HC Deb 23 July 1969 vol 787 cc2032-46

7.43 a.m.

Mr. Richard Wainwright (Colne Valley)

The area I wish to speak about in relation to Ministry responsibility for its problems and prospects is the County Borough of Huddersfield and six urban districts adjacent to and surrounding the county borough. Five of those urban districts form my Parliamentary constituency of Colne Valley.

This area has been much under the official microscope in the last few years.

To mention the main results of some of the microscopic inspections, the most efficient examination has been of its wool textile industry, by the admirable "little Neddy" for the wool textile industry which, as the result of much diplomacy and pains and employment of expert consultants, within the last few weeks has published a visionary, positive and constructive report on the future of the wool textile industry which is broadly optimistic.

It calls for heavy new and carefully selected new investment in buildings and plant in the industry to go with capital projects based on suitable return on expenditure, to be boldly carried out, and suggests that the industry should proceed with its own plans for rationalisation. The report suggests that this industry has a great future. A large number of the 100,000 or so workers in that area are still employed in the industry. Above all, the report makes the point, which needed to be made, that a decline in man-power and woman-power in a great industry is far from indicating a decline of the industry. All too often the hasty conclusion has been drawn from the decline since the war in manpower employed in wool textiles that this means the serious decline of the industry. As should have been obvious long ago, the introduction of automation and more rationalised processes enables the industry to dispense with labour. This may create a social problem, but it indicates virility rather than decline in the industry.

A second and more wide-ranging official examination of the Colne Valley and Huddersfield area has been by the Hunt Committee. The Government's almost instant brush-off of the major proposals of that tremendous niece of research and constructive thinking has brought great disappointment to the area, as to others, and could induce a drop in industrial morale. The report makes proposals for the grey areas, which particularly include proposals for Government encouragement of new industrial building in that area which above all others had the earliest building of Britain's first industrial revolution. The failure of the Government to respond to the facts which the Hunt Report produced about the urgent need for rebuilding for the industries of the future in the oldest industrial areas has been a great disappointment.

Bus the point about the Hunt Report that I particularly want to stress in this short debate is that it was broadly optimistic about the future of the Huddersfield and Colne Valley area and associated areas, and pointed out the many industrial advantages the area still possesses, and what it could do, given fair treatment compared with the development areas. This is particularly important when one recalls that the wool textile industry in the Scottish Borders is already in full receipt of the regional employment premium, all the special investment grants and the training grants available in development areas, none of which is available to the West Riding wool textile industry, in spite of its being one of the oldest mechanised industries in the country, and one most in need of physical re-development.

The third recent official investigation into the area, as into all the areas of England, has been that of the Redcliffe-Maud Commission. I think that it would be out of order to pass any judgment on the commission's proposals now. The point I want to make is that in spite of its having argued very strongly for a minimum population of about 500,000 to sustain what it expects from its new proposed unitary areas of local government, the Redcliffe-Maud Commission was so impressed with the coherence and social strength of the Huddersfield-Colne Valley area that it made an exception in that case, and in that of the Halifax area adjoining, and proposed that the area whose problems I am raising should be one of the new unitary areas, without any additional districts being roped in. It and Halifax are perhaps the two most striking exceptions to the Redcliffe-Maud general rule.

I come now to the most specific of the four recent official examinations of the area or its industries; namely, the inquiry commissioned by the Yorkshire and Humberside Economic Planning Council and Board into the Huddersfield and Colne Valley area, which it published in May this year under the title "An Area Study". It is a work which took over two years to produce, and which is perhaps none the worse for having, in the main, simply underlined the problems and prospects for the area which were already fairly well known. But, in so far as the study has given official recognition of the existence of these problems and has provided quite a useful statistical background and verification, I hope that the Government will give it careful study and not allow it to gather dust.

This study, too, is fairly optimistic about the future of this old established industrial area—once again, though, provided, and only provided, that certain urgent matters relating to the age of its industrial buildings and housing for industrial workers and of its industrial environment are attended to with some urgency and on a substantial scale.

I do not wish at this hour to go through all the favourable comments which this impartial study made about the Colne Valley and Huddersfield area. It stresses the fact that, apart from the old established advantages, it will shortly find itself almost at the intersection of the M1 London to Leeds motorway and the new M62 Yorkshire to Lancashire motorway, a prodigious feat of engineering now well advanced in construction.

