Cities (Process and Criteria for Designation) (Hansard, 2 June 1998)

§ Jane Griffiths (Reading, East)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to establish a process and criteria for places to be designated as cities; and for connected purposes. I thank the House for giving me this opportunity. The granting of city status to a town is a rare mark of honour, which is bestowed by the sovereign, and has not been granted often. This century, city status has been granted to Cambridge, Lancaster, Plymouth, Salford, Derby, Leicester, Portsmouth, Southampton, Swansea, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland. Other towns, including Wolverhampton, Croydon, Northampton and Stockport, have expressed interest.

The importance of city status derives at least partly from the fact that it is granted by the monarch. However, there are many misconceptions about what is required in order for a town to become a city. Many people believe that a city must have a cathedral. Not so. Many believe that a city must have a university. Not so; with the proliferation of universities in recent years, that is a less meaningful criterion. For example, Winchester is a city and believes that it was ideally suited for the granting of such status in view of its long history. I suggest that all towns and places have long histories. I suggest also that the concept of a city is deep-rooted both in our collective psyche and in our understanding of democracy in the truest sense of the word.

The city state originated in ancient Greece. In modern Greece, the word "polis"—for city—is officially accorded to significant municipalities. Almost every country has a clear process and criteria for identifying a city.

In China, centuries of bureaucracy and civil service practice have arrived at highly detailed and inflexible criteria, including, for example, that the non-agricultural population of the town must exceed 120,000, of whom no fewer than 80,000 must be engaged in non-agricultural industries. By contrast, in the United States the situation is different in each state, and a state may label an area a city regardless of population size. Thus, Spring City, Tennessee, with an approximate population of 2,000, and New York, with an approximate population of 8 million, are legally cities.

I was especially impressed by how matters are conducted in Peru, where detailed criteria include population growth and the existence of educational institutions and hospitals. In Japan, rather differently, a city must have a population of 50,000 or more, and its inhabitants must be engaged in commercial or industrial pursuits. Thus, Tokyo contains several cities.

Many other countries have also considered the matter publicly, and have established criteria and processes for a town to become a city—I am indebted to their embassies for the information that they have supplied.

170 All that is educational, and should give us pause for thought. The Government are committed to openness and clarity of decision making, and to inclusiveness and a sense of pride in, and belonging to, our communities, but the process by which a place may be designated a city remains shrouded in mystery.

City status confers a tremendous sense of pride on a community and is attractive to business and to investment, but it should not be conferred willy-nilly. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary would determine clear criteria and a transparent process by which a town would become a city. I shall not prejudge what those criteria and that process should be, but I shall suggest what some of the criteria might be: a place to which people travel to work, to shop, to be educated and to receive medical treatment and which is rich in history and culture—in short, a place very much like Reading, which I have the honour to represent.

Reading was settled in Saxon times because it was on the confluence of two great rivers, the Thames and the Kennet. The railways and then the roads came. More people commute into Reading than out of it, despite its closeness to London, and it is surpassed only by London and by Birmingham as a place where major companies locate their headquarters. Reading has a great university and a great abbey, where Parliament sat in former times when this place was plague-ridden or otherwise unattractive. King Henry I is buried in Reading. Next to Reading abbey is Reading gaol, which was made famous in verse by one of its most famous, but least willing, inhabitants, the great genius, Oscar Wilde. Musical notation was invented and photography pioneered in Reading, and I should mention the Reading rock and Womad festivals.

To become a city, a town should attract people, investment and institutions on economic, cultural and geographical grounds. If those criteria were known to all and if a clear process were established by which any place could apply to the Government to be judged against the criteria, with a recommendation made to Her Majesty accordingly, we as a nation could approach the new millennium with a sense of pride in, and belonging to, the places in which we live.