HL Deb 11 December 1985 vol 469 cc319-35

10.36 p.m.

Lord Alport rose to ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will appoint a Secretary of State for the North, pari passu with the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with special responsibility for representing in the Cabinet the need, in the interests of national unity, to promote the industrial regeneration and social progress of the Northern counties of England.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I rise to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper. I regret that this debate has started so late at night, particularly because it deprives me of the support of the noble Lord, Lord Banks, and the noble Lord, Lord Rhodes. But I am encouraged by the fact that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield has chosen this occasion to make his maiden speech. I will not have the opportunity, I am afraid, of congratulating him publicly on it when he sits down, but I know that we will be very interested to hear his views and experience of this sort of subject and the problems of the North. He will have the satisfaction, at any rate, of knowing that he has made his maiden speech later at night in your Lordships' House than any maiden speech has been made, certainly since I have been here in the last 25 years and probably, I think in this century.

If any of your Lordships saw County Councillor Ellatson's "Comment" on Channel 4 a fortnight or so ago, or have recently read the press in the North or studied the pamphlet of the honourable Member for Manchester, Withington, you will recognise that my Question reflects a growing volume of opinion in the North of England, born of desperation. I speak, of course, as an Essex Peer living in a part of the South-East which has had everything going for it during the last 20 years. Perhaps it is no bad thing that the initiative which this Question represents should come from someone in your Lordships' House who has no local axe to grind and no special interest to represent.

As I have indicated on more than one occasion, I have been deeply concerned at the increasing alienation of the North from the South of England and at the political and social consequences which this must have for the unity of the nation. It has generated a sense of bitterness and despair, which is playing into the hands of those who seek, by unconstitutional and even revolutionary means, to undermine and destroy our free and democratic institutions. It is engendering a sense of unfairness—and fairness is the criterion by which all political leaders and their parties are ultimately judged.

I think that my own strong feelings spring from the recollection of one dark winter's evening in Sheffield in 1937. England had begun to recover from the shock of the crisis of 1931. Unemployment was still high. We were living not under the shadow of the nuclear bomb but, even for someone like myself in his middle 20s, the certainty of a second European war. As a southerner, knowing little of England beyond the Home Counties, the prospects were anxious and daunting and I wondered how, and if, England would survive. I remember as I walked along the dreary, rain- soaked Sheffield streets—returning no doubt from some political meeting—seeing behind the closed steelyard gates the glare and smoke of the great furnaces and hearing the clamour and rhythm of the machinery.

It made an unforgettable impression—an impression of power. It brought home to me, a callow visitor from the South, that it was there, in the heartland of the North, with its great industries of shipbuilding, coal mining, steel-making and textiles, and with the skill of the men who spent their working lives there, that the real strength of Britain lay. I took heart because I realised that, despite the financial crisis in the City, the cloth capped, bedraggled columns of unemployed marching south, the defeatism of the older generation of that time, it would be from the great industrial complexes of the North that Britain would draw the strength to survive the great storm which was then preparing.

The counties north of the Humber-Mersey line have a population of some 13 million, twice that of Scotland and Wales combined. The average unemployment ranges from 15.6 per cent. in Yorkshire and Humberside to nearly 20 per cent. in the counties further north, as compared with 11 per cent. or less in the south-east. Average earnings are 16 per cent. lower for men. Of the 1 million jobs lost in England since 1977 three-quarters were lost in the North. If a man is unemployed in the North he stands two and a half times less chance of getting a job than he would in the South. The North has a higher percentage of school-leavers leaving school without qualifications than any other region in the kingdom. I shall not weary your Lordships with more statistics or try to support my proposal with a description of the atmosphere in the communities around the coal mines which have closed, the silent shipyards, the great textile mills now derelict and empty, or the miles of streets in which one bread winner in five is unemployed and has little chance of finding a job.

