HC Deb 03 July 1967 vol 749 cc1525-34

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Fitch.]

5.50 a.m.

Mr. Alexander W. Lyon (York)

It is something of an anti-climax to come down from the heights of passion and the torrents of eloquence which have blown about the Bill which we have just considered to deal with a mundane constituency matter. However, it is a matter of the greatest importance to all my constituents in York. It is of no mean importance to the country at large, because the city of York is one of the most important places in the country. It has a history going back almost 1,900 years which is besprinkled by incidents common to the narrative of the whole of English history. The city is a living monument to much which has passed in the story of this island. For this reason alone, the country has a real interest in what happens within the confines of the city boundaries.

Here is one of the greatest churches in Christendom. Here is the largest of the medieval centres of this country. Here are some of the finest pieces of Georgian architecture to be found in the country. It is this which the country knows. To some extent, it is an unfortunate factor in making known some of the problems of the city. People know about the historical associations and architectural merits of York. What is not so well known is the real difficulties of economic development of the city.

It is a city with low unemployment. It has achieved a certain stability, a certain plateau of development. But it has not expanded much in recent years and shows little sign of expansion in the coming years, save for two exceptions to which I shall refer. As a result, it has a comparatively low rateable value.

I asked the Ministry of Housing and Local Government what was the product of a penny rate of all the cities in England with populations of between 90,000 and 110,000. Of the dozen or so cities concerned, the rateable value of York was very much less than the average. For instance, compared with Oxford, which is virtually the same size and has many of the same problems, it has a little over 50 per cent. of the rateable value. The product of a penny rate in York is £15,000. In Oxford, it is £29,000.

It is obvious that in such a situation there is a great call upon scarce resources to provide the normal amenities for a city of 100,000 people, but when the additional burden of preserving this historic core as a lasting monument for the nation, and as a living reality of the pattern of English life, is added to the normal calls on the local authority's public purse, clearly a city so poor in its rateable value is bound to be faced with grave difficulties. It is not only the purse of the City Treasurer but those of the average housewife and of the man within that city which are affected, because if York has low unemployment it also has low wages. The situation is perhaps not as bad as in some of the worst depressed areas, but it is low in comparison to the average for the country and the reason is not far to see.

Many jobs are available within the city, but they are mainly confined to a few large firms. The result is that one does not have a scattered number of smaller business premises whose aggregate rateable value is higher than the present rateable value. Equally, there is not a large number of competing firms whose demands for labour and whose competing wage rates are likely to raise the level of wage rates in the area. If York is not simply to stagnate, it is necessary that there should be greater diversity of employment, giving greater opportunities to workpeople in the city and equally, that there should be higher rateable value from the growth of businesses and commercial premises in the city.

What is necessary has to be found by the efforts of many people. Industry has a part to play by its own expansion and the attraction of subsidiaries. I am impressed by the efficiency of the industry I have seen while I have been the Member for the city. The same is true of the city council which has a large part to play planning the development of the economy of the city. I am concerned with the part the Government can play in this development, because there is a sense in which the efforts of the city council or of business in the area can be frustrated by lack of effort by the Government in persuading industry to move there.

Clearly, in an area which has so much historic worth and architectural merit, the amount of commercial or business development which would be suitable has necessarily to be limited. It is impossible to set down inside York any kind of heavy industry which would be clearly out of sympathy with and in defiance of planning such as one finds in a city like York, but something can be done to direct there commercial development, particularly the kind associated with government and branches of regional government in the area.

I take as the text for what I have to say a paragraph from the survey made by the Yorkshire and Humberside Economic Planning Council, published late last year, which states that The City of York is a special case with acute planning problems of a local character. A solution to York's problems, in particular road communications, must, in the Councils view, precede any further expansion, and when expansion can take place full account must be taken of the importance of the City from the historic and architectural points of view. The Ministry of Housing and Local Government has recently selected York as one of the five towns which will be the subject of a special study for the preservation of their historic character. It is clear from that view of the planning council that the infrastructure of the city must be right before it can hope to attract the kind of development that is vitally necessary.

Roads are specifically mentioned, and roads are important. We badly need an outer ring road, because we have a higher proportion of through traffic than most cities of 100,000 population. Forty per cent. of the traffic which passes through York is through traffic and yet it has to pass through streets which were designed for the days of mediaeval transport and not for the days of the motor car.

I recognise that my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary is not associated with the Ministry of Transport, but I hope that he will urge upon the Ministry of Transport the needs of the city in relation to the outer ring road, and also the inner ring road, to reduce the amount of through traffic and to make possible the expansion which is desirable in that sense. It is equally true that communication with the Great North Road could also be improved to make the already good communications by rail and by road better still.

