Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Penny Mordaunt Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Penny Mordaunt (Portsmouth North) (Con)]

In my first year in this place I have often boasted of Portsmouth’s assets: its superb natural harbour, which will soon host our magnificent aircraft carriers; its heritage; its high-tech industries; its entrepreneurial and hard-working people; and its remarkable natural history—after all, a third of the world’s migrating Brent geese cannot all be wrong.

Given those advantages, one wonders why we have not made more progress in regenerating parts of the city. In fact, there have been serious obstacles to growth in Portsmouth, but happily they are not insurmountable. However, we might need the Treasury to give us a leg up. We have suffered from the lack of a clear and articulated vision, which is unforgivable when one considers the heritage on which we can build a strong narrative for future development.

Portsmouth is the maritime heart of this country. We have the wonderful historic dockyard and the recent developments at Gunwharf and the Spinnaker Tower, but that cannot be the limit of our aspirations. We must think about the whole area; not only Portsmouth, but Fareham and Gosport. What do we want the harbour to become? We should aim high, because with the list of assets I have mentioned we could be one of the world’s premier destinations for historical tourism and maritime pursuits. I believe that the key to unlocking the potential of the harbour and to achieving a step change in regeneration for our city lies in the various surplus defence estates in Portsmouth and the surrounding areas.

One of the challenges we face is the cost of maintaining the number of historic and often listed buildings in the dockyard. That is necessary but expensive work. Pleasingly, the Government have reiterated their commitment to all three naval bases, which strategically is the right thing to do, but it is vital that those defence assets have the financial wherewithal to “wash their faces”, as the burden of heritage maintenance is an unwelcome expense when the Royal Navy has so many other commitments. Those wonderful buildings should be preserved, used and enjoyed, and there is the commercial interest and the willingness of the Ministry of Defence to make that happen locally. Alas, rules designed to ensure fair competition demand such a huge investment from would-be developers, without any guarantee of success, that Portsmouth’s historical dockyard continues to stand empty. Local residents and tourists lose out, as they cannot enjoy beautifully restored historic buildings, facilities—homes, hotels, shops and museums—or the jobs that would be created; the city loses out, as it is denied the economic growth and investment that would obviously result; the MOD and the Royal Navy lose out, as millions that might have been spent on the naval dockyard are being spent on the historic estate; and English Heritage loses out as precious listed buildings drift into decay.

I am sure that Portsmouth will not be an isolated case, and the Treasury needs to realise that investors will not hold their millions in reserve, waiting for the day when common sense prevails. They will take their money elsewhere, and not necessarily in Britain. We must make investment easier, and that will require a strategic alliance of industry, civic authorities, the Royal Navy, the MOD, the heritage sites and other organisations. On the current rules of engagement, however, such a vision and alliance is not possible.

A full competitive tendering process for such developments is not practical: the costs would be prohibitive, because it is so complex, and it would require the co-ordination of many stakeholders. It is not realistic for such a chain of contributors to commit themselves without any assurance of success, and the project stands a much better chance of being delivered successfully if, from the start, a close relationship can be established between the stakeholders and such a strategic alliance.

To insist on the full competitive tendering process would inevitably mean the project being broken down into smaller schemes, and that would be the death knell for integrated regeneration in the north and south of the city and through to Gosport. It would certainly remove any hope of coherent integration between military and civil needs. That is an important part of the regeneration programmes for cities and towns where the Royal Navy is the central employer, estate owner and provider of further employment and opportunity. Development needs to be undertaken on such a scale to achieve the necessary regeneration that will drive changes in residential and visitor perceptions.

Today, I ask the Treasury to consider increasing the geographical scope of the national insurance contribution holiday to some areas of the south-east, where extra help is needed and the potential for growth is considerable. In my view, Portsmouth is top of the list. I ask the Treasury also to recognise the damage that out-of-control business rates are doing in Portsmouth and elsewhere, and to work to provide incentives for local authorities to address the problem; to work with the MOD to ensure that bureaucracy and costs are reduced for potential development of surplus MOD estates; to examine how it can support the emergence of strategic alliances throughout all sectors in order to make such regeneration affordable and achievable; and finally to meet me and potential partners in such an alliance in Portsmouth to discuss those issues in more detail. I hope that that meeting can take place in Portsmouth, so that the Treasury can see the energy, drive, vision and potential of our city.