§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lightbown.]
§ 12.3 am
§ Mr. David Hinchliffe (Wakefield)I have lost count of the number of occasions on which my three hon. Friends and I who represent the four Wakefield district constituencies have secured Adjournment debates to express our concern about the impact of Government economic and industrial policy on employment in our area. Our constituents in the Wakefield, Dewsbury, Castleford and Pontefract travel-to-work areas have seen during the 1980s and the early 1990s the systematic destruction of what has for generations been the economic base of the area—the coal industry. In our localities, we have experienced the wiping out of traditional male employment on an unprecedented scale. One needs to live in the area, as I and my three hon. Friends do, fully to understand the human implications of the changes.
My purpose in securing tonight's debate is further to press the Government to face their responsibilities in ensuring that our constituents in Wakefield can look forward to much better employment prospects than is, frankly, the case at present. It is to argue that the same Government who led the way in destroying the prospects of so many in our area have a duty to recognise the difficulties that the Wakefield district faces and ensure that the two travel-to-work areas involved are accorded assisted area status as a matter of urgency.
The Minister will say that our area, like many others, has been a victim of a wide recession, whether it be the last recession or the previous one over which the Government presided. I have spent considerable time in my constituency speaking to businesses involved in a wide range of activities. I am consistently told that the lack of any sort of economic or industrial strategy causes them the most difficulty. I have lost track of the number of times that managers in what is left of the mining engineering sector—people who are often politically sympathetic to the Government—have decried the complete absence of any form of energy policy.
Less than a fortnight ago, I was told by one local company with an interest in rail freight that it knew that the Government intended to privatise the railways. But what was their wider strategy for transport? People who are intimately involved in the industry simply could not detect one. The lack of any overall industrial strategy has meant that local companies producing for the export market have felt undermined by the Government. I have pressed this point on several occasions at Trade and Industry questions.
Producers of leading edge mining engineering technology with huge export potential find that the process of marketing their products is hampered by a British Government destroying the main marketing point—British pits—while the wider economic consequences are obvious from the balance of trade. In Wakefield, we pick up the pieces at the local level in terms of the impact on jobs and family prosperity.
The Minister is fully aware of the job losses that have occurred in the Wakefield district recently because of the coal closure programme. My constituency has no pits left and the decline of coal has had a huge impact on related industries such as engineering. We have seen major 895 closures such as British Ropes, Wooltex and Gullick Pitcraft, and companies such as British Jeffery Diamond have dramatically reduced their work forces. Numerous smaller producers for the coal industry have also shed jobs.
There must be serious doubts about the prospects of the remaining companies in the light of the implications of the DTI White Paper on the coal industry. The proposed closure shortly of Sharlston colliery, with a direct loss of nearly 700 more mining jobs, will add further to this spiral of decline. Undoubtedly, my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) will refer to that closure if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) will probably detail the impact of the closure of Grimethorpe colliery on the Wakefield area if he gets an opportunity to speak in this debate.
Their comments will reinforce representations made by Wakefield metropolitan district council to the Department of Trade and Industry about the changes that have occurred in Wakefield since the local authority made its original submissions for consideration during the review of assisted area status. In a letter dated 7 April 1992 to the Department, the leader of the local authority estimated that, with the closure of Sharlston and Grimethorpe, together with job losses at Kellingley, Prince of Wales and Frickley collieries, no fewer than 1,250 miners resident in Wakefield have subsequently lost their jobs.
It will be fairly obvious to the Minister that the marked decline in traditionally male employment, such as mining and engineering, has meant that women have increasingly become the breadwinners in many local families. But particularly alarming in recent weeks has been the announcement of proposals to close two major companies in Wakefield which employ many women in their work forces.
The announcement of the closure of Lofthouse Foods in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton was made on 23 April with a loss of about 1,300 jobs. A fortnight later, on 7 May, it was announced that the Lyons Bakeries plant in my constituency was to close, with the loss of about 500 jobs. Such closures would have a devastating effect on any area, but against a background of thousands of recent job losses in the coal and engineering industries, there is now extreme concern in Wakefield about the economic and social implications of the employment situation.
The local authority is to be commended on its efforts to attract industry to the district. It has had some notable successes with Coca-Cola, Schweppes, Pioneer and others, but it recognises that, despite the arrival in Wakefield of several new companies, we are continuing to experience an alarming decline in employment opportunities.
The Wakefield Europort project has been seen by the Wakefield metropolitan district council as a basis for the generation of about 6,500 new jobs in the district. As the Minister will be aware, public funding is being sought from both EC and United Kingdom sources as a catalyst for the development of the project. The project site is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse), who has worked long and hard to secure its completion.