Because of the problems which I have indicated, York is in rather the same situation as many of the grey areas to which attention has been drawn in the House in recent debates. The Government have promised to consider the needs of the grey areas and to see how, for instance, the premium which has been introduced for development areas might be adapted to those grey areas. I hope that consideration will be given to the needs of York when decisions are made about the premium for the grey areas, because York is only on the border of a development area.

The Northern Development Area is in the Northern Planning Area and it comes to the boundary of the city with the North Riding. Therefore, part at least of the industry of York is in the northern suburbs, which are outside the city boundary but are actually inside the development areas whereas the city itself is not. Clearly, such a dichotomy can lead to imbalance in the future development of the city, and I hope that attention will be given to the whole of the unit of the urban area of York in any decisions which are made about development premiums or development grants and allowances.

Finally, I come to the nub of the problem. There are projects which the Government themselves control. There are projects which can be allocated by the Government because they have the final decision within their own hands. Some of these projects are rightly being allocated to development areas, but there are areas like York where it is impossible to attract business or development of a heavy industrial type. It is difficult to attract stew industry of even a light industrial type where there is already a low rate of unemployment.

Therefore, there is a special responsibility upon the Government, who not only assign projects but can also provide labour in order to give the necessary boost to development which will expand the city to a more reasonable size whereby it can carry the full weight of providing for the needs of its citizens and for the very real problems which are almost unique to an historic centre.

One of the projects I have in mind is the North-Eastern Computer Centre which at the moment is under consideration by the Government. It is no secret that the Government are disposed to put this project in a development area, although the staff have said on a number of occasions that they would much prefer it to come to York, as this is the best site for it. It is said that the objection to York is that it will not be able to provide the replacement staff when such replacement is necessary, but if this he the case, and this is the real objection to York, I can only say that in no part of the economy of York where a quota is required by Government regulation, or by voluntary agreement, in the allocation of teachers, in the allocation of policemen, firemen, or whatever it is, York has always been up to the quota. It has never anxiously tried to make up the quota because it is such a desirable place in which to live that it has no difficulty in attracting labour, provided the work is available. It is for this reason that there has always been a balance in the economy, that labour has come to the work, and it is for this reason that I think there will be no difficulty in providing the labour for a computer centre if the Government decide to site it in the area.

I mentioned that there were two possible hopes of expansion. One is the university, which has brought work to the city, and has brought a promise of even more work in the future. Unfortunately it lies immediately outside the city boundaries, and cannot contribute to the rate- able value of the city. It is one of my deep regrets that the Minister of Housing and Local Government refused to accept the recommendations of the Local Government Commission which would have included the University within the city. It is clearly right and appropriate that it should be included within it, and I hope that when the Royal Commission reports it will be clear that not only the University, but all the large urban area of York, which is separated from any other urban area by 25 miles of agricultural land, shouts to he part of one community.

I think that I have taken more time than I intended. The Government have at any rate allocated to York the headquarters of the new combined Eastern and North-Eastern Region. We hope that this is a start, and that it will not be the end of the help which the Government can give to the city.

6.9 a.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr. Peter Shore)

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon) on putting with such clarity at this hour in the morning the problems of the city of York which he so ably represents. I think that I might also add as a matter for congratulation that he should be here so tenaciously, having endured a long night of debate, to raise these questions at six o'clock in the morning.

I assure my hon. Friend that we share his view about the distinction and the history of the city of York. As he reminded us, for many hundreds of years, from Roman and mediaeval times, it was second only to London in size and importance, especially as a religious and administrative centre. The result is a heritage of architectural beauty and distinction, and a national treasure which needs to be preserved.

The city has been, and remains, an important centre of commerce and industry, and its status was further enhanced by the establishment in 1962 of the University of York. The population of York has remained static at around 105,000, but the population of what we could call greater York—the area beyond the city's green belt—has risen from about 132,000 in 1959 to about 142,000 in 1965. That is a rise of the order of 7 per cent.

York's challenge for the future is pretty clear. It is to promote its economic advance while preserving its historic and architectural distinction. This challenge will call for the most careful planning of future economic development, and I should like to turn now to the question of employment and the trends of employment in the city and the county. The structure of employment in the city is somewhat different from the rest of the Yorkshire and Humberside regions. There are, for example, considerably fewer people in manufacturing industry than in the rest of the region, but there are more employed in services generally, including a rather higher than average percentage in transport.

Looking at the different categories, I think one could sum up as follows, in manufacturing industry, the situation has remained nearly stable in recent years, although there was a small decrease in the years 1959–65. While no fewer than 43 industrial development certificates were issued for the York employment exchange area between 1959 and 1967—for a total of about 900.000 square feet of factory space—these developments were expected to provide additional direct employment for only about 800 people.

