Economic Leadership for Cities

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I also congratulate my three city and urban colleagues on their maiden speeches. Certainly if I ever thought of looking back at my own, I am never going to again, given their erudite speeches.

It was not seen—or not noticed—much this week, but an OECD report came out which talked about inequality of incomes nationwide across all OECD club members—the developed nations. It pointed out very strongly, perhaps controversially, that the greater the income inequality within an economy, it forgoes economic growth over that period and thereafter. It calculated that in the UK over 1990 to 2010, we lost some 10% of growth because of inequality.

If this is controversial in terms of population incomes, I guess it is not in terms of regional disparity. It is quite obvious that where we do not have economies fully functioning within our nation state, we are losing economic output, incomes and jobs and creating unemployment. In the short time I have in this debate, I want to talk not about the metropolitan areas but about that other 91% of our land mass: the non-metropolitan and rural areas. These include important cities like Norwich and Exeter—its economy is vibrant at the moment. It is perhaps important to realise that those non-metropolitan areas provide some 56% of England’s economic output. That leaves only 44% for the metropolitan areas, but four-10ths of that is London. That illustrates what a great issue this is. I do not dispute it at all in terms of other non-London metropolitan areas, particularly the northern challenge.

It is really important that rural areas and non-metropolitan areas stay very much on the agenda in terms of this wish and momentum towards devolution, which I welcome strongly. Non-metropolitan rural areas have specific problems that maybe metropolitan areas do not have; transport, getting to work, access to services —particularly in rural areas—the digital divide and, in particular, affordable housing. Apart from those specific areas, there are a lot of similarities. That is why the solution towards devolved government is equally important in that part of our kingdom as it is in metropolitan areas. It is quite clear that cities such as Manchester have the capability for devolution to take place. I welcome that they are ahead and moving forward. But I believe strongly that, after those initial larger metropolitan areas, rural areas and shires are equally able and competent fiscally, in terms of their administrations and in their strength of culture and identity, to move forward on this agenda as well. I give the example of Cornwall where I live. We already have a unitary authority—a competent and very successful administration that is able to move this forward.

In the last few seconds of my speech, I ask the Minister whether she will guarantee that there will be no discrimination between metropolitan and non-metropolitan and rural areas, and that there will be a road map for such local authorities and areas. It is quite clear that we ignore non-metropolitan areas at our peril. They should not be an afterthought. They have a great role to play in the economic future of this country.