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LONDON REGIONAL TRANSPORT BILL [MONEY]
Queen's recommendation having been signified--
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 50A(1)(a),
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation),
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(9) (European Standing Committees),
Mr. James Hill (Southampton, Test):
I wish to present to the House three petitions from the residents of three high-rise council blocks in Southampton. They asked me personally to bring them to the House because they feel that they are not being considered by Southampton city council and they were stunned by the council's decision not to remove asbestos from their blocks of flats but to paint over the asbestos. In the three blocks, there must be about 200 children. There are certainly nearly 400 signatures from the various families.
The danger of asbestos is well known to everyone. Therefore I ask the House--that means the Department of the Environment--to look into the matter. Southampton city council has admitted that the safety of its residents is always a prime concern, and has said that it will appoint an independent analyst in the near future. Whether that will happen or not, I do not know, but the whole structure of the housing committee and the debates that have taken place lead me to be concerned about the wishes of the tenants, who will have to remain in their accommodation while people in protective clothing go around trying to neutralise the asbestos. A threat is posed to the life of anyone who is in contact with that terrible fibre, which will obviously be in the air while the work is carried out.
The three blocks concerned are Sturminster house, Albion towers and Shirley towers, all in the city of Southampton. I well remember those blocks, because when I became chairman of the housing committee in Southampton, we decided that the construction of those blocks ought to be stopped. Unfortunately, they had been partly completed, so the work had to be finished.
The humble petition states:
I have three petitions and with your permission,Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to put them in the petition bag.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.--[Mr. Bates.]
Mr. Den Dover (Chorley):
It gives me great pleasure to highlight the need for an enterprise zone at Royal Ordnance, Chorley.
In the past 17 years, this Conservative Government have displayed a tremendous vision for the enterprise economy, which has shown itself in our economic performance, particularly in the past two years. Those Government policies have comprised the creation of urban development corporations and enterprise zones. They have ensured that new ideas have flourished and new enterprises have been set up around the country. We have prime examples of that success in the Metro centre in the north-east, by Newcastle, and the Merry Hill centre in the west midlands. I venture to suggest that there would have been nowhere near that investment and retail expansion in those areas without enterprise zones.
Similarly, just 20 miles from Chorley, the Central Manchester development corporation has revitalised huge areas of what was a decaying city, and the Trafford Park development corporation has done a marvellous job on a clapped-out old industrial park.
In the past two years, I have raised the need for an enterprise zone on a number of occasions--first with the Prime Minister, whose answer on 22 February was interesting. On that occasion, I said that I welcomed the latest plans for enterprise zones to be established in areas where coal mining was running down and labour opportunities were diminishing, and I called for those zones in areas such as Chorley.
The Prime Minister recognised that enterprise zones had been successful, and said:
The basis of tonight's debate is to examine the various alternatives open for the regeneration of the Royal Ordnance site at Chorley, which has suffered massive job losses.
The owner of the site, Royal Ordnance, is a wholly owned subsidiary of British Aerospace, which is a first-class employer in the defence industry throughout the north-west and the rest of the country.
The whole 900-acre site is contaminated by munitions. It was used for the filling of shells and all sorts of bombs and other ammunition for many years. Three quarters of the site is in Chorley borough council and one quarter in South Ribble borough council. I welcome the presence of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble(Mr. Atkins), who wants to add a few comments at the end of my speech.
The site has always had direct rail access. It is directly between the M6 and M61 motorways, so, while it needs decontamination and much infrastructure, it is a strategic site that would have first-class communications.
Since the war, when there were 30,000 munitions workers on the site, there has been a dramatic fall in the amount of labour employed. It was down to 6,000 or 7,000
about 20 years ago, and there are now only 100 production workers. We have the headquarters of Royal Ordnance, and I welcome the fact that there are 350 white-collar workers on the site. They are located on the southern perimeter, on one of the roads.
Enterprise zones have been designated in the past few years in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and Durham. I am anxious, because of the peace dividend and the rundown of defence jobs, to fight the cause for enterprise zones in areas that have suffered from the dramatic fall in the number of defence jobs. That affects not only Chorley and the north-west but the whole country.
The advantages of enterprise zones are tremendous. There is a 10-year period without business rates and 100 per cent. capital allowance for people investing in the area; and they are basically planning-free zones, unless the use of toxic chemicals is involved. People generally have a free hand.
The sort of development that I, Royal Ordnance and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble would like would involve mixed uses. We want a reasonable amount of residential development, but of the right sort--for buyers from our area, not for incomers. We want a business park that would include manufacturing, light industry and offices. It would have some retail content, but the main aim is not a retail investment such as the Metro Centre or Merry Hill.
