Partnership Committees (Hansard, 10 May 1978)

§ 8. Mr. Arnold
asked the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he is satisfied with the operation of the partnership committees.

§ Mr. Shore
The first partnership committee meeting took place only last October, and since then all the partnerships have made progress towards tackling the problems of their areas.

§ Mr. Arnold
Is it really necessary to have a combination of partnership and programme authorities and designated districts? Would it not make better sense to give additional powers to the local authorities with inner urban area problems and to allocate money in response to properly prepared schemes?

§ Mr. Shore
The whole inner city programme is based upon the attempt by the Government to differentiate between those areas with absolutely major problems and those with problems that, though great, are not of the same order of magnitude. We cannot concentrate on everything at the same time, but, in terms of resources, we have put special efforts into the seven major partnership areas where the inner city problems are at their worst.

§ Mr. Litterick
Is the Secretary of State aware that the people of Selly Oak have informed me that they are not satisfied with the operation of the existing partnership agreement in Birmingham, for three reasons—first, because Selly Oak is not included in the partnership agreement; secondly, because my constituents feel, on the evidence, that they are not being adequately consulted by the existing partnership committee; and, thirdly, because they fear that, as a result, Selly Oak will not get its fair share of the resources that are devoted to the city of Birmingham?

§ Mr. Shore
I note what my hon. Friend says and I shall see that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction, who is chairman of the partner- 1168 committee, takes note of it. The first job of all the partnership committees was to define the areas of the partnership. If my hon. Friend's area was excluded, I am sure that he will find that there were good reasons for that joint decision.

§ Mr. Skinner
Not good enough.

§ Mr. Shore
My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is a great expert on Birmingham, as he is on other matters.

§ Mr. Skinner
I am an expert on marginal seats.

§ Mr. Shore
And on safe seats. On the question of consultation raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Litterick), we are trying to get all the committees to develop thought-out procedures for consulting the people in the areas concerned.

§ Mr. Arthur Jones
Does the right hon. Gentleman see partnership agreements as an alternative to development corporations, bearing in mind the difficulty of development corporations perhaps not being acceptable to local authorities? Does he see a more appropriate relationship between central and local government, through partnership committees, than we have had hitherto?

§ Mr. Shore
To some extent, yes. The circumstances in the already settled and built-up local authority areas are very different from those in the green field site areas. Not all new towns are wholly green field areas, but in the inner city areas where there is strongly established local government already and a substantial community living there, something other than the new town type of corporation is needed. The partnership committee brings local government and central Government together in a way that no other device has succeeded in doing.