North-East Independent Economic Review

Lord Beamish Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the North East Independent Economic Review report.

It is not often we get a chance to discuss English regional affairs, so I am grateful to have the opportunity to do so today and to focus on the north-east economic review, an independent review of the economy in the North Eastern local enterprise partnership area.

The debate is important for two reasons. First, it is about the most important single issue facing the north-east of England. The region, including Teesside, has the highest rate of unemployment of any part of the United Kingdom at more than 10%. That equates to more than 83,000 people, of whom 24,415 are young people. Long-term unemployment has increased by 8.6%, or more than 2,300, in the past year. In my constituency, approximately 3,000 people are looking for work, nearly a third of whom are aged between 18 and 24. Those people want to work, but the jobs are simply not available.

The debate is also important for every English region that has a local enterprise partnership. Although the report that we are considering is not the only one of its kind—I think that Manchester has produced something similar—it is clearly relevant to other UK regions that face similar problems.

There is no sustained political disagreement about the problems facing the north-east of England, which is why I am pleased that our debate has been supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman), the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith). When I was Minister for the North East under the previous Government, I found that it was possible to get a broad consensus among all those who had the region’s best interests at heart.

The report identifies the key problems that the region faces, but it is weaker on what to do about them. The issue at the heart of all this is what we should be doing to bring down high rates of unemployment and to ensure that the citizens we represent have a chance of a job, a decent wage and a secure future in the north-east of England—including in Teesside, for the avoidance of doubt.

While the report focuses largely on structures, I would have preferred it to focus on outcomes. It could have offered practical ways forward, but it focuses on process and reorganising functions. I think that a better approach was the one adopted by the previous Labour Government, with the regional Minister, local authorities working with that Minister through the Association of North East Councils, and essential economic development input coming from One North East, the independent, business-led development agency. Given the need to reduce public expenditure, it would have been better to refocus the development agency on its core business, rather than abolishing it.

There needs to be single-minded focus on broadening and deepening the region’s private sector employment base. Promising individual projects were in the pipeline when I was regional Minister—I believe that they are still in place—so they should be assessed and pushed forward with a sense of urgency. There should be political leadership from an individual Minister appointed to focus on this issue. The crucial point is that such a Minister will have access to the great Departments of State and can act as an advocate for incoming private sector investment. Other parts of the United Kingdom with similar problems have their own economic development bodies, local political decision-making bodies and ministerial champions at Cabinet level. That is true for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the north-east, including Teesside, needs a ministerial champion of its own.

In my time as regional Minister, I was able to intervene effectively at the heart of government. I was able to intervene on the region’s side in crucial debates about Nissan, its battery manufacturing facility and the new electric car assembly line to sit alongside that. I worked behind the scenes—we were not allowed to say anything in public—in the campaign to find a future for what was then the Corus steelworks at Redcar. I worked closely with the North East of England Process Industry Cluster, and secured central Government support for public transport initiatives on Teesside and for the Newcastle metro. I also championed the north bank of the Tyne’s industrial strategy, as well as a partnership between the regional development agency, Newcastle city council and North Tyneside council that brought new industrial jobs to the Tyne. A substantial amount of work was undertaken with small and medium-sized employers and an effective Business Link organisation, which I am sorry to see go.

The principal recommendations of the LEP report involve creating a leadership board that is made up of the leaders of the seven local authorities and that will lead on the three functions of transport, economic development and skills training. I understand that the Government support those recommendations because they are similar to their existing policy, but I note that our ministerial presence has been upgraded so, if I have got that wrong, I am sure that the Minister for Universities and Science will tell us when he says a few words.

The recommendations in the report involve organisational change, with no very clear-sighted view of where there would be an improved outcome following the change. They also strike me as being labour intensive. Each local authority leader, perfectly properly from their point of view, will want their own advisers in each of the three policy areas. Tellingly, the report talks of “capacity building” and “joint teams of officers”, with senior leads

“from each Government Department and Agency”.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the one thing missing from the report is the fact that many local authorities, including my own in Durham, have had to take £209 million out of their budget during this period? The capacity for officers to take up these tasks will be very difficult.

[Mr Brown]

It would certainly be impossible for local authorities to do what the report suggests. My hon. Friend’s point is correct. If extra resources were to be supplied to enable them to do so, frankly it would not be the first priority for expenditure in local authorities, all of which are very hard-pressed at the moment even without taking on extra functions without the resources to carry them out. Let us remember that the recommendations, which effectively are for extra civil service support, be it central or local government—as I read the report, it is both—come just after the Government have closed the Government office for the region.