I do not underestimate what has been done to help by local authorities, by successive governments and by the enterprise and self-reliance of the people of northern England themselves. But the fact is that what has been done is not enough. Apart from a sense of hopelessness and abandonment felt by the adult long-term unemployed, there is an even greater sense of deprivation and desperation among the young who are flooding south in the hope of finding something better than a lifetime on the dole. One organisation in London, the Piccadilly Advice Centre, which has made itself responsible for helping and advising youngsters coming to London to find work; which tries to find them safe accommodation; to help them when the money runs out as so often happens and to keep them out of the evil influences to which they are so easily a prey, tells me that of those who came to them for help during three months nearly 3,000 came from the North while only 700 or 800 came from the whole of the South of England. Beyond and behind all this is the abundant evidence that it is in the great industrial conurbations of the North that the worst and most tragic examples of deprivation and urban decay exist. exist.

My noble friend, when he replies, will tell us what the Government have done and will be doing. He will tell us of the £67 million from the EC for Merseyside and of the Government's regional policy announced by the Minister of State for Industry in November 1984. But when all this is said, the fact remains that the disparities between the North and South continue and grow. What is more important, so does the sense of grievance and of neglect by what appears to them to be a Southern orientated Government relying on the South for the bulk of their political support. A mood of increasing desperation is spreading inexorably over Northern England.

When one proposes what amounts to a major administrative change such as is embodied in the Question, it is always wise here in this country to cite precedents. There are several. Historically, the Council of the North, after its re-establishment in the 16th century, did great service in removing many social grievances". More recently, in our own times, was the short period when my noble and learned friend the Lord Chancellor was given special responsiblity for the north east of England. He describes his experiences in his memoir, The Door Wherein I went; how he assembled a small but highly motivated staff, how he set out the priorities, and how within a comparatively short time he was able to formulate his proposals. They were embodied in Command Paper 2206 of 1963.

At that time my noble and learned friend was Lord President of the Council, and thus the historic continuity of our administration was maintained. At the end of his account of what he terms in his memoir "a pilot experiment" he writes: I intended that what had started as an empirical approach to a problem of regional development should end by becoming the foundation for a policy of regional devolution on a scale and of a type never before seen in this country. The paradox is that the trends of policy during the past few years, so far from being towards regional devolution, have been in exactly the opposite direction; towards increasing centralisation of power and responsibility in Whitehall. That is one of the reasons why some Conservatives have, like myself, become critical of the Government.

I recognise that the contemporary second industrial revolution, based on advances in science and technology, have deprived the North of England of many of the advantages that contributed to its prosperity in the first. However, I do not accept that the social and economic consequences which that inflicts today on communities in the erstwhile prosperous centres of the North are inevitable and beyond the power of the Government to mitigate or even solve.

I am suggesting that the North of England should have its own man (or woman) in the Cabinet, with appropriate status and resources, to show that the Government are determined to do what is humanly possible to try to solve the problems of the North. A step such as that would be far more dramatic, vivid and understandable by the people of the North than the general display of statistics that I am sure my noble friend will be producing for the House later.

Let me try to clothe the idea I am proposing to your Lordships in more detail. The Secretary of State for the North would be a senior member of the Cabinet holding, perhaps for historic reasons, the office of Lord President of the Council, and having the headquarters of his department in York—also for historic reasons, although one of my noble friends who lives in Northumberland tells me that he regards York as being in the Midlands.

The Secretary of State would have two principal bodies responsible to him: an industrial development council analogous to the Scottish Development Agency, and a council for urban renewal, to assist the Secretary of State in tackling the dire problems of the inner cities of the great northern conurbations. He would also need to have an advisory body to consider the agricultural and conservation problems of the North; in particular, the state and prospects of hill farming.

