Local Growth White Paper

Lord Beith Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

In terms of the process for dealing with the LEPs, we had what my colleagues call a traffic light system. Very good, imaginative proposals with a strong business input that meet the needs of economic geography were put through to the first group. Quite a lot of the proposals were yellow rather than green, and they are being processed. I hope that soon we will have a list. Some had no ambition and no private sector input, and we have simply told them that they need to think again.

It is easy, I think, to fall lazily into stereotypes about growth in areas dominated by public sector employment. I recently looked at the figures produced by my Department on the rate of growth of new company formation in different towns and cities in Britain. The best performance in the UK was in Sunderland, followed by Rotherham. They are not archetypal south-east of England growth areas. There is a lot of entrepreneurial potential across this country, and we want to encourage and develop it.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

Why have Ministers not yet agreed a local economic partnership to cover Northumberland and Tyneside? Will whatever body is created have access to the assets that have been built up for the purposes of redevelopment and the income stream that those assets can give for continuing redevelopment work?

[Vince Cable]

As far as the north-east—in particular the Northumberland and Tyneside area—is concerned, we were disappointed that we got a very fragmented set of proposals. What has been agreed is that Teesside will go ahead; it is in the first list. Those behind four other LEP proposals that cover almost the whole region have now agreed to work together on a north-east basis. We think that that has great promise. We said that it needed a small additional amount of work and then it would get the go-ahead, and the kind of structure that my right hon. Friend wants will proceed.

As far as the assets are concerned, my Department has set up a working group that will help to manage the RDA asset disposal issue. As I said, we will try to manage this in a careful way, with assets and liabilities together. Some will be transferred, where appropriate, to local communities, councils or the LEP, but the criterion will be getting good value for money for the taxpayer. After all, this is taxpayers’ money and that is our primary requirement. There will not be gifts to local communities, but, in terms of maintaining the coherence and integrity of those developments, we will endeavour to keep them together.