Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority (Establishment and Functions) Order 2018

Lord Wrigglesworth Excerpts

Tuesday 30th October 2018 Grand Committee

My noble friend Lord Shipley has made it quite clear that this structure will be tested against the extraordinarily optimistic claims that have been made of large numbers of jobs and large amounts of investment. If that has to be achieved in the context of Brexit, it will be an even more difficult task. I would like this structure to succeed in those aims, and I would like it to ensure that it attends to the needs of rural areas, not just urban areas, but I have to have the optimism of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop in order to think that.

[Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman and shareholder of the Durham Group and a former chairman and shareholder in UK Land Estates, which, among other things, owns Team Valley, still the single biggest industrial estate in the UK, with some 800 acres of businesses of all sorts.

I speak in this debate not just from that point of view but from having been the regional chairman of the CBI and of the Northern Business Forum. I was a member of the board of the Northern Development Company, which succeeded in bringing Nissan, Fujitsu, Komatsu and a variety of other businesses to the region in years gone by. I was delighted and honoured to be the founding chairman of the NewcastleGateshead Initiative as a result of an invitation from the Labour leaders of Gateshead and Newcastle city councils. As a result of an invitation from Gateshead Council, I was chairman of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which was in financial difficulty and which we managed to pull back from the brink.

I have also been chairman of the Port of Tyne. It dominates a large part of the business life of the region. All the cars from Sunderland are exported to the rest of Europe and other parts of the world from the Port of Tyne. It is the fourth-biggest import- export car terminal in Europe. It is the biggest trust port in the country. It is bigger than Dover. It makes an enormous contribution to the whole of the subregion.

Colleagues will understand that in all those different roles I have had a fair amount of interest in and experience of dealing with local authorities and other bodies in the Tyneside area. Although I support what the Government are doing and I have every sympathy with the Minister in trying to bring these things about, it is a tragedy for the area that we have not been able to bring all the authorities together as was envisaged. It would have been better to have had a separate Wearside LEP and a separate Wearside combined authority, with Sunderland and Durham working together. There has been an historic problem of Sunderland being overshadowed by Newcastle and the Tyneside area, which seems the natural conurbation for the region, rather than including Wearside in it. If we had been able to get a combined authority for the whole of the seven authority areas, it would have been very much to the advantage of the region. This is very much a second-best solution.

It is also in sharp contrast with the success that there has been on Teesside, which includes my home area and which I represented in the other place for many years. There, the Conservative mayor and the Labour local authorities are working extremely well together, bringing resources to the area, developing the area and working together for the benefit of the whole region in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime in the north-east. The contrast between what is happening in the south of the region and what is happening in the north of the region illustrates the damage that is being done by the parochialism and the antagonism across local authority boundaries by the leadership of the local authorities in the southern part of Tyneside.

Although I am happy to support this first step—as it has been described—we should not in any way underestimate the damage that this mix-up and this weird split of the north part of the north-east into these two areas—north and south of the Tyne—will have. As I said, I was chairman of the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, the destination marketing agency for both sides of the river, which made an enormous impact. We put in a bid for European Capital of Culture. It has had a massive impact in the area on both sides of the river. How is the NewcastleGateshead Initiative going to work with a combined authority on one side of the river and the other authority on the other side of the river? It is going to be extremely difficult at times. It will certainly make life much more complicated, as it has been in the past.

The Port of Tyne, on the north bank of the River Tyne, straddles both sides of the river. On the north side is the international passenger terminal, with 30 cruise ships every year, paying visits and bringing an enormous amount of money and economic activity to the area. There are car and other activities going on on the north bank. On the south bank, we have the major dock facilities, with all the cars and the exports going out of there. There are wood chips and coal coming in, a whole pile of scrap being exported, and tea and a whole range of goods being imported on the south bank of the river, where the port will have to deal with South Tyneside. Instead of dealing with one authority for the whole area, the port will have to deal with a combined authority on the north bank and two authorities on the south bank. It will make the best of it, but this illustrates the difficulties when there is such a split of responsibilities and staff.

