HC Deb 25 July 1979 vol 971 cc589-90
11. Mr. Hooley

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment what reductions in the inner cities programme are envisaged for 1980–81; and how these will affect Sheffield.

Mr. Heseltine

The Government are discussing inner city policy with the local authorities principally concerned. Public expenditure programmes are also being carefully reviewed. Announcements about future policy, and the size of the urban programme, will be made in due course.

Mr. Hooley

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the inner cities programme has important social and economic consequences to do with the possibility of regenerating small-scale industry in the centres of some of our industrial cities? In the light of this, would it not be the height of stupidity to cut back this programme at a time when it is just getting under way?

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Member will know that in our tax changes in the Budget, in our speeding up of land disposal and in our speeding up of planning proposals, we have already moved very decisively to help the small sector of industry. I totally agree with the philosophy that he has expounded.

Mr. Steen

When the Minister is considering the inner cities programme, will he remember that most people living in the large towns and cities no longer live in the inner city but in the outer city? Many of them in the large towns live on large council estates. What steps will he take to help the people living in these vast council estates, rather than the few people left in the inner areas?

Mr. Heseltine

There are two immediate proposals to help council tenants and encourage them to stay. The first is the right for tenants to buy their own homes. One of the principal reasons they leave council estates is to buy their own homes on the fringes of cities. The second proposal is to give those who remain a charter to set out their rights and encourage them to become more involved in the area. The fact of the matter is that our inner cities have, over too wide an area, become unattractive places for people to live in and unattractive places for people to invest in. Until we recognise those two harsh facts, we shall not begin to have policies for restoring the situation.

Mr. John Grant

As the Minister has already confessed this afternoon that the Government have succumbed to the blandishments and pressures from Tory shires to give them a bigger share of resources at the expense of the hard-pressed inner city areas, has he not sounded the death knell of inner city policy?

Does the Secretary of State also recognise that if the Government go ahead with these savage cuts in central Government support for the inner city areas, and at the same time there are high interest rates and rising inflation, areas such as Islington will be in a desperate situation, unable to fulfil their social obligations? Does he agree that that would be a direct consequence of Conservative Government action?

Mr. Heseltine

Nobody has announced any reduction in the urban programme for next year.

Mr. John Grant

The inner cities will lose £700,000.

Mr. Heseltine

The figures that we have announced for the current year, to which the hon. Gentleman is referring, amounted to 4 per cent. of an increasing programme and are largely accounted for by under-spend, in any case.