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Coastal Towns

I am sure that as a former Tourism Minister, you must be tempted to intervene in this debate, Mrs. Anderson. I hope that the Minister will respond to the last point made by the hon. Member for Cleethorpes (Shona McIsaac) by commenting on the fair proportion of the £20 billion that is set aside for regeneration. If we get that sort of news at the end of the day, it will be very welcome. The report has clearly got people talking seriously about coastal towns. As Oscar Wilde said, there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about—and we are certainly being talked about. We have been talked about on ““You and Yours”” and on a Trevor McDonald show that I caught, on which the Select Committee report featured prominently and Southport was shown quite favourably. Few Select Committee reports make it on to Trevor McDonald’s show. Apart from the profile of this issue having been raised, I question what other results there have been. The Government’s response has been disappointing, and that disappointment has been echoed by organisations such as British Resorts and Destinations Association, which has commented on it. To be fair to the Government, however, they have had some sort of conference and have given support to deprived wards in particular areas. Dogging the Government’s thinking—and, to some extent, the Select Committee’s—has been the question of what thematic solutions apply right across the piece for all coastal resorts. Both the Committee and the Government recognise that there is a great variety of seaside resorts, which might be why they both rejected the idea of an individual, dedicated seaside or coastal fund. That is not a bad tack to take, because seaside resorts differ enormously in size—one could compare Brighton and Whitstable in that regard. One might also compare Southport and Whitby in terms of accessibility, Blackpool and Bournemouth in terms of current economic success and Hastings and Cromer in terms of types of economy. The housing profiles, resident bases and educational opportunities in those towns all differ. The report makes a fair case to suggest that there are generic problems that are solved more or less adequately in different places. Some problems might not be universal and might be a consequence of the fact that the towns concerned are seaside towns. Although such problems might not be totally peculiar to seaside towns, the fact that the towns are by the coast is the prime cause of those problems. The fundamental thing that goes against all coastal towns is that they are not in the middle of a radial catchment area—50 per cent. of what their residents look at is sea and fish, if they are lucky enough to have fish in the sea off their coast. That has two important consequences: it often affects the location of public investments, such as hospitals, which should arguably be in the middle of dense population centres, and it affects the location of private investment, because industrial and commercial operators look hard at the catchment area for any investment that they make. Those highly desirable public and private facilities, which are good for any town, often follow commercial and public service models and are set up in centres of population. Most coastal resorts are not centres of population in that sense, so they face problems in keeping public facilities and attracting inbound investment apart from leisure investments, from which they have had particular success. Coastal towns are invariably at the end of a transport link, on which they are highly dependent. Those links are often appallingly inadequate, given the nature of the economy, the demands of citizens and so on. A lot of seaside resorts grew up in the railway age. In many cases, the railway is either no longer there or no longer useful, so those towns are left with a somewhat inadequate road. It frustrates local councils and local people when their perfectly reasonable pleas for better communication are dismissed because their towns do not happen to be regional priorities or because the funding is simply not there. Although we complain, the coast remains extraordinarily attractive, which is a big plus. At times, there is an enduring call to all human nature to go to the coast. Unfortunately that call is seasonal and, sometimes, it is to the coast of the Mediterranean, the Iberian sea or elsewhere, which leads to all the problems that we have discussed. Employment fluctuations have always been there to some extent in seaside resorts. There is an element of decline in many resorts, and there is the problem of spare capacity. Accommodation that was once for visitors who stayed some time is now sometimes filled with benefit clients and the like. We saw a good deal of that in Margate, where we saw the problems that it is experiencing. Not every resort has such problems, however. I was told the other day—the hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess) will confirm this—that Southend has a university, so many places that might formerly have been occupied by holidaymakers are now occupied by students. That solution is not available to many other seaside towns. There are other problems that are consequential on being a seaside town but are not a necessary consequence, which to some extent invalidates the Government’s response. The Government have dismissed some of the Select Committee’s findings by giving general statistics. They suggest that economic fluctuations in employment are not very different from those that one might find in many inland towns. If one aggregates the figures for all seaside towns, including those for the really successful ones such as Brighton, I am sure that one can come up with some such stat, but some seaside towns that are in decline are severely affected by precisely the problems that we have identified. The Government should also concede—I do not think that they have hitherto—that because of the environment of coastal towns, they attract a large number of retired or otherwise economically inactive people, which puts an additional burden on social services departments. That is insufficiently recognised, which has been the case for a long time. The fundamental point, which we all want to address, is that to solve the problems as they crop up in coastal towns, we need central Government, RDAs, transport and health authorities and policy makers in general to recognise that there are generic problems and problems that are peculiar to, or typical of, coastal towns. Such problems do not necessarily have a single solution—it is not a case of casinos all round for everything to come right—but there are good solutions for most resorts that have not gone too far down the path of decline. However, those solutions cannot be implemented without a degree of sensitivity from the policy makers. The Committee Chairman made the point, albeit in a less full-frontal manner than I will, that solutions cannot be implemented without a certain amount of tough political leadership locally, and another member of the Select Committee also made that point. The management of change in a seaside resort, or anywhere else, is fairly tricky, because one is dealing with a volatile political environment. We have only to look at the local election results in—dare I say it—Blackpool, Torbay, Bournemouth and Eastbourne to see what a volatile political environment it is. Seaside towns are difficult places in which to manage change. One of the most discouraging events that the Committee witnessed in the south-west happened when we went to Exmouth. We found that it had solutions to its problems, but zilch political leadership to deliver any of them, so it was in a state of paralysis. There has to be an absence of paralysis, and there has to be dynamism and a vision of how the resort will regenerate. The community and the other agencies have to buy into that vision. Support from other agencies is not always as helpful as it might be. VisitBritain was mentioned earlier. On a trip to France with the Select Committee, I picked up a brochure entitled ““Guide to the North-West””. I looked to see whether my resort was mentioned in glowing colours, and I found that it did not feature on the map, although the squirrel reserve half a mile down the road did. Some mills in Oswaldtwistle that I had never heard of—I had never actually heard of Oswaldtwistle—were also mentioned. I was deeply puzzled, as I am when I go abroad and find that London, Stratford-on-Avon and bits of Scotland are the only things to which foreigners who come here are generally directed. Regeneration is a difficult business, and it is a rollercoaster ride for anyone who embarks on it. A major regional attraction will open this month in my resort. It will be called Splashworld, and I am happy to put in a plug for it here. As I go back to my resort, I shall see cranes around the town, which testify to the building of new hotels, a conference centre and so on. I do not share the views of the hon. Member for Blackpool, South (Mr. Marsden) about Blackpool Pleasure Beach, which last year, cynically, stupidly and in trust-destroying fashion closed its Pleasureland operation in Southport, leaving the site semi-vandalised. Within weeks, there will be renewed activity on that site and international marketing of a prime opportunity. I seek to bring home the fact that for most towns, seaside regeneration is struggle. It is a tough ride, but I hope that the report will help people to go on that journey.