Expanded Towns (Hansard, 5 November 1975)

§ 6. Mr. Spearing
asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will now take steps to establish the appropriate level of public investment in expanded towns in South-East England in the next three years.

§ Mr. John Silkin
No, Sir. The Government have no special control over the development programmes of expanding towns. Like other local authorities, each decides its own priorities.

§ Mr. Spearing
Although the Government may not have the responsibility, surely it is public money. As my right hon. Friend has said that he will publish a Green Paper on the future of the South-East Regional Plan, an announcement that is widely welcomed, it is necessary to know the amount of public expenditure already committed in the South-East, so that those areas from which people and jobs have gone, such as the docklands of London, can get their fair share of future investment.

§ Mr. Silkin
The major point that my hon. Friend makes is important. We must ensure that there is the right balance between the amount of money going to expanding towns and new towns and the amount preserved in the conurbations from which these people come. I accept that part of what my hon. Friend says. The difficulty about expanding towns is twofold. First, resources coming to them 382 come not only for their development but for their general purposes. Secondly, the expanding towns are rather larger than they were two or three years ago, because of the local government reorganisation, which has totally altered the administrative districts of some of them. But I agree that what we need is a proper assessment of whether we are using resources wisely in the inner cities as against the new towns, which I take to be my hon. Friend's point.

§ Mr. Arthur Jones
Is the Minister saying that expenditure within the overall limits is open-ended for the new towns? If not, how do the Government control the expenditure? Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the balance between public and private expenditure in new towns and the use of those joint resources? Will he have in mind what was said earlier about the sales of council houses and development corporation houses in new towns, sales which produced not less than £199 million? That had a considerable beneficial effect on the funding of the operations of new towns as a whole.

§ Mr. Silkin
I think that the hon. Gentleman is talking about new towns. My hon. Friend's Question was about expanded towns, which are financed somewhat differently.