HC Deb 28 June 1982 vol 26 cc724-32

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Mather.]

11.45 pm
Mr. Raymond Ellis (Derbyshire, North-East)

What has just happened in the House is an excellent example of the way in which Derbyshire has been treated in its effort to retain its intermediate status.

I learnt with some satisfaction that I had been given today's Adjournment debate because I thought that at long last the Government would be compelled to listen to Derbyshire's case for its retention of intermediate status, and that possibly they could be persuaded to meet a properly organised deputation, which they have not yet done, before a final decision was made.

You can imagine my feelings this afternoon, Mr. Deputy Speaker, when I discovered that I had been given the opportunity to put the case only after the case had been pre-judged; only after the verdict had been declared.

It will come as a surprise to all hon. Members to hear that all along the line the Government have refused to listen to any properly organised representation of Derbyshire's case, Only last week, David Bookbinder, the leader of the Derbyshire council, said to me that surely the Government have a duty to at least acknowledge Derbyshire's existence.

It seems that the Government do not have that duty. It would also seem that the Government do not accept the duty to acknowledge the existence of the massive numbers of hon. Members who represent Derbyshire either.

Other areas have been given ample opportunity to put their case, but Derbyshire has not. On 2 December 1981 Derbyshire county council submitted its case to the Secretary of State, who has just left. That case was rejected out of hand.

Since then the county council has tried to persuade the Under-Secretary to meet a deputation. That request has also been met with persistent point blank refusal. It is because of that point blank refusal to hear the case, and in the light of the Prime Minister's pledge to listen to representations relating to increased unemployment, that my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) and my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), Ilkeston (Mr. Fletcher), Derby, North (Mr. Whitehead) and myself wrote to the Prime Minister asking her to meet us in order to enable her to honour her pledge.

In her reply to me today the right hon. Lady has flatly refused to do so. In view of the wealth of evidence now available to the Department of Industry about Derbyshire, none of which came from any official source in Derbyshire, the Prime Minister said: I feel that a meeting with me at this stage would serve no useful purpose. That, to me, is a blank refusal.

However, the matter is worse than that. In her reply, which I received today after the statement, she informed me that there has been a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State. He has at long last received a deputation. She goes on to tell me that she understands that I have been invited to the deputation. I must inform the Prime Minister that she misunderstands the situation. I have not been invited. It was not until I received her letter today after the statement that I was officially notified that the deputation consisted of a Conservative Minister, a Conservative Member of Parliament and two Conservative opposition members from the minuscule minority on the Derbyshire county council. With that sort of meeting and representation, who can be surprised if my colleagues on the county council decline to touch it with a barge pole?

It should not need humble little me to remind the Government that consultation and/or negotiation with district and county councils should be with the district and county councils and not members of minority groups of their own ilk, chosen as they see fit. In her reply, the Prime Minister attempted to say that I would anyway be able to debate the case tonight. But what is the point of debating the case if this afternoon's statement is final? I shall concentrate on trying to persuade the Government that they have mishandled Derbyshire's case and that they should reconsider it.

I am not so arrogant as to think that the Secretary of State made the statement as a pre-emptive strike to stifle me, but it has at least had that effect. However, our case is cast-iron. I shall briefly outline the points, although some of my colleagues might also wish to speak. However, I would prefer the case to come from the horse's mouth—the elected representatives in Derbyshire.

There has been a phenomenal rise in unemployment in Derbyshire. Unemployment is still rising and it is higher than in many areas that will again be in receipt of intermediate status. The official forecast of the decline in Derbyshire's activity and employment is that it will be catastrophic unless something is done. The situation in Derbyshire will be worse than that in almost any other part of the country. Derbyshire is a responsible county and was induced by intermediate status to put millions and millions of pounds into creating industrial estates and reclaiming land to assist those who came to the county to create work. All that money will go down the drain.

I do not have time to elaborate the case, but it must be heard. It should be heard from the Derbyshire authorities. Derbyshire county council has been disregarded and at least five district councils have been refused the right to be heard.

The third paragraph of the Secretary of State's statement claims that since 1979 "there has been a very substantial increase in employment nationwide" and that that "increase has formed the basis of a large number of representations which the Government have received in respect of many areas from hon. Members, local authorities and others". The right hon. Gentleman admits that he has listened to others, but he has not listened to us. The Government have not listened to Derbyshire and have wilfully refused to do so. The proper procedures have been consistently disregarded. The time-honoured practice of all Governments of parliamentary representation has been discarded.