This will put the Colne Valley and Huddersfield area within a couple of hours' motoring distance of most of the main industrial centres and of the Northern ports on both sides of the country, in a most dramatic way. I have evidence that people are already moving into my constituency from the South of England in order to take advantage for selling purposes and other reasons of the ample new communications which are opening up.

But, more important, the study establishes most impressively the enormous value of the established, loyal, trained and, above all, eminently reliable working force in the area of about 100,000 people at work, and perhaps if I were to single out one of the points to illustrate the reliability of this labour force, I would say that, in spite of a climate and also history of air pollution, now at last slowly abating, which is inclined to reduce the standard of health in the area compared with the average in the country, the figures for attendance at work and the low figures for sickness benefit indicate a record of attendance at work unsurpassed in any other part of the. country. Anyone who has worked in the area for any length of time will also vouch for that.

Here is a tradition of hard work, giving a fair day's work not always in the past for a fair day's pay. There is still an element of low earnings in the district, but it has a history of reliability which it would be most unfortunate to break up or do anything seriously to diminish.

There are always disadvantages in any area, especially where older industries are established, and the point I want to stress and urge upon the hon. Gentleman with all the force I can is the problem of building, under three heads. The first and most important is housing, both the replacement of a very old and in many cases dismal stock of housing for wage earners especially and the provision of attractive new housing to bring new people, especially trained people with a knowledge of new industry, into the area.

7.55 a.m.

Second, there is industrial building, which I have already mentioned. There is, first, the fact that many of the industrial buildings in the Huddersfield and Colne Valley area date from the first Industrial Revolution and, with their five or six storeys, the top two or three of which are rarely used these days, are often out of date for modern processes and urgently need to be replaced. Second, there is the need for building appropriately for some of the new industries which we want gradually to be introduced into the area.

Third, there is the sort of public building which goes to make up an important part of the total environment. All the social studies of the area, especially that by the regional planning council, have stressed the old-fashioned nature of the environment, especially some of the public buildings, and the urgency of getting these modernised and made much more attractive, including the clearance of ugly and semi-derelict sites.

On none of these things are the Government at the moment proposing any special help for this area, and in one respect they are threatening—fortunately, the threat has not hardened into fact and I hope to avert it—to put a great handicap in the way, and that handicap is the green belt proposal.

This is an area which is richly blessed with fine natural scenery. The Pennine Way goes straight through my constituency, and the Peak District National Park occupies a very large part of the acreage which I represent. My constituents and the people of Huddersfield are also fortunate in that for a day's outing now they can have access to the following national parks: the North Yorkshire Moors, the Yorkshire Dales, the Peak District, the Lake District and, by fairly strenuous travel, Snowdonia. This is a range of national parks which few other people have within a day's travel.

Yet, in spite of all these natural facilities and natural amenities, the authorities are threatening to put into effect a green belt that for all building purposes will sterilise no less than seven-eights of the land in the Colne Valley urban district and proportions of the other urban districts which I represent almost as large. The figures for the Colne Valley urban district, which is the most outstanding and most deplorable case, are these: the area of the district is 16,052 acres and the area proposed under the green belt proposals, which are now before the Minister and many of which originated from him, is 13,897 acres. Give or take a few acres, that is 14,000 acres out of 16,000 proposed to be sterilised for green belt in an area which has been described in many official reports as an area with great promise for industrial development.

This threatened sterilisation is having current effects. The fact that the proposals have not yet been confirmed—and I hope that they never will be—does not mean that there is now an open door for house builders or new factory builders. On the contrary, they are rightly shown the green belt proposals, and any application by them is judged by the planning authority in the light of the proposals. Proposals for no fewer than 456 new houses in the Colne Valley urban district have been turned down by the county planning authority up to the end of November, 1967, since when Yorkshire builders have been so discouraged about the Colne Valley that few applications are made.

This is entirely in conflict with the regional planning council's study, which recommends the urban districts as areas for new housing and hopes that they will have an important part to play in housing the growing population of the area.