The proposed Europort consists of a terminal, one of nine Euroterminals in the United Kingdom, and a one-stop European freight centre for businesses in the Yorkshire and Humberside region. The promoters of the 896 scheme believe that better transport links to the continent will help to encourage foreign investment. The proximity of the site to the motorway network will ensure minimal transhipment problems and easy access by road to other parts of the region. The Europort will enhance export opportunities for regional firms by providing greater speed and efficiency of distribution. It will encourage locally based firms to reinvest in the region in the knowledge that European markets are easily accessible.
Port Wakefield is a public-private sector development which would clearly bring significant benefit to the whole region, as well as to the immediate Wakefield district. However, in view of the current economic climate, there is serious anxiety that this vital project may not proceed. Several grant sources—European regional development fund and derelict land grant—have been explored jointly with the Department of the Environment to assist in the implementation of the project. It is hoped that the grants will be forthcoming.
However, the factor that would be of most benefit would be the awarding of assisted areas status to the Castleford and Pontefract travel-to-work area. As well as offering incentives to inward investors, designation as an intermediate development area would assist with infrastructure elements of the scheme.
My hon. Friends and I who represent the Wakefield constituencies have felt aggrieved for several years that the district's problems have not received proper Government recognition. The unemployment statistics have consistently shown Wakefield to have levels of unemployment well above that in areas which receive assistance.
I mentioned at the beginning of my speech the human implications of Wakefield's employment problems. As my hon. Friends and I come from and live in the Wakefield district, many of the statistics relate to people known to us personally—neighbours, friends and sometimes relatives. I cannot emphasise too strongly the profound anger that I feel meeting every day when I am at home men of my age and younger whose jobs have disappeared and who believe, perhaps rightly, that they have little prospect of getting back into regular employment. The Government have a duty to assist such men to regain their self-respect and return to regular work.
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise these points tonight. I hope that the Minister will recognise the strength of Wakefield's case.
§ Mr. William O'Brien (Normanton)I join my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) in emphasising the need for assistance to be given to the Wakefield area in total. That assistance is made more necessary because in the past four weeks it has become clear that 2,000 jobs will be lost in my constituency. The Sharlston colliery will close with the loss of 700 jobs, and Lofthouse Foods will close shortly, with the loss of 1,300 jobs. These are just two examples of the devastation that my constituency is suffering. In addition to those 2,000 jobs, there are a further 2,000 jobs in the location of the two major factories I have mentioned that will be lost.
That is the significance of this appeal tonight for some assistance to be given to the Wakefield area.
I am disappointed that the Minister for Industry is not present. It was important that he be here, because it was he who, on 30 October last year, sent a letter to the 897 Opposition Front-Bench spokesman on industry saying that RECHAR money would not be available to mining areas. RECHAR money would have meant that £140 million could have been available for the development of mining areas. It is therefore disappointing that the Minister is not here to say why we have not had that money over the past three years.
The allocation was for the three years up to 1993. We feel that we have been betrayed, because money that should have been available to help the development of the mining areas, in particular the Wakefield and district area, has been denied to us. If the Minister were here, he would have to explain why we were not allowed to have our money.
I want to re-emphasise the need for some assistance to the area. We have been pleading for assisted area status. A deputation to meet the Minister, including members of the local authority and the four Members for the Wakefield area, made clear in November last year the need for assisted area status to help us over the unemployment problem that was looming then and has since become worse because of the closure of Lofthouse Foods, which was unannounced and a surprise to everyone in the area.
I put it to the Minister that it is important that some assistance be given by way of assisted area status to the Wakefield area. I join my colleagues in asking that there be no further delay. The information is now available; the 1991 census figures are there. The question of assisted area status was first brought forward in June 1990, and the time has come for decisions to be made. I hope that Wakefield will be included in those decisions and will rejoin the map of areas enjoying assisted area status.
§ Mr. Derek Enright (Hemsworth)My hon. Friends have put the case admirably for assisted area status, and I will point out briefly some of the reasons why, in Hemsworth constituency particularly, we need that.
I will start by detailing the unemployment levels in the various wards: ward 11, 14 per cent.; ward 12, 15.1 per cent.; ward 18, 11.5 per cent.—that is in Ackworth, where it is principally professional people now going out of employment; ward 19, 17 per cent.; and ward 20, 20.3 per cent.
Those are appalling figures, but they existed before the closure of Sharlston and Grimethorpe. In the villages of Havercroft, South Heindley and Ryhill now, male unemployment is above 40 per cent. There are no official statistics, but unofficially, that is the best practical estimate we can make. Hemsworth is a microcosm of what has happened in the Wakefield area.
