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Cities

My Lords, I thank noble Lords. During the course of this debate, I have been struck by how many common themes there have been. We almost put our finger on the issues and problems that need to be addressed. Literally every speaker has raised the same issue. I should of course congratulated the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, on her job as chair of the Local Government Association when there was a real focus on the importance of cities and the shifting of work she was able to do. She rightly said that power should be decentralised to the lowest possible level, and I entirely agree with that. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, made an important point about the mismatch of what the private sector needs and how we needed to unlock local skills. I was shocked at the figure given by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson—that for every 10 jobs created in London and the south-east, only one is created elsewhere. That is an alarming statistic. I equally agreed with her valid point that it was all very well one city crowing that it has won new inward investment, but that might have been taken from somewhere else. That has often been the story of the past couple of decades. I know that in Liverpool, when we were lucky enough to secure Jaguar, the inward investment moved from the Birmingham area. There have been lots of examples of cities, with government help, having been able to get inward investment but at the expense of other parts of the UK. It was right and important to raise that issue. I am sorry she was disappointed that Liverpool was made the European capital of culture, but I should tell her that we still regard ourselves as the capital of north Wales. We tried to get the Eisteddfod to come to Liverpool but were not successful. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, talked powerfully about the lessons that can be learnt from European cities. Again, we should look closely at that. Those lessons are very plain for us all to see. I come to the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and his almost political tour de force. It made me think of when I was first elected as leader of Liverpool City Council and I went to my first core city leaders' meeting in Birmingham—I was the only non-Labour leader there. As I listened to noble Lords' speeches, I thought that those Labour leaders would be shocked that it has taken a coalition Government, 12 years later, to introduce most of the policies they were asking for. When the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, raises those issues, it gives rise to the question: where was he when the Labour Government did not ensure that decisions were devolved locally but had stringent bidding rounds and ensured competition all the time between local authorities? I must say that I thought that some of the points he made were fair and equitable. Finally, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, for her response. I am delighted that deals will be made for further cities to take part. A couple of Members made a point about core cities. The core cities used to have the view that they were self-selecting, which I thought was very unfair. They often turned down the likes of Bradford, perhaps because they see them as competition. Perhaps we should have a campaign to stop that self-selection and have a genuine partnership of cities of the United Kingdom. I thank all Members of the House for their contributions. Motion agreed.