The way in which the duly elected district councils, the county council and the great mass of Derbyshire Members of Parliament have been ignored amounts to a studied insult not only to us, but to the electorate of Derbyshire. The only way to put right that wrong and to restore the Government's reputation is to exclude Derbyshire from today's decision, to go back to square one, to hear proper representations and to listen to the case. If the Government do that, they will come up with a different answer.

11.53 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover)

rose—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Paul Dean)

Does the hon. Gentleman have the agreement of the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Ellis) to intervene in the Adjournment debate?

Mr. Skinner

I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Ellis) had made it clear that any one of the other hon. Members present might wish to intervene. I shall be as brief as possible.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on having the foresight to apply for an Adjournment debate and on being successful. The Government saw fit to pre-empt the issue on the very date of the Adjournment debate because it was too embarrassing for them.

The Derbyshire county council asked for a meeting with the Secretary of State way back in March. It made successive appeals for a meeting. The Prime Minister has said on many occasions, and once from the Dispatch Box, that she is happy to meet people with unemployment problems. As my hon. Friend said, we received a letter today from the Prime Minister about a meeting held last week to which neither myself nor my hon. Friend, or anybody else of whom I am aware, was invited. We are not supposed to use the unparliamentary term "lying", but it looks a lot like it to me. A letter was sent by the Prime Minister suggesting that we were invited to a meeting. The Under-Secretary of State has sent another letter, confirming that the Prime Minister was wrong, because he reminds us of what took place at the meeting.

The sad fact is that North-East Derbyshire, Bolsover, Chesterfield, and the Amber Valley have suffered tremendously as a result of the threat to withdraw intermediate area status. The Secretary of State decided to take that step soon after the 1979 election. I am told that thousands of acres of land could have been taken up had it not been for the fact that intermediate area status was to be phased out in July 1982.

Intermediate area status was granted in North Derbyshire on two occasions by Labour Governments. In 1968, when the first plans were devised, I came with a deputation from Clay Cross and we managed to persuade the Labour Government to see sense and to grant intermediate area status to certain parts of the area. Later, after abortive attempts under the Tory Government between 1970 and 1974, we made a fresh application to have the Chesterfield travel-to-work area included. That includes part of my constituency. That was granted, again by a Labour Government, after a gap of many years. This Tory Government, hell bent on creating misery and unemployment throughout the land, have steadfastly refused to change their attitude. That is the story of intermediate area status. We recognise that such regional policy is not sufficient to get back to fewer than 1 million people on the scrap heap and the dole, but it helps.

We know what the Tory Government are up to. They refuse to meet the Derbyshire county council. They refuse to meet all the other local authorities and connive with a Tory Member, the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost), in a tinpot meeting held last Tuesday. All the other authorities up and down the land which have made applications to see the Minister have been granted meetings. Meetings have taken place in Lancashire, for instance. Yet, the Government refuse steadfastly to meet the Derbyshire people.

I am pleased to support my hon. Friend today. The Tories are shown up for what they are worth by making the announcement today and refusing to rescue the Derbyshire area from the demise arising from the cancellation of intermediate area status. I join my hon. Friend in calling on the Minister to review the matter and to tell the Secretary of State that he has an obligation.

After intermediate area status had operated for several years, unemployment fell below the national average. The system worked to some degree. Chesterfield, Bolsover, North-East Derbyshire and Amber Valley now have unemployment levels well above the national average. That is the fact that was told to us by the representatives of the local authorities which met Labour Members a few weeks ago. I am happy to support my hon. Friend in his application for another review for the Derbyshire area.

11.59 pm
The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. John MacGregor)

I congratulate the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Ellis) on securing an Adjournment debate. I do not know whether to congratulate or sympathise with him on the fact that he secured a debate on the day of the announcement about assisted area status. I assure him that it was not an attempt to pre-empt his position or the debate tonight, and I do not believe that he expected that to be the case. However, it gives him the opportunity, at greater length than hon. Members this afternoon who could raise only single questions, to put forward his points about assisted area status in some travel-to-work areas in Derbyshire. It also gives me the opportunity to explain the position in detail in a way that was not possible earlier today. The hon. Gentleman and the House know what the meat of my reply will be.

The hon. Gentleman referred to his disappointment at hearing that no part of Derbyshire will retain assisted area status. Before I turn to the details of the area and why the application was not accepted, I should spend a few moments on two wider aspects of the subject. The first is the one on which the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) concentrated rather than pressing the merits of the two travel-to-work areas. They said that the Government had not listened to Derbyshire's case. I assure him that I have examined that case carefully on each occasion. It was put in detail in documents in November 1981 and June 1982. I have both documents here. The hon. Gentleman said that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred this afternoon to the fact that we had received many representations. I assure him that many of them were written. They went into considerable detail, and by no means did all the representations lead to deputations being seen by either me or my hon. Friends.