While his staff would include representatives from the various departments of state, as was the case with my noble and learned friend's pilot experiment. I do not believe that he would require or should have the full panopoly of administrative back-up available, for instance, to the Scottish Secretary. In time, he might find it advisable to have the support of a council of the North, but that would be a matter for his experience and judgment. He would, of course, have to be confident in having the wholehearted support of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

There is a current phrase about solving problems by throwing money at them. Perhaps I may ask my noble friend: how much money has been thrown per head of population at Scotland and Northern Ireland during the past eight years as compared with England, north of the Humber-Mersey line? Of course money would be needed if the Secretary of State for the North is to do his job. But if he is appointed, there will be someone in the Cabinet to argue for the special interests of the North and to attend the discussions in the so-called Star Chamber over which my noble friend the Deputy Prime Minister at present presides. There would also be someone of weight and authority to represent the North of England when decisions are made in Cabinet on issues directly affecting the North, such as the third international airport and the building of the Channel tunnel. There is no one there today.

Last week there was a debate in another place about the problems of the North linked more, so it seemed to me, with a by-election. I raise this matter and ask the Government to give consideration to this Question not from any motive of obtaining some transitory party advantage—though if I were concerned with that, I would have no difficulty in assessing the political dividends which would accrue to the Government from such an innovation. I do so because I believe—and I think that perhaps one senior member of the Cabinet may also believe—that such a radical change in the administration of this country will have far-reaching advantages to the future good government of Great Britain as a whole.

10.51 p.m.

The Lord Bishop of Sheffield

My Lords, I am reminded a little of an occasion when I conducted the three hours devotion and in the central hour the congregation shrank to one; but we kept going.

For a lifelong Northumbrian nationalist to be able to make his maiden speech, even at this late hour, on a Motion such as this is a great privilege. We all have our little vanities. I know that I am too ready to boast of my 100 per cent. pure bred Geordie ancestry; four generations, I believe, with no dilution of south country blood in my veins. I rather fear that I might be able to claim, too—and this is no credit to the Church of England—to be the first 100 per cent. Tyneside born and bred diocesan bishop since poor Bishop Ridley was martyred in 1555.

When, so unexpectedly, six years ago I was uprooted from my Tyneside seaside parish to become a bishop in South Yorkshire it was a great relief to know that the diocese of Sheffield lay securely within the ancient kingdom of Northumbria. I can assure the noble Lord's friends that York is not in the Midlands but is, indeed, the proper capital of Northumbria up to Bamburgh.

I was delighted with what the noble Lord had to say, not simply because of the actual concrete proposal he made for a Secretary of State for the North, but even more because of the tone in which he expressed our needs. It was a tone of sympathy and understanding and it was greatly appreciated, at least by me. I believe that what we really need is a change of attitude. Given that change of attitude, the new Secretary of State would do a grand job. But if the change of attitude had happened, would there be a need for a new Secretary of State at all? In truth we in the North have three needs that are greater than that. We need to be loved, we need to be respected and we need to be trusted.

We need to be loved. I apologise for the word; it is a preacher's word and I know I should not be preaching to your Lordships. But we are told, "Let the cobbler stick to his last", and my "last" is that of a preacher and of a parson, not a politician. It is only when we are loved that the miracles which change things can begin to happen.

Years ago a tract with the title Who Would be a Priest made a great impression on me. In that booklet one of the phrases used to describe the work of a priest was, "loving people into holiness." I know now that it is the only way to change things. Loving people into anything is the only way to get things done. Help is only really acceptable from those whom we know in our hearts to be on our side. A hint of contempt, a hint of patronage, and the most generous gifts will be slung back—and surely rightly slung back—into our teeth. "Keep it!" we say. I imagine that this is true of all people; it is certainly true of the north countrymen. To a sudden outburst of south country generosity, if it were without love, we would say, "No thank you—keep it."

We need to be respected. We are proud of our history. When Edwin was king of Northumbria and Bretwalda, there was so great a peace in Britain, we are told, that a woman with a new-born child could walk throughout the island from sea to sea and take no harm. Alas, it is not like that now in our United Kingdom. The bones for which Durham is really famous are those of Cuthbert, Oswald and Bede—which are powerful reminders of the time when the light of Christian civilisation shone more brightly in Northumbria than anywhere else in Western Europe—and, some would say, the world.