Of course there is a case for the seven local government leaders to meet. In effect, this replicates, but for a smaller area, the arrangement that pertained under the last Labour Government through the Association of North East Councils. Local authority leaders already take a close interest in economic development questions in their council areas, and they work with others when there is a common interest. But is not the lead on economic development supposed to lie with the LEP, not the local authority leaders alone? The local authority leaders are already all represented on the board of the LEP. What is the relationship between the two supposed to be?

A better approach to the Tyne and Wear passenger transport authority would be to amend the existing arrangements rather than create a whole new authority. The existing authority has the advantage of involving councillors who are not the leaders of their authority and can give the time to specialise in transport matters. Nexus and the integrated transport authority are already working hard to push ahead with many of the recommendations in the report, including smart ticketing and a consultation on a quality contracts scheme.

Similarly, I do not understand, and the report does not explain, what the specific input of the local authority leaders into skills training is expected to bring. The justification in the report is that the local government leaders know their own areas the best and therefore are best placed to identify skills needs and shortages. I am not sure that this is true. In any event, local authority leaders have a great deal to do already, and to demand that they specialise in skills and training issues as well as economic development and transport policy seems to me unreasonable.

A combined authority does not give the region any more access to Government, and it is Government who have the power and hold the purse-strings, and that is more so now than under the previous Government. We have had the LEP up and running now and that has not enhanced the region’s direct access to Government, where the big decisions are made. The LEP has had the lead on the enterprise zone policy for almost two years now. I am not an advocate of the policy, as I made clear at the time, but if it can be made to work, I want it to be made to work. But there is not much evidence of it working so far.

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[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown). I suggest that we should be very proud of the report, and very proud in the north-east. As we all agree, it is the most beautiful of regions, and certainly not desolate. It is blessed with a positive balance of payments, as the North East chamber of commerce and the businesses constantly make clear to us.

Not only was the region the cradle of the industrial revolution, but this year we are leading the way. First, in the spring we had the January declaration in the north-east, which made a significant contribution to how we visualise the type of country we wish to be. Secondly, in April we had Lord Adonis’s report, which is fundamentally business-led, with the most pragmatic of Labour politicians at its head; he is someone we can genuinely work with. I am happy to say that I worked with him and supported what he was doing in creating the report. Thirdly, in June, we had the banking conference in Gateshead which a group of us organised to try to facilitate bank lending in a multitude of ways, ranging from a business bank to a local enterprise partnership infrastructure bank to community and local banks—different types of lending and expanding on credit unions that will address the fundamental problem of the lack of bank lending and finance to create the private sector jobs that we all so wish for.

The north-east is leading the way. The right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East is right that Manchester has produced a derisorily small and not very good report. We have produced a proper report that deals with what all 39 local enterprise partnerships have to do—address specific plans for a strategic economic plan within a particular time scale. Every Member of Parliament and every person in this country will have to address the problems that we are leading the way on. That is very significant. The north-east is not sitting back and accepting the state of things as they are; the north-east is making the case for change.

The strategic economic plan must be submitted by the end of March 2014, and it requires a Government response at a certain stage over the winter. It affects businesses, universities, local authorities and anyone interested in transport, housing, schools or skills—pretty much everybody. I cannot speak to every part of the report in seven minutes, but I can say that I support its broad thrust. The most important part concerns the development that has taken place over the past year-plus with the local authorities all coming together and forming the combined authority. It is absolutely vital that we go on this journey. I take the point about the Association of North East Authorities being a type of combined authority, but it is nothing like what we are going to have in future.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

That is a structural change, although I am not opposed to it. To be fair to the north-east councils, they have a very good track record, across the political divide, of working together. However, the hon. Gentleman cannot get away from the fact that his Government have already taken some £240 million from the local authorities covered by the LEP area in the past two years, and that is before the next round of cuts. How does he expect those councils to come up to the mark as the Government are asking them to do?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Gentleman need not take my word for it; he can listen to the author of the report and the business men and business women who believe in the north-east being able to cope with those difficulties and strongly make the case that there is optimism to be found there.

The next step as regards the combined north-east local authority is to pick a leader. I would certainly support having a mayor.

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[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I congratulate those who have secured the debate. For a small but beautifully formed part of the country to be discussed in the main Chamber is terrific. I bring apologies from my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), who unfortunately cannot be here as he is on Justice Committee business. He certainly wanted to be.

I welcome the high-quality report. I was slightly surprised at some of the critical remarks about it in the opening speech, because I understood it to be a bottom-up initiative by a lot of people in the region, and therefore a good summary of what was happening and what should be done. Lord Adonis said in his report that he had been immensely stimulated by being in the region and meeting various people, and had left “full of optimism”. That is certainly the spirit in which we should see the future.

