works closely with the Ministry of Defence client, and skills behind that work in areas such as certification, software design, materials and acoustic treatments, are available in the local supply chain and are second to none in the world.

There is a strategic imperative for an independent design and production capability to exist in the UK, and that inevitably entails some level of Government involvement as well as early, clear and efficient procurement that will take the whole business ecosystem into account. I welcome the focus on value for money within the MOD, but we also need to think quite holistically about the impact of different procurement decisions.

It is also very important within this context that we attempt to develop indigenous intellectual property. It is much better to develop our own products, because that is how the industry captures higher margins and secures higher living standards for the workforce and the population. Building to print, using other people’s designs and simply assembling products, is just not as good a business to be in. Indeed, it is almost a distraction from what the core endeavour of design and engineering should be, which is to create product opportunities and export opportunities. So, we must have early engagement with Her Majesty’s armed forces, to ensure that we are developing the capability that they want and need, while also making the platforms flexible for volume production at different levels of capability.

As I said before, there are opportunities to deepen relationships with Italy and the EU, and with US firms. There is a huge opportunity at the moment, for example, in service and support. There is the potential for Leonardo to work closely with Boeing, which I encourage and I would like the Government to try to encourage it too, because that could be a very good foundation for new product development to emerge from the excellent cash-flow opportunities.

There is a role for Government. We have seen some part of that in the strategic partnering arrangement and I would now like to see more joined-up thinking by the MOD, including in procurement, in addition to the support that can be given by both the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the Department for International Trade. At times civil servants in different areas have not always known what other parts of the Government are doing.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so gracious in giving way again. Does he agree that there is also a need to have closer relationships between the helicopter manufacturers and those companies that provide the armaments for use on the helicopters, in other words companies such as Bombardier in Belfast? It is very important sometimes that we are in touch with the companies producing the technology as it is developed. Having heard her speeches in the past, I know that the Minister is well aware of that, but does he also feel that we need that closer co-operation between these armaments companies and the helicopter manufacturers?

[Marcus Fysh]

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and, yes, I absolutely agree that the industry needs to take a holistic view, in order to work with the MOD and other clients in the rest of the world, to see how we can optimise these matters.

I call on the Government to support my infrastructure-led industrial strategy plans for the Yeovil area, with broader input from the national work on industrial strategy. I would also like the Government to support the iAero hub, which is a proposal that came out of the county council and the local enterprise partnership. The idea is to network up all the aerospace technology firms in the south-west around a hub in Yeovil, with a dedicated facility in the town for manufacturing innovation. Leonardo wants to acquire land. The county council has committed to putting in some money, but we need more money for the LEP to come up with its piece and, eventually, we will need more money from the EU funding— £10 million—or whatever the successor to that EU funding is.

I would also like the Government to encourage the clustering around the Yeovil area and inward investment, which I mentioned earlier, and to help the companies to focus on transforming themselves into firms that can sell products around the world in volume, to enable them to take advantage of the very high quality products that are being produced in and around Yeovil.

I would also like the Government to support the Yeovil area as a centre of excellence and technological skills development, with an institute of technology as a step change in the local tertiary education offer. There is widespread industry support among the local tech firms for that idea, and I would like to take it forward.

I would also like to make sure that the prosperity agenda is implemented in Yeovil, to ensure that Boeing and Leonardo work together in the town to seize opportunities in service and support, and in their manufacturing supply chain.

I would like us to work more closely and creatively with Italy on mutual defence programmes, and I would love it if the Minister would find time in her busy schedule to visit Italy and meet the management of Leonardo and, potentially, some Italian politicians, to talk about the ways in which we can build on our relationship with Italy after Brexit and do even more to co-operate with Italy than we are doing now.

I would also like us to consider spending substantially more than 2% of our GDP on defence, to increase our defence capabilities with more personnel and more equipment, which will be needed given the enlarged role in global affairs that I see us having in the future. Clearly, in Europe there is a loss of confidence in America’s commitment to the NATO alliance. We should lead on that issue, and on ensuring that our friends and allies in Europe are confident that the NATO alliance will continue to matter in the future.

Last but not least, I would also like the Government to help to promote civil use of Yeovil-made Leonardo helicopters, which have an exemplary safety record. That is especially important given the low morale that currently exists among offshore platform workers, due to safety concerns about other fleets of helicopters.

To give the Minister ample time to reply to the debate, I will just summarise by saying that the Yeovil area presents huge opportunities to raise growth and export potential, and to help to drive up local and UK living standards. Its helicopter industry is the core of the UK’s strategic ability for the flexible production of crucial battlefield lift capability, and its companies are focused on delivering continuous improvement, innovation and value for money to military and civil clients, and they also make some of the safest and most capable aircraft available. So let us build on this existing centre of excellence and rotor speciality, using all the elements of the Government’s industrial strategy to drive growth, skills and innovation throughout the south-west.