We are equally proud of our more recent past. Our Northern muscle, industry and manufacturing skills produced the goods that made possible the trading miracle that was the British Empire, and from all that springs our still surviving civic pride. Sheffield Town Hall proclaims in solid stone the self-confidence of a Victorian Northern city. Even today, to share in some great occasion—I almost dare to say "state occasion"—in the Town Hall or the Cutlers' Hall gives me a proper pride in being a Sheffielder, albeit only an adopted one.

But we deserve even more to be respected for what we are now. Despite the harsh consequences of the economic collapse, in the North we do not grumble at life. Far otherwise. We do not want to be anywhere else. Surely our stability, our loyalty to and affection for our own neighbourhoods, our commitment to our families, and our contentment are qualitites to be respected. Yet, whenever I venture south, I am assailed with legends of abundant work and foolish Northerners who are too stupid to leave their wretched hovels for the promised land of plenty in the South. Reluctantly—not only because it is late—I turn my back on the self-indulgence of filling out this tale with illustrative anecdote. I simply say again that the North of England is beautiful and its people are strong. We need not your pity but your respect.

Above all we need to be trusted. The last great rising of the people of the North was the Pilgrimage of Grace in 1536. Decree after decree came from King Henry's London. In those days, too, there was no consultation with the people of the North. The rising was settled with a treaty and a solemn promise: Parliament would meet in York. We are still waiting.

We are not a conquered province of the South, though at times it feels like that. Underlying our United Kingdom is a federalism—peoples with their own history, their own language, their own understanding of reality, who have chosen to share in the life of the one nation. But we have a right, surely, to some say in the decisions that affect the nation as a whole, and an even greater right, most certainly, to be trusted with the conduct of our own local life. Metropolitan arrogance, metropolitan ignorance (the phrase is borrowed and not my own) are hard to bear.

To a Londoner it may be incredible that the people of South Yorkshire were grateful for all that their county did to make the area more beautiful. It found it pit heaps; it left it woods and forests. But we were not asked before all was torn down.

In England there is a tradition of local independence as ancient as the Kingdom itself. We of the North do not wish to see it lost. In Sheffield for generations industry and the council, though perhaps politically divided, have been able to work together for the good of the city and its people. In Newcastle, I am told, at this very time great efforts are being made to bring together unions, industry, the boroughs and many others so that together some of the fearful problems that that city faces can be tackled. If such initiatives are to bear fruit we need to be trusted.

I speak too long for a maiden speech; I must end. But at the heart of all this is a question of waste. The nation as a whole is not getting the benefit that it deserves from having the North of England. We are a resource; not a problem. Not just for our sake but for the sake of the country as a whole we need to be loved, respected and trusted, and I would welcome the appointment of a Secretary of State for the North on the terms that have been outlined if it was the outward sign of such a new deal.

11.1 p.m.

Lord Elliott of Morpeth

My Lords, it falls to me to have the considerable honour and pleasure to congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield on his maiden speech. It may interest him to know that I count it an extra pleasure above what it would possibly be for anyone else, for two reasons. The first is that it is a very short time ago that I made my maiden speech, so I had some conception of how he felt tonight.

On the occasion when I made my speech the House was full; and I regret that it is not on this occasion, because his speech was delivered with great feeling and ability and he spoke warmly of his native area. Although few of us are present this evening, I say to the right reverend Prelate that at least two of us are Geordies, and I particularly appreciated his remarks about the ancient Kingdom of Northumbria and particularly the North-East of England from whence he came; and he is still not too far away in Sheffied. I, and I am sure all of us who are here this evening and the many more who read his speech and possibly listen to a recording of it, look forward with the greatest possible pleasure to his many future contributions in this House.

I turn to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, who began by saying that he was an Essex Peer. I am sure that those of us who came from the northern half of the country are extremely grateful to him for the enormous interest of an Essex Peer in our affairs. For him to raise the question of the North and its problems is appreciated, although I have a great deal of criticism of what he said. I agree very much with the noble Lord when he determined on a dark night in Sheffield in the 1930s, if I remember rightly, that the great industrial strength of this country is in the North of England. It was in the North of England; our prosperity was built there. But I do not agree that at the moment, for instance, there are miles of streets with few people employed. Other than one or two, I do not for a moment agree that there are silent shipyards—not at all. I believe that he is thinking of the 1930s and the time of that dark night in Sheffield.