Mr. Skinner

Some did.

Mr. MacGregor

Of course some did, because there are rather less clear-cut cases, but I shall come to the reasons in a moment.

Mr. Skinner

Will the Minister confirm that he has met representatives from Tory constituencies and, as outlined in the proposals described today, no Labour constituency has had its intermediate area status continued?

Mr. MacGregor

As so often, the hon. Gentleman is wrong on both counts. In view of that, I shall not allow him to intervene again. We received deputations from many Labour Members. The change of status in travel-to-work areas has affected Labour, Liberal and Conservative constituencies.

I assure the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East that there is no shortage of evidence available about the position in Derbyshire. As he said, in December 1981 the clerk and chief executive of the county council wrote to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State presenting evidence why, in the council's view, those parts of the county that had assisted area status—the Alfreton and Chesterfield travel-to-work areas, upon which the representations concentrated—should not lose it as planned. I considered the submission carefully, but found it impossible to justify retention of assisted area status, as I shall explain. That decision was conveyed to the chief executive towards the end of December.

The council made further representations in March and April, both of which I considered carefully, but I could find no justification for reversing the decision The position was so clear-cut that at that time I saw no point in a deputation coming all the way to London, at the taxpayers' and ratepayers' expense, to press the representations. I have received many deputations, but I have had to turn some down. There is a limit to the number of hours in a day. Where the evidence was clear and could be dealt with in written submissions, it was unnecessary to ask people to make oral representations. The line had to be drawn somewhere.

Nevertheless, earlier this month, in response to an approach by one of my hon. Friends representing another Derbyshire constituency, I agreed to meet a deputation representing the county council.

I agreed because it was clear that, despite ail our correspondence there was still a strong desire for a meeting from Derbyshire. That had to be arranged at fairly short notice, because I was anxious to see those people before the final decisions were taken. Simultaneously, a number of other Derbyshire Members had asked the Prime Minister to receive a deputation. It was not possible for her to do so, but I agreed. We tried hard to contact as many Opposition Members as possible in the short time available.

Mr. Skinner

rose—

Mr. MacGregor

I do not want to make too much of this matter as I want to go on to the merits of the case, which is the guts of the matter, after all.

We invited the leader of the council and the chief executive, who agreed to come, but for some reason, which was not clear to me, they withdrew at the last minute. That was why it was a smaller deputation than expected.

Mr. Eric G. Varley (Chesterfield)

Let us be plain about this matter. I know that the Minister does not want to mislead the House, but he said on previous occasions that he saw no useful purpose in meeting a deputation from the county council. When the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) arranged the deputation to which the Minister has just referred, I was not contacted by the Department, nor were any of my hon. Friends. I was stopped by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East in the Corridor. He invited me to take part in such a deputation. That is not the way to arrange a deputation. That it is not the way to go about serious consideration of the retention of intermediate area status. The Minister should put the facts absolutely straight. He refused to see a deputation and the deputation was accepted only on the basis of the Conservative political network.

Mr. MacGregor

I want to be absolutely fair, because the right hon. Gentleman is always fair. I had refused to see a deputation because I thought the case was clear cut. It was because the feeling expressed to me was still strong in Derbyshire that at the last minute I agreed to see a deputation. It was very much at the last minute because I knew that the statement would be made shortly in the House. My diary was extremely crowded. We bent over backwards to try to fit in the meeting. All the arrangements had to be made on the telephone—all were made orally. Whether it was my office or my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost) who mentioned the meeting to the right hon. Gentleman, I was assured that he had been contacted. I agree that it was difficult, because the arrangements were made at the last moment, but we went out of our way to try to meet the deputation.

I shall repeat this point because it is important. We looked with extreme care at the whole of Derbyshire's case as it was represented. I now turn to it because the substance of the representations is more important than the mechanics.

I shall underline some of the things that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier today in announcing the outcome of the Government's review of those areas that were special development or development areas in 1979 and are to become non-assisted on 1 August, having thus gone down by two or three stages. My right hon. Friend repeated the Government's determination to continue with an effective regional industrial policy that concentrates the assistance that the country can afford on the areas in greatest need—those with the worst problems of long-standing unemployment and industrial decline.

