Future of Small Cities Following Covid-19

Stuart Andrew Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Housing (Stuart Andrew)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Nokes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) on securing a debate on an issue that matters to so many communities across this country. The future prospects of small cities and our future support for them are real, tangible things that people in this country care deeply about. I commend him for his ongoing interest and convicti-on.

It almost goes without saying that covid-19 changed the world as we knew it. I cannot think of any part of the country that went untouched. Although the virus was a doomsday event for the businesses that make up our high streets, its effects—the hon. Gentleman has highlighted this in the past—were not evenly distributed. For places such as university cities and tourism hotspots, the effects of the virus were particularly profound. The issues created by the shutdown of local economies and the temporary closure of high streets were massively exacerbated by having fewer students and tourists in the city. For cities such as Cambridge, Oxford or York, whose populations always swell in size during normal times, the loss of revenue was especially damaging. I know that the hon. Gentleman will have felt that pain acutely, as Cambridge usually attracts more than 8 million visitors a year, bringing in about £800 million and accounting for nearly a quarter of all employment in the city.

I firmly believe that the Government, thanks to the support from the Treasury, did everything possible to support cities and places to weather the storm. That included billions of pounds of covid loans, furlough support and money to local authorities to support their communities. Those economic lifelines helped to keep businesses going, keep people in jobs and, most importantly, keep people safe from the virus. But it is right, with covid almost, I hope, in the rear-view mirror, that we look beyond the pandemic and at the wider economic geography of this country.

Although the virus was a generational event, we do not need to be economists to recognise that wider issues plaguing many of our small cities and towns have long predated the pandemic, including a lack of opportunities and good-quality jobs, and life prospects diminished by areas being overlooked and undervalued. Places across the country with proud histories have seen generation after generation leave the area in search of a brighter future that did not feel was possible where they were.

We need only to look at the high streets in some of the small cities dotted around the UK to see that they have been taken for granted for too long. Even places such as Cambridge, which draws millions of tourists and thousands of students, and places with a rich cultural heritage have at times been like a jet plane powered by only one of its engines. It does not have to be that way.

The Government party stood on a manifesto that promised to end the status quo, delivering policies and plans to usher in new opportunities across the country. That means reviving the fortunes and transforming some of our much loved cities, big and small, creating vibrant places and communities where people want to live and work.

In February we launched, in our levelling-up White Paper, our blueprint for how we get there. It outlines a huge number of measures designed to close gaps in health, education and wealth between regions, and inequalities that disfigure this country, including those in the east of England. It draws together policies on education, transport, housing, research and development and many other areas of Government spending. It is a plan that sets out a clear, targeted and measurable approach to breathing fresh life into our cities and improving the lives of people across the UK.

People want to see buzzing high streets. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Anthony Browne) is right to raise the changing nature of many of our high streets and how we can tackle that. People want thriving local businesses and to see their children in good schools. They also want money to be invested back into things that strengthen the social fabric locally —from renovating the local theatre or museum, to constructing a neighbourhood community centre and preserving a centuries-old pub.

We believe that with the right approach—an approach that takes a long view and focuses on policies such as regeneration and proper devolution to local leaders—the results can be more money in the pockets of those people who need it most, more high-skilled jobs and more new investment attracted to an area.

[Richard Graham]

May I draw the Minister’s attention to one aspect of Gloucester’s success with the levelling-up fund, which is the first ever conversion in this country of a department store into a university teaching campus? It will open in September 2023 and I hope he will have the chance to visit it one day. That is also an opportunity for other cities.

[Stuart Andrew]

That is exactly the sort of innovation that we want to see in towns and cities all over the country, where people locally know what is best for their communities and of the existing opportunities, such as an empty building or area in need of redevelopment. Such local decision making will be key to ensuring that we maximise the potential for local communities. I thank my hon. Friend for raising that.

I also emphasise, as I have many times in the past, the moral imperative to level up the country. Levelling up is not about an arbitrary divide that starts just to the north of the Watford gap, and nor is it about a London versus everyone else divide; it is about breathing new life into, and offering a more prosperous future to, neglected areas across the country that have for years felt forgotten by Westminster. I assure every Member present that those places in the east—Cambridge, Peterborough, Luton, Bury St Edmunds—and those further afield, such as Gloucester, are just as central to our levelling-up ambitions as Sunderland, Darlington and Grimsby.