I say to the noble Lord that we certainly still have problems in the North of England—many problems with regard to renewing our old industries and creating new employment—but in my opinion the greatest problem that we face is the continuation of the suggestion that there are two nations within the one, North and South. There is nothing of the kind. We are one nation. The North of England has played its full part in our industrial well-being in the past; it is still playing its part. It wants nothing other than to play its fullest possible part in our future industrial prosperity.

The noble Lord suggested that we needed our own man or woman as a respresentative in government. For many years we had a Minister for the North, granted not at Secretary of State level, which is what he is now suggesting. But we had Ministers for the North who did not manage to accomplish a great deal and who would express to me—they were both labour Ministers—their frustration at lack of personal power. To suggest a Minister for the North brings up the constant criticism of such a possibility. If you have a Minister for the North of England, then why not a Minister for the West of England? If you have a Minister for Tyneside, why not a Minister for Humberside and a Minister for Merseyside? The answer, of course, is that you would have devolved government and sectionalised government that would achieve nothing at all. It is often argued that there is a Secretary of State for Scotland and a Secretary of State for Wales, a development body in Scotland and another in Wales. The best possible, balanced system was that of a development area in Scotland and Wales and the enterprise board for England. That seemed to me to make all sorts of sense.

The great test of what the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has said is quite simple. Is the Northern region, in Government terms, disadvantaged at this time? To that, I give the unqualified reply, "No, of course it is not. Not at all." Indeed, the North-East of England, where I come from, has been very much aided in recent years. Almost a third of total Government aid has come to the North of England. Since 1979. the Northern counties of England, which we call the Northern region, has had aid totalling £l billion. We have improved communications and an improved educational system. We are training and retraining on an unprecedented scale. Since 1983, we have had £140 million spent on the youth training scheme and 61,000 young people have been given some qualification. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne alone, at this very moment, 35,000 young people are receiving some form of training in our educational establishments of one kind and another.

Much has been done to overcome the northern area's undoubted particular problems. The problems can best be represented against the background of what we have had to do. The Northern region, as the noble Lord rightly said, knew great industrial strength and prosperity in the past. But, in the late 1950s when the dole queues began to form again and when the clouds of unemployment appeared again, we had to recharge completely an area and change its form. The main, old industry was declining. We had to replace it with new. We have done this to an advanced degree through Government policies. In my maiden speech not so long ago, I paid tribute to governments of both major parties for what they have done over the past 25 years for areas such as the North-East of England. Their methods were different; their aim was the same. We have now a great new complex of new industry and young people being trained for it. We are on our way to a new prosperity. It is wholly misleading, as I see it, to suggest that the North-East of England at this time is a deprived area with silent yards and silent streets. Nothing of the kind is true.

After all, the North-East of England has just managed to obtain the Nissan project. The most sought-after scheme in the United Kingdom for the past four years has come not to the South but to the North-East of England. That is a £350 million development. Is this deprivation? Is this neglect of an area? Two thousand new jobs will come with Nissan, and another 2,000 in spin-off to other industries. A month ago, Her Majesty the Queen Mother opened the most modern coal processing plant. Where? Not in the South of England but on the Tyne. It is the most modern coal processing plant in the whole of Europe and one of the best in the world. We have had so many new and successful businesses doing so well. English Estates have done a tremendous job even in places like Consett, a town so badly stricken when a steel works was closed.

There we have an English industrial estate which is prospering at this time. There we have unemployed people of the town of Consett and other parts of the North-East of England being encouraged to set up their own businesses. So I would suggest that once again this evening there is danger to the future and continuing prosperity of the North of England in the suggestion that it is a deprived area of our country. I do not believe that this is so at all. I pay great tribute to the present Government, in their understanding of our problems. I am in a better position, I believe, than most to know how deeply my right honourable friend the Prime Minister feels about our problems and how anxious she is to go on overcoming them through her Government's effort and enterprise.