A mere 10 years ago, Hemsworth had more pits than any other constituency in the entire United Kingdom, including Scotland and Wales. Today it has one, Frickley, which is being rapidly run down and currently under threat in spite of the promises of the President of the Board of Trade.
As the Minister knows, these figures underestimate the real unemployment figure. I am not trying to make a political point; the Minister knows that some of the miners who are out of work, although they want to work, are not included in the statistics. That creates a serious social situation, particularly since the few jobs that exist in my 898 constituency are extremely poorly paid. More than 50 per cent. of the jobs that were available were paying under £3 per hour.
No one can envisage living on £120 a week. It is appalling. We are being left with more cheap jobs because firms such as Thyssen and Felkirk Engineers, which are dependent on supplying the mining industry, are having to run down.
British Coal Enterprise Ltd. is our great hope, but, in our experience, it comes in, stays for six weeks and quietly folds up its tent and goes out into the night. It has remarkably little impact upon employment.
The number of free school meals in the primary schools in my constituency is going up rapidly, and in more than five of them the figure is over 50 per cent. That is an alarming statistic.
The derelict land is totally unsuitable for new industry. We are left with dereliction and the threat of opencast mining in our only piece of open countryside, Wintersett. As the local authority, quite understandably, has not been able to keep up with repairs, the housing conditions are appalling.
I invite the Minister to Come to the Scotch estate, which is an example of a dilapidated estate which has basically good housing but which would be improved enormously by assisted area status. It would give us the opportunity to uplift socially and allow people to live in good conditions.
In conclusion, assisted area status would stop the downward spiral, and I beseech the Minister to see to it that we get it.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs (Mr. Neil Hamilton)I congratulate the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) on initiating the debate, and the hon. Members for Normanton (Mr. O'Brien) and for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) on their contributions. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Normanton feels that I am an inadequate substitute for my right hon. Friend the Minister for Industry, but I am a northern Member of Parliament, and as a Minister in the Department I am collectively responsible for the decisions we take, so I hope that my answers to the points that have been made in the debate will have equal authority.
I am also grateful to the hon. Member for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) for being here this evening to give me moral support as a Member for the other side of the Pennines where my constituency is situated. He came to see me before Christmas with a delegation from his own local authority to plead the case for assisted area status, and he did it extremely eloquently.
I am fully aware of the strength of feeling that exists in Wakefield and the importance that is attached to the application for assisted area status. The case has been made forcibly tonight and in written submissions, and at a meeting with my noble Friend Baroness Denton of Wakefield on 4 November last, when a delegation from Wakefield, including the local Members, made a clear presentation of all the key issues.
As hon. Members know, the current review of the assisted areas map was announced last June, and the criteria on which the review is based were set out in a consultation document. We invited interested parties to submit their views. During the consultation period, over 1,500 written representations have been received. My 899 ministerial colleagues and I at the Department of Trade and Industry have met more than 50 delegations, in addition to delegations that have been seen by Ministers at the Scottish Office and Welsh Office. So the needs and circumstances of all areas have been carefully considered in the review.
As part of that process, we have continued to monitor the economic situation in Wakefield, and the results of the review will be announced as soon as possible, following the necessary clearance by the European Commission. As the House will understand, I cannot anticipate those decisions tonight, so I am afraid that I am not in a position to give any advance indication about whether Wakefield will succeed in obtaining assisted area status.
I fully appreciate the difficulties encountered by businesses in Wakefield, as the hon. Gentleman pointed out, in the last two to three years. No region or sub-region—indeed, no industrialised nation—has been insulated from recessionary pressures, regardless of the political complexion of the Governments concerned. These have led to some painful rationalisations and restructuring across all business sectors.
The recession has lasted longer than expected, but I believe that all the ingredients for recovery are now in place—low inflation, lower interest rates, a competitive exchange rate, rising productivity and slower wage growth. So although we have undoubtedly been through a bruising period, I believe that the economic prospects, for Wakefield in particular, are better. They cannot be viewed in isolation from the prospects of the United Kingdom economy as a whole, and there are clear signs of a resumption in economic growth suggesting a sustainable recovery this year.
For example, total output has been rising for nearly a year and non-oil output rose by 0.5 per cent. in the first quarter of 1993; manufacturing output is 2 per cent. higher in the first quarter than in 1992; retail sales are at a record level in the three months to April, up 3.25 per cent. on a year earlier; productivity and exports are at record levels and are growing strongly; seasonally adjusted unemploy-ment is down for the third consecutive month in April; and consumers and business men are now much more optimistic about the prospects for the economy. So, although I would not seek to disguise the scale of the problem, there are causes for optimism.