The refusal of planning permissions for new houses has an unfortunate effect on labour intensive industries. Several reputable manufacturers gave evidence to a planning inquiry in the Colne Valley in February, 1968, of their handicap in labour matters because of the impossibility of getting sites right for new houses. One manufacturer, Mr. Firth of Marsden, gave evidence publicly, and said: … if the proposed Green Belt site could be developed for residential use, I feel confident that we need have no further concern over labour shortages in the future. An architect commissioned by a large textile firm, John Edward Crowther Holdings of Marsden, Said: The large company commitments already invested in industrial development, and constantly being modernised, £700,000 having been spent since April 1960, are made ineffective by the present Planning intention of sterilising the majority of land from its natural function of providing living space within the industrial community. Introducing the Green Belt into local industrial areas will stultify modern industrial development by driving the younger generation from the district. Cushion space is essential for the replacement of terrace housing. The chairman of the Yorkshire Regional Planning Council has shown his own anxiety that the pattern of land use in the Colne Valley should not be settled in advance of the study which is about to be published.

The Minister of Housing has not settled that in advance, for which I am glad. But I must emphasise that, while he is still deliberating—and the deliberations have gone on for many years—the shadow of this vast green belt hangs over any serious development in the district. The Government have shown no sign yet of facing the need for a grant for new industrial building equivalent to that received by the development areas.

When for instance, I visit Merseyside and see the bounding industrial development there, based largely on extra development area Government grants and I see there the very welcome enormous advantages in stock of modern industrial building and plant, I find it a dismal experience to come down the same railway line from Liverpool down the Colne Valley, through Milnsbridge into Huddersfield and see the dismal ancient industrial buildings which the Government are giving no help to replace. In an old-established area where the pattern of roads, railways, canals and rivers is obviously complex, and where the terrain is hilly and sometimes awkward to develop, there are additional initial costs to be faced. All the surveys I have quoted indicate that by and large these extra costs are well worth facing because of the other industrial advantages of the area. The Government have given no recognition to the additional costs of rebuilding in an area of this character. The problem of which I am speaking is not a parochial one. It extends to the whole of the industrial West Riding, to practically the whole of South-East Lancashire, to some parts of the Potteries, and to other old-established industrial districts. The problems are brought sharply into focus in the area of which I am speaking and whose claims I am urging upon the Minister.

Unless we have within a short time an indication that the Government will move outwards from the new areas which they have chosen for some benefit in accordance with the Hunt Committee's proposals to embrace areas where industrial building is such a problem and a challenge, I assure the Minister that there will be a sharp drop in industrial morale and an unwilling surrender by local employers to the enormous temptations of the development areas, which so far practically all of them have resisted out of loyalty to the area which has supported their businesses for so long.

There are many aspects of this study which I would like to develop and which I hope to develop on future occasions. I hope that the Minister will agree that there are advantages on this occasion in concentrating upon the problems of building for people, for plant, and for public purposes. I hope that we shall hear something from him indicating that the green belt threat is to be greatly modified and that there are prospects of industrial building grants being extended to the area of which I have spoken.

8.7 a.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Economic Affairs (Mr. T. W. Urwin)

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Richard Wainwright) for providing me with the opportunity to debate with him the study to which he has drawn attention. I am sure that he will agree that it is of great importance to those who are concerned with planning the future development of the Huddersfield and Colne Valley area. I am sure, too, that he will wish to join me in congratulating the Yorkshire and Humberside Economic Planning Board and Council on producing such a thorough and carefully thought out piece of work.

As the hon. Gentleman may know, the study is one of a series being undertaken by the board and council. A study of the neighbouring Halifax and Calder Valley area was completed last year. In this and in many other ways the board and council are contributing a great deal to our knowledge of regional problems and similar important work is being done in all the other economic planning regions.

Their activities have vastly expanded the amount of regional information available to us and, in my view, have vindicated the decision which this Government took, soon after assuming office, to establish an effective and uniform system of regional planning machinery throughout the country.

The Huddersfield and Colne Valley study has made it clear that the area faces a number of very serious problems, many of which the hon. Gentleman has highlighted. We recognise this and we certainly do not under-estimate the problems. As the council has pointed out, the population of the area is increasing very slowly and regional earnings are still somewhat low. There are serious environmental problems, especially in housing. No doubt, these contribute to the significant net migration which has been taking place from the area. The area's stock of industrial buildings is certainly old and difficult to improve, and there is a shortage of land suitable for new industrial development.

