Economy: Growth

Lord Haskins Excerpts

Thursday 6th December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Haskins]

My Lords, as the chair of the Humber local enterprise partnership, it would be remiss of me not to say that I entirely support this proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, and I congratulate him on it. It was a very interesting symbolic moment when he chose to launch it in Birmingham Town Hall, which many noble Lords will recall was where Joe Chamberlain made all his speeches. While the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, was giving his speech, the figure of Joe Chamberlain was standing over him, reminding us of the past.

The talk of the erosion of local government and the move towards central government is one aspect that I should like to mention. I can also point to the talk of the erosion of corporate Britain away from the provinces and towards the centre, into London. In 1906, some 85% of the headquarters of the top 100 companies were outside London. Today, I guess that there are less than 10. We have seen over a period great companies such as Rowntree’s being devoured by Nestlé, an old international company, and the local identity of Rowntree’s has gone. Aviva thought that Norwich Union was not a great name, so it chose something else. Above all else, the banks have devolved local power to the centre. In the job that I do, it is difficult to make sense of all that. Contrast that with BMW in Munich, Volkswagen in Saxony, Microsoft in Seattle, Coca-Cola in Atlanta and McDonald’s in Chicago. Corporate Britain must learn to let go.

There is a huge attraction in localism. There is better accountability—a case of Whitehall versus City Hall, and I have no doubt where the accountability lies—as well as local knowledge and local experience. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned the skills problem. It is very important that that is dealt with at a local level and that local needs are met. Localism also means a speedy response, ownership and civic pride. I believe that the LEPs will develop into something called city regions, which will probably have more credibility than the regional development agencies because people identify with cities. If people identify with cities, there is a chance. Apart from in Yorkshire, people have never identified with regional development agencies.

However, the LEPs have to demonstrate that they are competent to take greater responsibility, getting talented people into public life once again and getting local authorities to pool their resources—something that is not very easy in my part of the world. Getting local business associations and local authorities to work together is, again, not very easy. Big businesses must devolve much more authority to the local level so that people such as me can get answers on big economic decisions at the local level, rather than having to go back to daddy.