Steve Rotheram
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Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Gale. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) on securing the debate and my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) on tenaciously pursuing the issue of housing market renewal.
Hon. Members will, I hope, be aware of early-day motion 1970 on housing market renewal, which I sponsored not only because it affects huge swathes of my constituency, but because we need to secure a fair deal for all the former HMR areas. The Chancellor once told us that we are all this together, and perhaps that is partly true in this case—at least, “we” on Labour Benches representing ordinary, working-class constituencies might be in this together, but certainly not “we”, as in the royal “we”, representing leafy suburban areas such as Tatton, Witney and South West Surrey.
[Mrs Linda Riordan in the Chair]
Despite the unbelievable transformation of our city during 13 years of Labour Government, Liverpool’s socio-economic problems are common knowledge and have been touched on by my hon. Friends. The problems are disproportionately concentrated in north Liverpool and their consequences correspondingly magnified. There is a complex and historical mix of issues, such as low educational attainment, a low skills base, high welfare dependency, poor housing, low or unskilled and often casual employment, and poverty of aspiration. Those factors have made for a potent, self-perpetuating, cyclical cocktail of disadvantage and marginalisation. I have spent more than two decades working hard for Liverpool, and I am determined to continue that fight here today.
In the 12 pathfinder areas, there was demonstrable market failure in the housing sector and the £2.2 billion housing market renewal initiative essentially recognised what we needed to do to tackle poor housing conditions. Despite some justifiable criticism that it was not always sufficiently focused or sufficiently geographically specific to meet Liverpool’s needs, it started to address one of the multiplicities of interconnected problems that areas such as my constituency face. It was housing market failure that created neighbourhoods with a large number of vacancies, owners trapped in negative equity and the unwelcome attention of speculators. I concede that the scheme was not perfect, but, much like the future jobs fund, it was at least a programme to address specific needs. For that reason, moderate reform rather than radical abolition would have been the sensible thing to do, but, no, not for this Government.
Despite what I am sure were its best intentions, the previous Lib Dem city council in Liverpool got things disastrously wrong, and now the Liberal Democrats and their Tory partners are trying to finish us off completely. Instead of taking a break, as they did with the health care reforms, to consider all the options available, the coalition Government have simply turned off the regeneration tap in areas such as Walton. In this very Chamber, only two weeks ago, I led a debate on the construction sector and highlighted the damage that the scrapping of HMR and other initiatives was doing to the industry. It is generally accepted that HMR alone has generated £5.8 billion-worth of economic activity and created 19,000 construction jobs. So the Government’s decision to scrap HMR was devastating not only for residents trapped in properties in areas that look like they have been bombed, but for the construction industry in general. It would not have been so bad if the Government had recognised the serious socio-economic problems of HMR areas, but instead they have once again hit the most deprived parts of the country hardest.
Government Members are desperate to blame the previous Labour Government by using the tired old mantra that it is all our fault, but the economic argument is that for every £1 invested in construction, £3 is generated and a further £2 is generated in the wider economy. So, instead of paying benefits to building workers who are desperate for jobs but who are forced to sit at home, the Government could have invested in construction to ensure a return on their investment and the creation of jobs and apprenticeships. The Government chose not to do that; instead, they chose to cut and run.
It is disappointing that the Minister for Housing and Local Government is not responding this morning to our serious questions—metaphorically speaking, this is not the first time that a Lib Dem has taken a bullet for his Tory master. The Minister will be keen to lay the blame squarely at the door of the previous Labour Government. However, whether or not there was money in the Exchequer, there appears to be an ideological motive for this callous and cynical decision, which has caused so much distress in areas such as Liverpool.