Mr. Wainwright

This is a key point which crops up again and again in the study. When the hon. Gentleman says that there is a shortage of land suitable for industrial development, is he referring to literal physical suitability, or is he saying, with which I would agree, that there is a shortage of land at present designated officially by the planning authority for industrial development?

Mr. Urwin

I was speaking in general terms but more specifically about a physical shortage of land rather than the other factors to which the hon. Member has referred.

All these points have been very well documented in the study and largely confirmed by the Hunt Committee. The last thing that I want to do is to create the impression, either here or in the area of the study, that we do not fully recognise the problems and their difficulties. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we did not ignore them when we considered our proposals for regional policy in the light of the Hunt Report.

My hon. Friend the Secretary of State, when presenting the proposals to the House, said that the essence of the exercise on which we were then embarked was, as in the last resort is all economic planning, the assignment of priorities. We deliberated a very long time to determine what we felt the priorities were and ought to be. We have in this situation always to keep in mind, first, the essential national economic need for severe restraint in public expenditure, and, second, within the context of this type of control, the need to minimise the adverse impact which measures to assist in the intermediate areas might have on the development areas, the problems of which, despite improvement, still remain by far the more pressing.

The criteria which we employed to help us make those decisions are, I am sure, well known to the hon. Member. Specifically, they were the nature and level of unemployment in the area under consideration, the net migration of population and the real scope for the promotion of industrial growth. After very careful consideration of all the evidence in the light of these standards, we came to the conclusion that there were areas with much greater need for help than the Colne Valley.

To look quickly at the comparison in unemployment, last month the unemployment rate in the Northern Region was 4.3 per cent. In the Yorkshire coalfield area, which has been designated as an intermediate area, it was 4.2 per cent. On the other hand, in the Huddersfield employment exchange area, the area of the study concerned, the rate was as low as 1 per cent.

On the second criterion of loss of population due to migration, the situation is much more serious for the study area but, here again, there are also other areas where the situation concerning migration is a good deal worse. For example, in the period from 1961 to 1968 the loss of population through migration from North-East Lancashire was 2.4 per cent. of the total. The comparable figure for the study area was 0.8 per cent. Again, the criteria were against the inclusion of the study area as an intermediate area.

Mr. Wainwright

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the very distressing figures of unemployment and outward migration from the Yorkshire coalfield, to which he has referred, would now be much less if the problem had been tackled earlier, perhaps even by a different Government?

Mr. Urwin

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman's comment. What we are trying to do now—if I may be allowed to diverge a little to reply to this point—in the introduction or extension of assistance to areas outside the development areas is to offset the possibility of serious decline in those areas to the extent development areas have suffered it. Clearly, if the kind of action which we are now taking in the development areas had been done several years ago the situation would not be so bad now in the more depressed areas of high unemployment such as Scotland, Wales and the north of England. This is, indeed, the reason why we are taking the action of designation of and assistance to intermediate areas.

Despite this—and I sympathise with the hon. Gentleman in many of the points he has made—the area's industrial base is also fundamentally healthier than that in many other parts of the country, Look at the traditional wood textile industry. Despite all the problems, many of which are acknowledged by the N.E.D.C. report, the area has an international reputation, and so far has adjusted to rapid change with less difficulty than the cotton textile industry. The area also contains a flourishing engineering industry, which has added some diversification to the industrial structure and, as the study pointed out, its manufacturing industry as a whole probably has an export performance second to none in the country.

The hon. Gentleman has given the impression—at least, this was the impression which I obtained—that as the Colne Valley has not been made into an intermediate area the problems are being completely neglected by the Government. This is by no means the case. The study pointed out the need to effect improvements to the environment. Under our new proposals local authorities in the region with schemes for the reclamation of derelict land which will be of assistance to industrial development will qualify for central Government grants at the new rate of 75 per cent., which is 50 per cent. higher than those which already existed, and which will be available to the whole of the region of Yorkshire and Humberside. This should, quite clearly make a significant contribution to improving the environment of this area.