I welcome the five key aims set out in the report, especially the one about the skills agenda. We saw in the news today that Dyson had said it would employ 2,000 more people if only it could find the technical and engineering staff that it needed. It is frustrating for me, in an area of high unemployment, constantly to meet employers who say that they cannot find the people they need. We also need more entrepreneurs in the north-east. That is not well covered in the report, but we have one of the lowest levels in the country of entrepreneurship and small and medium-sized enterprises. There is plenty of room for growth there.

As a Tees valley MP, I look at the report through the lens of that area, and I would make one observation that is meant to be helpful. The report is quite heavy on structures and low on dynamism and the private sector. I know that there are real issues in the North Eastern local enterprise partnership area, but Tees Valley Unlimited is different in that the local authorities come together in the LEP rather than as a separate group. That leads to cohesion and also gives the LEP a strong mandate for action. It remains to be seen how the north-east’s structures will work in future.

Of course, our region has been hit hard by the decline of traditional industries, but it is recovering. As has been said, it is the only region with a net trade surplus, and we are benefiting from the Government refocusing on manufacturing. Recent figures show growth in manufacturing, and Redcar steelworks had record production just a few weeks ago. The Government are also making more effort on foreign trade, which is benefiting our region, and we can all do our bit. As chair of the all-party group on the chemical industry, I was pleased to lead the north-east process industries trade mission to India in March.

The Government have been working hard on the north-east in many ways. Enterprise zones have been mentioned, and I am delighted that those in the Tees valley have already attracted 10 new companies and more than £400 million of investment. The regional growth fund was derided earlier in the debate, but let us remember that it is genuine regional policy. Only the areas that really need the money are getting it. The north-east is a huge beneficiary—in rounds 1 and 2, the two LEP areas got nearly one third of the entire country’s projects.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Is it not a fact that in the last year of the regional development agency, it had an annual budget of nearly £250 million? Now the Government have taken that away, which the hon. Gentleman voted for, and there is a bidding game in some areas. Some of the decisions that are being taken are difficult to justify given the deprivation that exists and the support that areas need, but they are perhaps being taken for political reasons. The idea that the regional growth fund somehow replaced what was taken away is complete nonsense.

[Ian Swales]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about the amounts of money concerned, but of course we were left in a situation where the Government were basically bankrupt. It is excellent that instead of spraying money around all the regions of the country, the Government have picked the regions that actually need it. The limited amounts of money are coming to areas such as the north-east. The recent announcements of EU funding are of course welcome, and I congratulate the Government on taking only a small slice of it, as opposed to the 50% slice that I believe the previous Government took. The EU’s recognition of Tees valley and County Durham as areas needing special assistance is welcome, because it will result in large amounts of money. There is more to come from the EU youth unemployment funds, because we qualify on that ground too.

The hon. Member for Burton (Andrew Griffiths) said we should celebrate good news. It was great to see the ground being broken for the Hitachi factory a few weeks ago. It already has its first orders. We have heard about the effect that Nissan has had on the north-east. Hitachi has the potential to be a similar success story, with the supply chain as well as the company itself. We should celebrate that.

As the briefing for hon. Members states, the North Eastern local enterprise partnership is the fourth biggest. It is working on a huge number of activities. Were my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed in the Chamber, he would certainly mention the need to continue with rural broadband investment for Northumberland, and to build on the recent Government announcement on dualling the A1.

The overall region is stronger with two LEPs based on the two main conurbations. I have spoken in previous north-east debates on how I believe that the Tees valley lost out under the old arrangement. The statistics are clear on that. I congratulate Tees Valley Unlimited on its work. As well as enterprise zones and successful regional growth fund bids, it has an economic strategy and a business plan. It is aiming to have 25,000 extra jobs over the next 10 years. It has launched a £20 million contract catalyst fund, giving performance bonds for small and medium-sized enterprises; secured £12 million for a pinch point on the A19; and engaged with more than 750 local businesses.

We are getting much needed improvements to local bus and rail services, including a new rail station at James Cook hospital.

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[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) on securing this debate and the Backbench Business Committee on allowing it.

As my right hon. Friend said, the problem with the report is that it contains a lot of structures but very little action. It is action that we need now. The report has another fundamental problem, in that it divides the region artificially in half, talking about transport for the north part of the region. We are a small region, and one thing that we cannot do is put artificial barriers between parts of the north-east. People in my constituency work on Tyneside, in Durham and down on Teesside. That is one of the problems with the report.

The hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) said that he welcomed his involvement in the report. I say well done to him, because Labour MPs were certainly not asked for their involvement, although that did not surprise me at all, coming from Andrew Adonis. Indeed, he has come up with another structural solution, which is to have a mayor for the new LEP area. I do not think he could have come up with a more barmy idea, because it would do nothing to help the economic development of our region—not even the northern part of the north-east. Fundamentally, this Government do not believe in regional policy, so they have come up with two LEPs. They have no cash, but a nice report will be produced that will possibly gather dust, and also a lot of plaudits—that is certainly what I have seen over the years that I have been in the north-east.

A headline in the Newcastle Journal today, alongside a picture of Andrew Adonis’s smiling face, tells us that £1 billion is coming to the north-east. Only when we read the small print do we see what is really involved. It is £500 million of European money, but the real clincher is that it has to be matched by another £500 million, either from council money or from the private sector. That is a bit like someone winning a car on a quiz show, only to be told not only that it has no petrol in it but that they have to buy an engine for it as well.

It will be interesting to see where that other £500 million will come from, because local authorities are under a great deal of pressure. More than £200 million has been taken from the local authorities in the LEP area in only two years. Over the next financial quarter, Durham county council is going to lose £209 million. What are the Government doing with that money? They are giving it to their friends in the south of England. Let us look at the local authority cuts per head. Durham is losing £168.80. Wokingham is losing £26.53, and Surrey Heath—that place of real deprivation—is losing £24.54.

This Government have no regional policy at all; that is the problem. The report is fine when suggesting structures, but the fundamental problem is that there is no cash behind them. I pay real tribute to councils in the north-east, not just those in the northern part but those in Teesside as well. They have a long tradition—going back to well before the last regional development agency—of working with private industry and other sectors to help the north-east. Nissan came to the north-east because of the dynamism of those different sectors working together.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

The fact that Newcastle airport exists in its present form is due to a partnership of seven local authorities working together to provide a regional airport for the northern part of the region. Local authorities have been engaging in such processes for decades.

[Mr Jones]

That is right. I used to be a director of Newcastle airport. It did a remarkable thing under the previous Conservative Government: when they stopped local authorities raising money, it paid for an expansion costing nearly £27 million out of its profits. It had the foresight to do that.

If we are looking to local authorities to provide that extra cash, we must remember that they are under a lot of pressure. The chair of the North Eastern LEP prides himself on having only a small team around him, as though that were some kind of badge of honour. I do not know how the hell he is going to deliver the process if he is going to rely on local authorities to provide that extra funding, because the cash just is not there. Every time a grant is made from the regional growth fund, we hear announcements of so many million pounds coming from the Government to the north-east, but the real sting in the tail is that we never hear how much the Government are taking away from the region, including the £200 million a year that was going to the RDA, and the £2 billion-plus that the Labour Government invested in the north-east over 13 years.

The Government also talk about skills. Well, fine; but this is the same Government who have cut back on Building Schools for the Future. In Durham, for example, only seven of the 25 BSF projects have survived. In Darlington, seven out of the eight projects were cancelled, and 14 out of 21 were cancelled in Sunderland. I say to the authors of the report that it is no good talking about school initiatives when there are schools in the north-east that are crumbling around people’s ears and have water leaking in through the roofs. It is very difficult for teachers to teach in those conditions. Lo and behold, Mr Speaker—I come back to my favourite place: Wokingham—guess how many BSF school projects were cancelled in Wokingham. Not one.

It is no good the Conservative Government, with the support of the Liberal Democrats, arguing that they are somehow supporting the north-east. They are deliberately doing things that take resources away from the region. Local government funding is being skewed in favour of the south-east, and the benefits changes will have a disproportionate impact on our area.

The report appears to give tentative support for High Speed 2, although it does not actually do so, because it admits that the north-east will benefit the least. That is true: HS2 will be a complete disaster for the north-east of England. We have heard about a wish list of transport projects—including a Teesside metro and others—if HS2 goes ahead, but I would say forget it, as that will not happen. What we need is real investment and increased capacity on the east coast main line. Back in 1980, the then British Rail did an experiment, clearing all traffic off the east coast main line. Journey times from Edinburgh to King’s Cross came down to three hours, and from Newcastle to just over two hours. That is what we have to do—invest in that, not in the vanity project for which this Government have fallen. It was dreamed up by Lord Adonis, who I do not think has ever been elected to anything—apart from when he was milk monitor at school.

I wish this report well, but I fear that it will raise expectations, without delivering. What business needs now and what young people in my constituency who face a long term of unemployment need now is action. They do want to hear structural arguments and they do not want a glossy report, which might well make the authors feel good and get them a lot of press coverage locally. What we want is action. We had action when we had the RDA, which could step in and rightly did so when the economic downturn came—not just to help individuals but to help businesses in the constituency. There is now no access to that at all, and some businesses in my constituency are certainly struggling as a result of the lack of investment from banks and other lending institutions.