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North-East England: Socio-Economic Prospects

My Lords, I join in congratulating my noble friend on obtaining this debate, but I want to look back a little and ahead a little in considering the issue of creativity. The north-east used to be famous throughout the world for its creativity. At Middlesbrough, on one of the three rivers, in 1820 there were 25 people, two farms and a hermit’s chapel. By 1853, Bolckow, who came to England in 1827, was the mayor and the Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough. He had created with Vaughan the modern iron-making, then to become the steelmaking, business. Gladstone went to Middlesbrough in 1846 and called it the Hercules of England, and there are many other such examples in the region. In 1833, the Stockton and Darlington railway reached Middlesbrough, and that is where passenger-type railways started. Then there is the Iron Bridge in Sunderland, and there are many other examples, including Bell Brothers, Dorman Long and the bridge over the Tyne—the prototype for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. However, everything that has happened in the north-east in the three rivers region since then does not match the creativity of that period. In many cases, it has been driven by very large companies whose headquarters are not in the north-east—not in Newcastle, Sunderland or Middlesbrough. Starting in the 18th century, Newcastle became, and remains today, famous for its glass. In fact, you will find Newcastle engraved glass achieving the best prices at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and other auctioneers. We also have the potteries. In Newcastle, we had Maling, Austin and Dixon, and Linthorpe in Middlesbrough with Dresser as the designer. There were also the potteries in Stockton, one of which used to spell Wedgwood wrongly on the bottom of its pottery so that no one thought that it was actually Wedgwood. These are now collectors’ pieces. All that went with the disappearance of Jobling, which manufactured Pyrex in Sunderland. I do not need to go into the disappearance of all the pits and the iron ore from the Cleveland Hills because it was not of a suitable quality for today’s iron and steelmaking. All sorts of things have happened on the three rivers. For example, there was the building of the Liberty ships in Sunderland, which in the war represented an amazing effort on the part of that shipyard. There is nothing equivalent today. We need to recreate the spirit of adventure and creation, but there are two preconditions to that. The first is that we have to remove centralisation, particularly in education, together with the idea that one way of developing creativity is the right one. I am sorry to disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, but the regional development agency—God bless it—is full of good endeavour but it will never be creative. Governments absolutely do not score on creativity and never will. Secondly, we need to make room for social leadership in the region, not by politicians but by independent institutions and individuals. We need many more decisions to be made by those who can lead and who are not in the official loop but are often defiant of authority. We need far fewer strategy and committee meetings, and the virtual disappearance of consultants. After all, if you cannot do it yourself, you become a consultant.