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Regeneration

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Howarth, and to contribute to this important debate, the topic of which has been the subject of detailed consideration by the Select Committee. It is pleasurable that eight members of the Committee have been able to be here and that other MPs have chosen to participate. I remind Members that we are debating the Select Committee's report in response to the Government's published strategy. We have had the opportunity to hear of a great bid for funding for Erewash, and of greater reviews of Northampton and Cleethorpes, but I want to bring us back to the strategy and to what I believe should happen. A problem in the past has been that with every change of Minister—whatever the Department has been called—there has been a new initiative. In my view, there has never been a proper evaluation of what succeeded and what failed, what was good and what was bad, and whether we could learn lessons. Historically, when Governments have succeeded one another, they also have failed to do that. I am a strong supporter of the Government and of almost everything they do, but I believe that there has been a missed opportunity with the strategy, and I hope that we can persuade my right hon. Friend the Minister that there needs to be much more of a proper strategy for regeneration. As a veteran of local government, I go back—beyond some others—to the urban programme and the damage that it did, with small amounts of funding that had huge strings attached. It was not really successful, and we still bear the scars across the country. There has been a whole series of schemes, but time does not permit me to go through them all, and I would lose everyone to boredom were I to do so. The problem is that regeneration is not just about replacing people's houses. Someone can be given a decent place to live and that will be an improvement, but have they been given a job? Have they been trained to get a job? Has their health been improved? Have the life chances of young people been improved, so that they can get a job in their environment? Has it been ensured that the education system is right and that we have true equality of opportunity, so that people can aspire to be the best they can? Has there been the opportunity for the private sector to invest and create jobs? Without all that, spending on any single strand—whether housing, training or education—is almost wasted money. We need what I call wholesale regeneration of areas, rather than the picking off of little bits and pieces. That is one of my greatest concerns about the position regarding the Government's strategy. During the Select Committee inquiry, we considered successful and less successful regeneration schemes, and drawing strengths from the successful ones will start to lead us to what the strategy should be. There are limited resources, and I gently remind Opposition Members that the Government inherited a huge deficit, with one in four of the pounds that they spent having to be borrowed. There is no pot of gold to be handed out willy-nilly. However, it should be clear that if we have a regeneration strategy and Government funding is provided, competition is needed. Ministers should not simply dole out cheques for an area; people should come together as communities in partnership with the private sector and others to compete for the money that is available. In addition, given the economic position faced by the Government, there is no doubt whatsoever that it will be extremely difficult to make revenue funding available, but the Government gave a commitment before the election to continue to fund the capital programmes and not to cut capital funding in the way that the previous Government planned. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) mentioned infrastructure, which is a key point. Often, the private sector wants to invest, but things—blockages—prevent it from doing so, and I well remember an example. On the site of Central Middlesex hospital in the London borough of Brent, 80 acres of prime industrial land were not going to be invested in. By using regeneration money, a new road was created and suddenly huge amounts of investment came in. Hon. Members can go and see that today. That investment dwarfed the amount of public money that came in. Therefore, a relatively small spend on an infrastructure project produced large-scale private sector investment.