I mentioned the Team Valley. For 25 or 30 years, I have been developing factories and offices, probably creating more jobs throughout the region than I have ever done in Westminster. You have to work with the economic development departments of different local authorities. If I build a big shed in South Tyneside and I want to let it to somebody, I will have to go to the LEP, to the combined authority and to Gateshead Council. I will have I do not know how many economic development departments to deal with in trying to fill that factory with people working there for a company. If I am going to embark on a project like that, I will have to work with all those bodies to make a success of it. That makes life very complicated.

I do not know what will happen with representations from the area on economic regeneration. I think of MIPIM, the great property event in Cannes in the south of France every year, and more local ones here in London. Are all the authorities going to be sending representatives down? They probably will. But if there were one combined authority for the area, we would have one group of people and one strategy and everybody would know who they were dealing with. Frankly, it would also be much cheaper for the rate payer and taxpayer if that were to be the case.

Although I support what is happening as a first step, it is a tragedy for the area that we do not have a single united authority. I would prefer one for Tyneside and one for Wearside. We already have the successful one on Teesside.

The transport issue illustrates the problems—it will be the same on housing and other areas—where all the bodies have to work together and staff will have to be employed to carry out the work in different bodies. It will be less efficient and less effective and it will not have the impact of one authority for the whole area.

I support the regulations with a heavy heart. I shall be interested to hear from the Minister if any discussions are going on with the authorities south of the river to try to bring them to their senses and join in, so that everyone knows where they stand, with one authority for the whole area.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and I shall seek to deal with the points that have been raised.

No one on the Government side seeks to suggest that this is an ideal arrangement. We would have much preferred the councils south of the Tyne to participate in the deal. I agree, therefore, with the points that have been made by all speakers—with differing amounts of stress—that this is not the first choice. That said, it takes us forward. Again, most participants would agree with that, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Beith. I do not think that he was fair in suggesting that I was not keeping a straight face about this—it was probably said tongue in cheek; he is normally very fair—because I have no doubt that this is a good step forward for the region. I emphasise that, given the circumstances, this is the best way forward.

I shall try to deal with some of the points that were made. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that this is not the most desirable arrangement and that anyone who did not know would think that Gateshead and Newcastle were as remote from each other as Sydney and Melbourne, rather than being connected by the Tyne Bridge. It is a mystery to me, but that is where we are.

I do not want to suggest that £600 million over 30 years—although we should not underestimate the amount that will be put into the deal—will solve all the problems of the north-east. That is clearly not the case. Nor is it the sum total of the investment that goes into the north-east. Significant amounts, for example, go into the LEPs and the borders growth deal, of which the noble Lord, Lord Beith, will be aware. The Northern Spire Bridge attracted £82 million of government money and the International Advanced Manufacturing Park is another example. I shall come on to the money earmarked for the Metro system.

We cannot both say “Let us set up this devolution deal” and “What is the Government’s policy on x, y, and z?” It is for the combined authorities and the mayor to decide. It will not have escaped everyone’s attention that, although some metro mayors are Conservative, they are not all Conservative. This one—although I have no doubt it will be a close run thing—may not be a Conservative. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that we are giving significant power to the mayor and the combined authority to decide on policy in the areas that we devolve.

The noble Lord mentioned the airport and air passenger duty. That issue will not be devolved. The Government are looking at that to balance all the needs of the different parts of the UK. He is right to refer to the problems of Scotland in competition with Newcastle; similar problems are felt in relation to Bristol and Wales. The Davies review has formed some of the policy in this area.

There is a significant housing element here, but that will not affect, for example, the existing provision for social housing, nor the £2 billion that the Prime Minister recently announced from 2022. There is no doubt that that will be bidded in for.

Adult education is not devolved by this. I agree with the noble Lord about the need for authorities to work closely together, as they do at the moment in many cases. The NHS is also not devolved by this arrangement—of the metro mayors, I think only the Mayor of Greater Manchester has that devolved power. Similarly, justice will not be devolved and so probation will not be directly affected, but I agree with him about the need to work across borders and to adapt arrangements in the light of circumstances. That is a fair point and we will approach it very much on that basis. The noble Lord asked about investment in the Metro system. In Budget 2017, £337 million was announced.