Lord Ramsbotham
Main Page: Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Ramsbotham
I declare an interest: my son is the chairman of the North East Chamber of Commerce, which the noble Baroness mentioned. I endorse everything that has been said by the noble Lords, Lord Beecham and Lord Shipley, and by the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong. Politically, people think of the north-east as being divided by rivers. Economically, the north-east is divided between the rivers. Now, instead of having one regional development agency, which has been looking over the whole of that area and easing that division, the Government are setting up local enterprise partnerships that are separating the region. It seems to be madness. All that I can say, from the points of view that I have heard from everyone, is that there was not just confusion but anger up there after Mr Cable made his announcement. Having observed the situation, the Government seemed to be prepared to listen to what people up there were saying and proving, but suddenly that was all dashed, apparently in alliance with a mantra that everything should be localised.
If there is one issue that should be borne in mind, it is communications. The communications system in the north-east is not all that good. There are not the motorways or the means of connecting the various areas. Why not? It is because, over the years, there has been all this local scrapping. Yes, bypasses have been built around areas and there have been local communications, but the region was never looked at as a whole until there was an RDA. Until and unless you get the region to be looked at properly, you will not get the communications that should be the hub of any future development. I join everyone who is begging that the north-east be, if necessary, taken as a separate area and looked at separately again, in order not to throw away what has happened.
Lord Bates
My Lords, in many ways, this debate reflects the sense of where we are with the whole Bill, because we have heard speech after speech about the north-east of England, which we all love dearly, pointing out what an exceptional region it is and how it needs special attention and help. People have been saying that it had a regional development agency that performed better than any other and was adhered to and held in affection by the business community of the region. It is a small region, with 2.6 million people. The Northwest Regional Development Agency, on the other hand, covers an area from the Scottish border to Cheshire. That is not a homogeneous region to which people can feel an affinity.
There are different views on this. We are having this debate, but let us remember that there is an option available to the local authorities and the business community of the north-east to have a single local enterprise partnership for the whole of the region. That offer was put forward and I supported it, so that there should be one voice for the north-east. However, the local authorities, in their wisdom, could not agree on that. We therefore have this breakaway on Teesside. In fairness to Teesside, and given my credentials in the north-east that I offer to this debate—I was born on Tyneside, represented a seat on Teesside and now live on Wearside—I understand what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said about the region between the rivers. There are different perspectives. The people on Teesside felt strongly at the last general election that they had been let down by the regional development agency. The closure of Corus TCP was a real issue. The people felt that they wanted to reflect the fact that the economy and the process industry of the Tees valley made up a unique and discrete entity and that they might perform better on their own. I disagreed with them, but they took that decision, which was for them to take. It was on offer.
Perhaps I may offer this point of view. As well as the sort of romance that we have heard about One North East, let us remember—I am sure that my noble friend Lord Shipley from the board can confirm this—that its budget two years ago was £290 million. Under the previous Government, that was to be cut this year to £180 million. The idea that there was some sort of love-in and that somehow money was being poured into the good north-east was not true. A cutting back of the reach of that agency, and some may say its effectiveness, was already in train.
It is also worth putting this on record. Other noble Lords will also remember the time when I was Minister for the north-east under the previous Conservative Government. There were the Northern Development Company and the Teesside and Tyne and Wear development corporations, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, referred. The development corporation for the north-east was fantastic and very well run under John Bridge, with George Russell as chairman—Ron Dearing was a previous chairman. These were terrific ambassadors for the region. They brought in significant amounts of foreign direct investment; 75,000 jobs were brought into the region during their time, although their organisation was very thin. They did phenomenal work. Our reward for having one regional development agency, going head-to-head with the Welsh Development Agency and Scottish Enterprise in trying to bid for projects, was that the incoming Labour Government created seven competitors for us in the other regional development agencies around the country. That was a mistake. There is a case for north-east exceptionalism in these matters. I should have preferred the continuation of a single entity, but that has not been possible.
In conclusion, we are entering a time when there is a change of approach. An interesting study into regionalism by the Smith Institute looked at a set of data covering a period between the peak before the recession hit and its trough. It showed that a recession born of the financial services industry, which should therefore have primarily impacted on the City of London, in fact hit the regions of the country, such as the north-east, Yorkshire and the north-west, hardest. That seemed to fly in the face of the argument that regionalism would balance the national economy. Regionalism was meant to give a little bit of emphasis and push to those regions that, because they were peripheral to the centre, struggled in economic terms. However, we were actually hit hardest.
The north-east will have a good and positive future, not because of organisations and institutions, but because of the quality of its entrepreneurs and businesses. The entire budget of One North East is only half as much as the amount by which Greggs increased its turnover last year, in terms of investment in the region. The company employs 18,000 people. The private sector is doing it. Companies such as Sage are doing fantastically well. I was at the opening of a new facility for OneX in Teesside, which is now exporting server capacity into Denmark through a new cable across the North Sea. There are some fantastic things happening.
It is worth remembering that the north-east is the only region in the country that exports more than it imports. That is a great place to start, and we have to have far greater confidence in our own ability. A good policy is the introduction for the first time of a difference in national insurance contributions, with a preference for allowing people outside the south-east and London to benefit from lower tax rates. Personally, I would go much further. There is a real case for reintroducing enterprise zones across places such as the north-east. In places such as Blyth, Easington and Middlesbrough, where there is no enterprise at all at present, you could create enterprise zones under which businesses could be set up.
The opportunity was there for us to have a single voice in the north-east, although it was not taken. However, the prospects are good, but only because our entrepreneurs and businessmen are good.