The hon. Member for Cambridge has said that while slogans come and go, we need a proper regional policy. I could not agree more. For our strategy to work, it has to be more than a slogan; it has to be something that people can really see and feel where they live. One of the central pillars, therefore, is regeneration, and I am delighted with the progress that we are making on that front. The towns fund of more than £3.6 billion is helping to create jobs and to build more resilient local communities and economies. Our investment of £2.4 billion through the town deals for 101 towns across England is giving them the tools they need to boost their local economy.

Hon. Members will have seen at first hand how that funding is supporting regeneration in the east of England. The region has received more than £287 million through our towns fund for several projects to support growth, regenerate public spaces, as the hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned, and improve transport. A fantastic example is the city of Peterborough, which will benefit from a range of new cultural facilities in the city centre, including a lakeside activity centre and the creation of new pedestrian links to improve access to the riverside and its green spaces, alongside the brand-new university opening its doors for the first time later this year. That is levelling up in action, and is just one of hundreds of examples.

We are soon to open the next round of our £4.8 billion levelling-up fund, and I encourage all smaller cities to get their bids in and to secure investment that will help to deliver on local priorities for the people they serve.

[Daniel Zeichner]

I am encouraged by much of what the Minister is saying. Cambridge is in a slightly different position, with slightly different issues. Will he undertake to meet Cambridge Ahead to look at how we can take things forward in future?

[Stuart Andrew]

I was literally about to come on to the hon. Member’s point. For me and the Department, regeneration has a fundamental role to play in the levelling-up agenda. By bringing together the vast experience that exists in our private sector businesses, local authorities, developers and local communities, we can create vibrant cities and restore people’s pride in the places where they live.

The hon. Member mentioned the Cambridge Ahead report, and I loved his comment that his ambition is for Cambridge to be the best small city in the world. The Government are clear that, as I have said, levelling up means levelling up all over the country—and that, of course, includes Cambridge. He will understand that certain points he raised on education and transport are not in my Department’s remit. None the less, the values he raised from the report sound like they could be of value to our Department’s levelling-up mission. I particularly welcome the report’s recommendations for a more resilient city with well-designed, inclusive spaces. That will be a key element of some of the work we will be doing in the forthcoming months. I will ensure that this report is reviewed and taken into consideration by my Department as we consider the next steps from the levelling-up White Paper. More importantly, I am more than happy to ensure that officials meet people in Cambridge to discuss the report further.

I want to touch on another central theme of our levelling-up plans, and that is devolution. As part of our diagnosis of the challenges that areas are facing, we recognise that low-paid, low-productivity work is largely concentrated in areas that are disconnected from much bigger cities. We believe that one of the principal solutions should be levelling up by devolving down, with a proper revolution in how we approach local democracy—one that replicates some of the extraordinary successes that have come from the introduction of metro Mayors in places such as Teesside and the west midlands. We believe that that is a winning formula for giving back control to areas over their own destiny.

That kind of devolution is what will propel us beyond what Michael Heseltine termed “the traditional Whitehall solution” of

“throwing money at individual identified problems”.

Our approach will embody the Heseltine approach to devolution, where the focus is not based on north, south, east and west, but on devolving power to cities and devolving to towns. For the east of England, that process has already begun, with Norfolk and Suffolk among the first wave of areas being invited to discuss county deals.

I will finish by thanking the hon. Member for championing the cause of small cities and bringing the debate to us today. I hope I have laid out our vision for how we offer these places a positive vision for the post-covid era, with policies and initiatives that meet the urgent needs of the moment. Individually these policies would do little to transform the fortunes of any given place, but taken together our levelling-up plans, with new hospitals, new county deals, new 4G infrastructure investment and new powers for local leaders have the potential to lift up every single city and strengthen its social fabric.

Local government and local institutions worked with national Government throughout the pandemic to support people through one of the most challenging periods in the history of this country. We did that in the spirit of collaboration and with a desire to protect people from a deadly virus. I am certain that if we work together and apply the same spirit and zeal that we showed in that moment to levelling up our country, we can deliver on the things that matter to people. I know that all hon. Members present share the motivations behind that agenda, even if we may sometimes disagree on the precise means of getting there, and I look forward to working hand in hand with hon. Members present and on all sides of the political divide to make that a reality.

Question put and agreed to.