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Coastal Towns

I entirely accept what the hon. Gentleman says as it underlines the need for transport and peripherality to be addressed centrally by Government. I shall briefly mention benefits and education and skills because they are key issues. Blackpool had some good results this year in the league tables, but like many other seaside towns, Blackpool has historically had a low-wage, low-skill economy and staying-on rates have not necessarily been what we would wish them to be. On incapacity benefit, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West was right to take the Department for Work and Pensions to task for not looking at which of the two elements is relevant. My own view is that in Blackpool it is a bit of both. We know that many IB claimants in Blackpool originally arrived 10 or 15 years ago, probably when they were in their 40s from other industrial centres in and around the north-west. Those are important issues. If the Government want to achieve what they hope to in terms of welfare to work, they need to use their imagination in using the money that is put in. It is not enough to produce welfare-to-work plans; there must also be an economic strategy—whoever it is delivered by—to create decent and progressive jobs in areas that have an historically low-wage and low-skill economy. My hon. Friend has already referred to the Government response; I share her concerns and her disappointment. I am not a fan of committee for committee’s sake or of a joined-up, linked, strategised or anything else approach. However, my experience as an MP for 10 years who represents a seaside, coastal town—and I think the experience of many of us—is that such an approach is sorely necessary. For the sake of argument, if civil servants in various Departments dealing with tourism, local government and communities and transport met regularly to speak informally about common issues, we might be dismissed as pedants for wanting a strategic approach. However, the fact is that they do not. With honourable exceptions, the record of Departments on this issue during the past 10 years—I can only speak about the past 10 years, but I know about before that period—has been extremely patchy. If there is not some form of joined-up strategy, it is very difficult to deal with the problems. We may praise the efforts of organisations such as the British Urban Regeneration Association or the British Resorts and Destinations Association, but it is difficult to follow through their work in a systematic way. In recent years, we have had a coalfields regeneration taskforce and a rural taskforce, so I see no reason why the Government should not go back and think a little bit more about the recommendations of the Committee. Some of the details of the response strike me as rather complacent and show that the Government have not looked in detail at the issue. For example, the response mentions the diversification of the economies and states that the RDAs are"““best placed to take on this role within the context of the Regional Economic Strategies””" and then refers to the role of city region economic development companies. However, I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that city regions and city regional approaches will not necessarily be the magic solution for seaside and coastal towns. Most such towns—there are exceptions, and Brighton is a significant one—will not benefit directly from city region-orientated economic activities, because many, if not all, fall into the second-level category of town.