I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Energy has played a part in ensuring that we get Konver funding from Europe. That ensures that we can change from defence manufacture towards civil production, and get a commercial business centre started. So far, it has been only small fry. That is why we need the massive injection that we would get from an enterprise zone.
What are the alternatives to an enterprise zone? In our area, unemployment is below 5 per cent., and we have no chance of getting assisted area status. We would need an unemployment rate of 15 or 18 per cent. or even higher. I welcome the fact that we do not have that. I like to think that much of that results from my efforts and those of other Conservative Members in the area, who have kept unemployment in Lancashire lower than in the rest of the region or the nation.
We have put in single regeneration budget bids in the first two rounds. The Government office in Manchester gave us a no-no in each case. I am not hopeful about rounds three and four, and there will be less money available in the rounds to come.
English Partnerships has been helpful, but it has been charged with redeveloping brown-field sites throughout the United Kingdom. It has a massive task, which will need not hundreds of millions, but billions, of pounds to redevelop all available sites. It is spoilt for choice, but it has been very helpful. Some investigations are going on at the moment, and I applaud it for playing its part. Frankly, this site will not be developed for decades unless we have a designated enterprise zone.
I have already paid tribute to Trafford Park and Central Manchester. They have done wonders in the north-west. Royal Ordnance has put in for planning permission on a mixed-use basis, and it hopes that the two local authorities will play their part so that it can do full viability studies. I am not hopeful that we can see our way ahead.
Two years ago, I led a deputation from the two local authorities to meet the then Minister, who is now my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. He made constructive comments, but said two things. First, he said that it was not necessarily the right way ahead, and that we must examine all possible alternatives. The Minister had been advised by his civil servants that there was little or no chance of securing European Union approval.
Following the deputation, on 18 April my right hon. Friend wrote a letter in which he said:
We have only to look at the events of the past week to see that the Commission always wants its own way.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble and I are here this evening to champion the cause of an enterprise zone. Article 92, section 3 of the treaty of Rome, under the heading "Aids Granted by States", says:
That article could be applied to defence industries, not only in this country but in other member states.A submission could be made, and the European Union would then make a decision--and I would fight it all the way.
I ask that Royal Ordnance, as the landowner, and the two local authorities, which support the concept of an enterprise zone, be allowed to fill in the necessary forms and make out their case. We could then examine that and other alternatives to see what may be done.
I raised the matter in the Environment Select Committee hearing of 19 July 1995 with my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry). In answer to my query about the possibility of a designated enterprise zone within the European Union, he replied:
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the London Regional Transport Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other Act.--[Mr. Bates.]
That the draft Contracting Out (Functions in relation to the Welfare Food Scheme) Order 1996, which was laid before this House on 19th February, be approved.--[Mr. Bates.]
That asbestos has been discovered in the structure of the buildings
That the City Council is proposing not to remove this asbestos, but only to seal it in its place;
That we fear for the health of ourselves and especially our children if this asbestos is not properly removed.
Wherefore your Petitioners humbly pray that your honourable House will take what measures lie in its power to ensure that we, and other residents of council-owned property, are given all possible protection.
10.16 pm
"In areas that face particular difficulties because of substantial job losses, perhaps because of the collapse of a single employer or industry, we look across the board to see what help can be given. Enterprise zones are an important part of that, but not necessarily the whole of it."--[Official Report, 22 February 1994; Vol. 238, c. 143.]
"I promised to write to clarify the European Union position regarding the designation of Enterprise Zones. My officials have spoken with our representative in Brussels (UKREP) who confirm that the Commission's position remains that Enterprise Zones are extremely unlikely to be approved if located outside Assisted Areas. Of course, under the Treaty of Rome, the UK is able to notify the Commission of a proposal to designate a zone outside an Assisted Area, but the unambiguous advice from Brussels is that the Commission will reject any such proposal".
"The following may be considered to be compatible with the common market:
(b) aid to promote the execution of an important project of common European interest or to remedy a serious disturbance in the economy of a Member State".
"There are really two aspects to this. The first is, does the European Union allow it; the answer is yes but the conditions are very severe and it takes an interminable time to deliver one . . . it is because there are a great deal of conditions to fulfil, there are activities which have got to be excluded from an enterprise zone and there are contracts which have got to be signed with umpteen people in order to deliver them. With the best will in the world, we are talking about years, not months, to get an enterprise zone from zero to operation. So that is the first answer. The second answer is there is a real issue about whether enterprise zones are the most effective answer; whether or not they do, to some extent, divert investment, while in this long period of getting it up and running whether, in fact, investment is deferred as well as distorted. So I have to tell you that my own view is that I do not say 'I never want to see another enterprise zone', but I would want to make sure I had explored every other avenue before I would say that an enterprise zone seemed to me the right route to go down."
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