In transport and the communications field, the numbers employed have declined considerably. In 1959, the total was 8,200 and this fell to 6,800 in 1965, but, while York has found its dependence on railway employment reduced, it will remain a most important rail centre. The British Railways workshops, engaged in the construction and repair of carriages and containers, were selected for development in the 1962 plan, and the numbers employed there have risen from 1,800 in 1962 to 2,500 in 1966.

Turning to office and commercial employment, or service employment, the situation is rather more hopeful. Over the years 1959 to 1965, employment in professional and scientific services has risen from 6,200 to 7,800, and in particular the university, founded as my hon. Friend has said, in 1962, has already achieved a considerable reputation for its fresh approach to traditional methods of study in collaboration with the four associated research institutes established in the city. The total population of graduate and undergraduate students is expected to reach 1,800 in this current year, and three thousand by 1971–72.

We have the establishment of the headquarters of the newly merged North-Eastern and Eastern Regions of British Railways, and a large new office building is being constructed for this purpose. Under the merger plans, more than a thousand staff will move from London to Peterborough and to York, and a smaller number—about a hundred—will move from Newcastle. York was chosen by the railways—on whom responsibility for this decision rested—because of its excellent position in relation to other rail centres, but, as my hon. Friend knows, there are no definite plans for moving regional centres of Government Departments to York.

I will not say that the door is completely closed, but I must tell my hon. Friend that I do not know of anything in the pipeline. It is true, however, that the location of the Inland Revenue P.A.Y.E. centre for the North-East has yet to be finally determined, but it is only fair to tell my hon. Friend that there is strong competition from other towns and centres in the northern and north-eastern parts of Britain.

There is one other feature of employment in York which I should mention, and that is tourism. Here the city's great historical and architectural merit gives it obvious potential as a tourist centre. An illustration of this is provided by the estimate of the Friends of York Minister that over a million people visited the Minster in 1966, including 100,000 overseas visitors. The Minster is only one of a large number of historic and achitectural treasures which the city possesses. As an important tourist city it has the advantage of its position on the main line between the tourist centres of London and Edinburgh.

My hon. Friend has mentioned the anxieties about employment, and about the relatively low level of wages. I cannot either confirm or contradict his view that wages in York are lower than in other parts of the country, but if they are similar to wages paid in the Yorkshire and Humberside region as a whole his argument is almost certainly true, because wages there in manufacturing industry are lower than is general throughout the country. This may reflect the relative lack of manufacturing industry in the city area, but I am not absolutely certain—without investigation I cannot be categoric—about the cause. As for I.D.C. policy, the Board of Trade is pursuing a pretty liberal policy. By that I mean that firms already in York or in other parts of the Yorkshire and Humberside region who wish to move to York have readily been given consents since 1964.

As to whether York could be considered a grey area—that is a matter which the Yorkshire and Humberside Council will be pursuing first in discussions among themselves and secondly, no doubt, in the committee under Sir Joseph Hunt that the First Secretary of State has recently announced. I agree that there is a problem arising from the fact that York is on the fringes of a development area, and while, inevitably, on some occasions a city must be on the fringes of a development area, that is not to say that no problem arises from the fact.

I now turn briefly to the question of the physical problems of York, and I want to refer to two matters which my hon Friend raised. One of the problems of York is that it is confined within its present local government boundaries. As my hon. Friend knows, the Local Government Commission made proposals which would have increased the city's population. Had that proposal been accepted it would have reduced considerably the resources of neighbouring authorities, especially the North Riding, and in view of the more far-reaching proposals which are likely to emerge from the present Royal Commission on Local Government the Minister of Housing and Local Government has decided to make no significant adjustments until the Royal Commission has reported. He intends to ensure that there will be room for expansion in the interim period, and although approval has been given in principle to a green belt round the city to help preserve its special character, sufficient land is allocated to accommodate natural growth in the immediate future.

As to the local yield of rates, to some extent this is bound up with the question of the actual physical frontiers of the city of York. I cannot say more than I have already said about the Royal Commission's consideration of future boundaries, but the low yield of rates within the city is substantially corrected by the Exchequer grant. This largely offsets the relatively low yield from the rates.

The last thing I want to say about York's physical problems is to endorse what my hon. Friend has said about the problem of the roads and communications through and within the city of York. This is a very important matter, and I know that much thought and planning is going on, both in connection with the inner ring, which is the responsibility of the city corporation, and the outer ring, in which other authorities are involved. Certainly no one should doubt that this is of great importance.

The city of York, as my hon. Friend reminded us, is one of the five towns chosen to be the subject of pilot studies on the problems of preservation and change in our historic towns.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Monday evening and the Debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at twenty-one minutes past Six o'clock a.m.