That is a difficult area to research conclusively, but all the evidence, such as it is, is that regional policies that concentrate on the areas of greatest need are the most effective. That is why we have continued with the policy of reducing the assisted areas from 44 per cent. of the working population in 1979 to 27 per cent., as it will be with the changes announced today.

My right hon. Friend told the House that in carrying out the review to which we were formally committed we had taken the opportunity to look more widely and had identified a few more adjustments to the assisted areas map which developments since the 1979 review had made appropriate. We did not remove any others from assisted area status additional to those in 1979. My right hon. Friend explained the reason today. Considerable notice would have had to be given to do so, not least because of the importance of maintaining some stability and continuity in regional policy. It did not seem to us that this was the occasion to put out of assisted area status more areas that were not expecting it, given that that would also mean a further long delay.

In carrying out this review we were of course guided by the principles that we have followed since we came into office. We have taken travel-to-work areas as the basic building blocks of the assisted areas because they are the smallest areas for which a valid measurement of the need for jobs can be produced. In doing so we have continued the practice followed by successive Governments. In the Adjournment debate of 18 May I was able to spell that aspect out more.

We have applied the criteria that the Industry Act requires all Secretaries of State to observe in designating assisted areas. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield will know them well. They are that all the circumstances, actual and expected, including the state of employment and unemployment, population changes, migration and the objectives of regional policies". In doing so, we must take into account, as hon. Members know, a number of factors. Unemployment is the most obvious, but we must also assess the industrial structure of an area together with its communications with markets and sources of supply. We must examine existing levels of unemployment, except in areas such as the major steel closure areas, where it is clear that there has been a substantial change in their structure and there is evidence of permanent long-term decline, relative to other parts of the country. We do not examine what the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East described as official forecasts of unemployment. I have examined unemployment level changes in travel-to-work areas during the past 18 months. What people in the area often believe to be the future change because of what they believe to be in the pipeline is frequently not the case in practice. That is why one considers the existing state rather than listens to the estimates of what might happen in the future.

How does Derbyshire in general, and the travel-to-work-areas that are becoming non-assisted, measure up to this type of analysis? Clearly, from the fact that we have decided that Alfreton and Chesterfield should not remain assisted areas, they do not emerge from the comparisons with the rest of the country as being among the worst affected areas. Unemployment rates are not the be-all and end-all of the exercise, as I have already said, but they are an important element. If the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) examines the figures, he will find that not all of the travel-to-work areas are above the national average in that respect. During 1981 the average rates for seven of the 12 travel-to-work-areas wholly or partly within the county were at or below the national average, and they still are on the May figures. Of the remainder, only Alfreton and Chesterfield can be considered seriously. In May, the average for such areas was 14.3 per cent., Alfreton was 13.9 per cent. and Chesterfield—the other area at issue—was 12.4 per cent., which was in fact one-tenth of a percentage point above the national rate.

I do not pretend that unemployment rates around the present levels are acceptable. Nobody is more determined than this Government to get unemployment down by our wider economic policies. What is significant about unemployment rates is their comparative levels. On this basis Derbyshire, even Alfreton and Chesterfield, is not significantly disadvantaged compared with the seriously affected areas—the 27 per cent. or so of the working population which is to remain in assisted areas. If unemployment alone does not justify assisted area status, what else might? It cannot convincingly be argued that either area in question displays the kind of heavy dependence on steeply declining sectors of industry that characterises many of the assisted areas. Nor can they be described as isolated from markets and suppliers, with poor communications. It is literally a central part of Britain with good communication connections to other industrialised areas all round.

Even if we accepted that Alfreton and Chesterfield should remain assisted areas, would that necessarily be entirely to their advantage? Altogether 84 travel-to-workareas representing around 17 per cent. of the working population of Great Britain are to become non-assisted on 1 August. Many of them have unemployment rates as high as—often much higher than—Alfreton and Chesterfield. If these two areas retain their status, what about the other 82?

Non-assisted areas, such as many in the West Midlands which face similar industrial problems and have similar communications, have much higher rates of unemployment than the two with which we are dealing. If we granted assisted area status to Alfreton and Chesterfield, many other areas would claim that they should remain assisted. If they do, the domino effect could be so powerful that it would cut the ground from under the feet of the worst affected areas, depriving them of a good part of the benefits which greater selectivity is intended to bring. Even more significantly, it would also ensure that assisted area status was far less helpful even to Alfreton and Chesterfield than it might be in theory, because there was so much more competition for industrial investment—not to mention the fact that the rest of Derbyshire would also remain at a comparative disadvantage.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at fourteen minutes past Twelve o'clock.