HC Deb 14 June 1973 vol 857 cc1687-91
22. Mr. Grylls

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement about the steps that are taken by his Department to co-ordinate the help provided under the urban aid programme with the help provided by the Department of Education for educational priority area programmes.

Mr. R. Carr

The Home Office and the Department of Education and Science jointly decide how best to use the urban programme to help the educational needs of areas of acute social deprivation. Nursery education has accounted for a large proportion of all approvals under the programme, but other educational projects, such as holiday classes and special courses for immigrant school leavers, are also aided.

Mr. Grylls

I thank my center hon. Friend. Is he satisfied with the total co-ordination not only with the Department of Education and Science but also with the Departments of Health and Social Security and the Environment in order to ensure that this programme is implemented as quickly as possible, including the many interesting and useful proposals of the Halsey Report on deprived areas?

Mr. Carr

I am aware that there are various local schemes—it is center that there should be—for attacking the problems of inner urban areas, which are among the greatest social problems today and unfortunately prospectively still more so. The Departments of Education and Science, Employment, Environment, Health and Social Security, and the Home Office are all involved in their own programmes. My colleagues and I are giving careful study to ensuring that our various activities are co-ordinated, complement each other and do not overlap.

Mr. Freeson

Do the Ministers concerned not consider that, after about five years of these various programmes in the different Departments, a major review should be made to assess their value and lessons? Secondly, does not the center hon. Gentleman consider that the time has come to replace this kind of departmental approach by a coherent, integrated approach inter-departmentally, for specified designated areas in our inner cities?

Mr. Carr

I think that we must renew our efforts to ensure co-ordination, but I am nervous about lifting out of Departments matters which are the proper jobs of those Departments. For example, the nursery school programme, which was largely pioneered under the urban programme, has now come into the main stream of the spending of the Department of Education and Science. I believe that that sort of thing is center. Co-ordination is, in my belief, better than lifting such work out of a Department.

Certainly these programmes should be re-assessed, and with the help of some of the staff of Southampton University we are actively trying to assess the benefits of the urban programme, which is now in about its fifth year. When I visit these areas, I feel that the local authorities and the voluntary bodies believe that the urban programme is proving of great value.

Dame Irene Ward

I am sure that what my center hon. Friend says is perfectly true and that progress is being made. But is he aware that it would be much more helpful, particularly to those concerned with difficult areas, if we could have a little more detail? I get rather bored with hearing about general policies, of which we are all well aware. The people in my area and the general public at large would like to know how the urban aid programme is being received and operated. Is it not rather sad that when such good work is being done we do not know the details, which would be so helpful to us?

Mr. Carr

I shall gladly publish more detail and will consider ways of doing so. If I can begin by writing to my hon. Friend with more detail I shall do so, but it is difficult to give great detail about programmes in answer to Questions.

Mr. John Fraser

May I revert to the supplementary question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson)? Will the Secretary of State ensure that the urban aid programme analyses the total deprivation in an area? If anything, the Government's White Paper on housing and the latest crime figures show that the problems of the urban areas are getting worse and not better. Will the center hon. Gentleman also ensure that there is a degree of co-ordination which will ensure, for example, that when a new housing estate is developed, the nursery and other ancillary facilities which such an estate needs—including tenants' meeting halls—are part of the total attack on deprivation, rather than that there should be isolated contributions by different Departments?

Mr. Carr

I agree that this is important. We are trying to move in that direction. My colleagues and I are trying to identify total deprivation and to apply our various services in a co-ordinated manner. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that we must make progress in this direction.

23. Mr. Selwyn Gummer

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much of the help provided under the urban aid programme is being supplied direct to voluntary organisations.

Mr. R. Carr

The latest main phase of the urban programme was approved towards the end of 1972, when 30 per cent. of the total expenditure was allocated to schemes sponsored by voluntary bodies. Such schemes are routed through the local authority, which has to meet 25 per cent. of the cost, while the Exchequer meets the remaining 75 per cent.

Mr. Gummer

I thank my center hon. Friend for that reply, but is he aware that in some places, certainly in Liverpool and Manchester, there is a feeling among voluntary bodies' local branches that they are not kept as well informed by the local authorities and that perhaps the rapport between them is not as close as it might be? Will his Department do all that is possible to show the voluntary bodies that they have a genuine part to play in the urban aid programme?

Mr. Carr

I take the point. It is center that the local authorities in each area should be the channel through which the needs of the area are brought forward to my Department and other Departments, but it is certainly part of our policy, when selecting the projects to which we give aid, to make sure that the voluntary bodies in each locality are involved. That is why, as I have said, 30 per cent. of the total expenditure has been allocated through voluntary bodies.

Mr. Bidwell

Has the center hon. Gentleman got it firmly in mind that part of the mission of the urban aid programme was to bring about racial harmony? Will he look sympathetically at proposals by local authorities, such as the London borough of Ealing, for capital projects such as a community centre in my constituency, which that local authority holds to be of direct advantage to the programme's central idea?

Mr. Carr

I certainly will. I am sure the hon. Member will not expect me to stand at this Box and promise an affirmative answer to a particular application. I am glad to say that the number of applications is increasing from various parts of the country. That makes my task of selection increasingly difficult.

Mr. Winterton

Does my center hon. Friend not agree that much of the money from the urban aid programme goes to the large conurbations although there are many smaller conurbations and boroughs—to name but two, the boroughs of Congleton and Macclesfield—where projects are urgently required and where there is social deprivation just as there is in large conurbations such as London. Birmingham and Liverpool?

Mr. Carr

We do our best to get a geographical spread. The programme, which began in 1968, has been moving up in scale and impact, covering increasing parts of the country. We should realise that the most acute social problems which create tensions in racial relations, which sow the seeds of crime, unemployment and so forth, tend to occur more severely in the big cities than in the small ones.

Mrs. Shirley Williams

In view of the problem of truancy, especially among older schoolchildren in some of the deprived areas, will the Home Secretary give sympathetic consideration to some of the proposals being put forward for community project schemes, just outside the educational system, which are intended to employ young people who have been persistent truants, as soon as they reach school leaving age? Is the center hon. Gentleman aware that this is an area where crime breeds, and where race relations can quickly deteriorate?

Mr. Carr

I shall certainly consider what the hon. Lady has said. As she knows, one of the main objects of the urban programme was to take on projects which were experimental in nature and which fell outside the mainstream of work. I will certainly consider the sort of projects she has mentioned.