The hon. Gentleman has referred at some length to worn-out houses, but I am sure it has not escaped his notice that there is new legislation which has proved of great assistance to local authorities in this area. It will facilitate slum clearance, by amendments to the compensation arrangements, and it creates a new system for the improvement of whole areas of old houses with a reasonable life left in them. Of course, it is essential that the local authorities should take full advantage of the new opportunities provided to them. I am convinced that the local authorities in this immediate area will not, having regard to the depth and extent and seriousness of their problems, be slow to make full use of the facilities provided. Improvement is not intended as substitute for slum clearance. We also hope that the councils in the area will press on vigorously with clearance, and there are certainly no Governmental limitations on their rate of progress.

When dealing with housing the hon. Gentleman referred to the problems relating to the green belt. I understand there has been quite a long delay in defining the size and shape of the green belt which surrounds the West Yorkshire conurbation—a large area including Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Halifax, Wakefield and Dewsbury.

Two public inquiries have been held. The first was to consider objections to the original plan submitted by the local authorities. The second was to consider additions to the green belt made by the Minister of Housing and Local Government after receiving the report of the first inquiry. The Minister is considering the report from the second inquiry, but he has not yet reached a decision.

On the matter of delay, the hon. Gentleman himself is on record as saying that no decision should be reached until the Huddersfield and Colne Valley study has been published, digested and considered. The Minister has given the assurance that the study will be taken fully into account in arriving at a decision on the second inquiry.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the necessity for industrial development. The industrial development certificate policy which is pursued in the Yorkshire and Humberside region is very different from the rather stringent conditions applied to the more congested areas of, for example, the West Midlands and the South East. The Board of Trade administers the i.d.c. control in the region liberally.

In the last 3½ years only one small application for an i.d.c. has been refused in the whole of Yorkshire and Humberside. In fact, the rate at which approvals were being made for new industrial floor space in the region, which amounted to more than 22 million square feet in the period 1965–67, was roughly twice as much as in the preceding three years.

Only in very exceptional cases have the Government made any attempt to limit the expansion of existing firms in the region. Thus, a good deal has been done in the matter of development policy for the benefit and advantage of industry in the region as well as in the study area.

The hon. Gentleman properly referred to the matter of communications. There is no doubt, as the study emphasised, that the area will benefit greatly from the M62, Lancashire/Yorkshire motorway, which will run along its northern edge and on which construction work has already started. This recognises the importance of communications in this area and in areas far beyond it.

We should not under-estimate the considerable advantages the area possesses, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would be the last person to do so. I have already mentioned the reputation of the area's manufacturing industry, although it undoubtedly faces difficult problems. The study emphasises in particular the need to modernise the stock of industrial buildings and the fact that an above average proportion of local employment is in industries where employment has declined and may be expected to continue to do so.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the additional difficulties, as he described them, as a result of the Government's decision not to implement that part of the recommendation of the Hunt Report in relation to building grants. We did not dismiss the Hunt Report bluntly and quickly, as the hon. Gentleman suggested. We studied in great depth problems drawn to our attention by the Hunt Committee.

In regard to building grant, if we had accepted the recommendation of a 25 per cent. grant throughout the whole of the North West and Yorkshire and Humberside, it would have been a complete departure in policy, providing a distinct advantage for those areas as against the worse problems in the development areas where such grants have always been closely tied to the provision of employment opportunities. Either we did it on this basis, difficult though it is, or it would have been unfair as well as being an extensive additional call on somewhat slight resources.

The study also points out, however, that the level of industrial skills in the area is higher than the national average, which is perhaps not surprising when one considers its long industrial history, to which the hon. Gentleman referred with pride. Industrial relations are good and there is above average provision of training facilities. This gives good grounds for hoping that it will be able to make the necessary adjustments to changing conditions.

The recent report on the wool textile industry, commissioned by the E.D.C., is of particular relevance to the study area. It makes proposals for action, both by the industry and by the Government, and we are giving them careful consideration.

I would never deny that the area has problems, as have many similar areas. In arriving at our decision on the designation of intermediate areas we were aware of the seriousness of these problems. As regional planning is a continuous process, we shall always be ready, in the light of the information before us, to adjust these policies from time to time and prevent a situation worsening to the point when there is a possibility of real hardship for the people of the area concerned.

In the case of the development areas this step should have been taken years ago. If it had been, we probably would not be faced now with the problems of declining major industries and a lack of employment opportunities to meet the wastage of jobs. We shall continue to watch the position and the problems to which the study has drawn attention.

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