The final point I cited—about the growth in economic optimism—is very much supported by the latest business surveys conducted in West Yorkshire. The regional CBI, the Leeds chamber and the mid-Yorkshire chamber all report strengthening business confidence and increased expectations of gradual and sustainable growth.
The speed and impact will inevitably vary across sectors and between areas, but it is encouraging that there are definite signs of increasing investment, particularly in the manufacturing sector. Investment intentions among Yorkshire and Humberside companies are among the strongest in the United Kingdom, according to the most recent CBI survey.
The recent decrease in regional unemployment is particularly welcome, but it is probably too soon to be absolutely sure of a clear downward trend, and there are distressing cases such as those raised by, in particular, the hon. Member for Normanton, of closures that have been announced recently.
But the Yorkshire and Humberside seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment of 10.5 per cent. in April is down 900 0.2 per cent. on January 1993 and is now only 0.1 per cent. above the national average compared with 0.3 per cent. a year ago. I agree that unemployment is still too high, and we look forward to a sustained fall. In Wakefield, the unemployment rate in April fell for the third consecutive month, and that is a welcome sign.
§ Mr. William O'Brienrose—
§ Mr. HamiltonI will not give way. I have only a few minutes in which to reply—
§ Mr. O'Brienrose—
§ Mr. HamiltonNo, I will not give way. There were three speeches in the debate and only a few minutes remain, and I am anxious to give as full a response as I can.
The hon. Gentleman has referred to recent job losses in Wakefield, including the British Coal redundancies at Kellingley and Sharlston and the closures at Northern Foods and Lyons Bakeries. I can assure him that these have been taken into consideration as part of the assisted area map review process.
I recognise that AA status is important to Wakefield, but it would be misleading to suggest that its benefits would be the only source of Government assistance. That is plainly not the case. In response to British Coal redundancies at Sharlston and Kellingley we have already introduced the following local package of measures as part of an overall national regeneration programme totalling £200 million. First, the DTI will extend the regional investment grants to 12 wards in Wakefield and Castleford. This was announced on 13 May and will encourage small firms employing fewer than 25 people to invest in new plant and equipment.
This represents an important boost to the small business sector in Wakefield and complements support for new product development under the related regional innovation grant scheme which was extended to Wakefield in May 1992.
English Estates has prepared a £4 million programme of industrial and commercial development for Wakefield. The Wakefield TEC and the Employment Service will receive an additional £1.87 million in respect of Sharlston and £1.3 million for Kellingley, shared with the North Yorkshire TEC, for a combination of training and business support. In addition, Wakefield council has been invited to bid to the Department of the Environment-administered coalfield areas fund for projects designed to alleviate problems caused by the Sharlston closure.
The hon. Gentleman referred also to the Port Wakefield project, involving AMEC and a potential 7,000 new jobs as part of a rail freight terminal development. Government Departments are currently in discussion with AMEC over the details of the scheme and the possibilities for public financial sector support.
These measures are additional to the significant amount of public investment being made in Wakefield through both United Kingdom Government and European mechanisms. For example, since 1990–91 Wakefield council has reclaimed almost 200 acres of derelict land, largely former colliery sites, as part of a 1,500 acre programme, and has received £3.5 million in grant from the Department of the Environment. Over £6 million business support funding under existing European programmes, including RECHAR, has been offered, largely utilising effective local partnerships of regeneration 901 agencies. Examples include a small business equity fund through British Coal Enterprise, the Ferrybridge resource centre and the Wakefield business and technical information centre. There has also been over £10 million infrastructure support under the mid-Yorkshire opera-tional programme in the last two financial years. Wakefield TEC annual training and enterprise budgets are in excess of £12 million a year.
I believe that these measures will provide a significant contribution to the future prosperity of Wakefield, whether or not the district is successful in obtaining assisted area status. That alone cannot be a panacea for all the district's problems, which will need to be tackled on a wider front through a continuing and extended partnership of all the relevant regeneration agencies, including the DTI, other Government Departments, the local authority, the TEC, and the private sector.
902 We do not underestimate the current difficulties facing coalfield areas like Wakefield. That is why the £200 million regeneration package was devised and the assisted area map review has been delayed to take account of the coal review. I know that hon. Members would like a decision as soon as possible, and as soon as the EC aspects of the decision have been cleared, we will announce it at the earliest possible opportunity.
We must be careful not to over-emphasise these current economic problems, to the detriment of the area. Wakefield has a number of significant strengths which will be crucial to its continuing diversification and regeneration and, in particular, it enjoys an excellent location alongside the M62/M1 motorway network, first class communications and a loyal and industrious work force. That is why it has already been successful in attracting several significant inward investment projects, including Pioneer and Coca-Cola, and a host of other smaller projects.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at twenty-seven minutes to One o'clock.