It is therefore no service to my area to suggest two nations within the one. I do not believe the situation justifies a Secretary of State for the North, or that this would solve any problems at all. I believe that the entire Government at this time have full sympathy with the North-East of England, with the Northern counties of England, and are doing all that is possible to overcome our present problems.

11.12 p.m.

Lord Bancroft

My Lords, may I voice my own unbounded admiration for the right reverend Prelate's maiden speech, its eloquence, its conviction and its substance. Like the other noble Lords who have spoken, I, too, look forward to his contributing frequently to our future deliberations. Indeed, it is singularly fortunate for us that he chose this debate in which to make his first speech. It is a very important debate, if not apparently a very popular one. I give a wholehearted welcome to the aim of the noble Lord, Lord Alport; namely, to promote the industrial regeneration and social progress of the Northern counties of England. I am sure that I speak for all of us when I say how deeply grateful we are to him for initiating this debate and for his graphic, indeed moving, opening speech.

Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Alport, I was born and spent my early boyhood in Barrow-in-Furness when it was the most northerly tip of Lancashire. It is now part of Cumbria. I spent my later youth in Coatham near Redcar, which was then the most northerly tip of Yorkshire. It is now Cleveland.

I must disagree with the otherwise powerful speech of the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth. I acknowledge the role which successive governments have played in seeking to regenerate the North; but both the Furness peninsular and Cleveland have seen hard and rough times for the past 60 years. In East Cleveland especially they are harder and rougher than they have ever been.

In both areas, as has been pointed out, the smoke stacks and their industries are down; and the sunrise industry—nuclear submarines, chemicals, advanced steel making—employ fewer people. Too many places are derelict. If noble Lords doubt what I say, I ask them to make the railway journey—not a very long one—from Middlesbrough to Redcar. One passes through a lunar landscape, most of it quite dead, clad in the uniform colour, rust. It used to be a rather ebullient and exuberant Dante's Inferno crackling with movement, action, steam and flame.

I am totally with the noble Lord, Lord Alport, as to ends, but, regretfully and respectfully, I cannot go all the way with him as to means. I see and acknowledge the attractions of a powerful Cabinet Minister arguing the case for the North with his colleagues like the Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Ireland Secretaries of State. But these Ministers have powerful multifunctional departments underpinning them. In my experience, a Minister, even with three councils under him and a small staff, cannot punch with the necessary weight when the argument is about resource allocation. He must have a strong department.

We must remind ourselves that like all spending Ministers he will be fighting on two fronts—against his other spending colleagues and against the Chief Secretary and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The last two will be doing their best, and understandably, to divide and rule. I can assure noble Lords there is no more pleasing sight to a Treasury Minister, or to a Treasury official, than dog eating dog.

Even the noble and learned Lord the Lord Chancellor would, I fancy, have found difficulty in keeping his end up permanently when Minister with special responsibility for the North-East. Decentralisation and devolution, as has been pointed out, are not exactly flavours of the month at the moment.

I am professionally sceptical about creating a new Northern department. Going back many years it would be recreating a Department of the North, and I am not now referring to the Council of the North. I do not believe that one can successfully superimpose a territorial system on to a functional system unless there is a strong sense of national identity already there, as is the case with the three existing territorial departments.

The new department would, in my view, have to be a big one. It would spend years filching and fighting to haul the levers of power away from the functional departments and into its own territory. Organisational battles of this sort are, I believe, best avoided. There are no winners, only losers, and the battle is always a long one. It took the Treasury five years—and I was there—to dance on the grave of the Department of Economic Affairs. Alas for a wasted quinquennial!

I repeat, the Northern department would have to be a big one, and I am a firm believer in the proverb that all large organisations are in a permanent state of near breakdown, and the larger the nearer. I would prefer, therefore, at a time when the public service is having to contract, to see the existing machinery of government used more effectively. As I have said before, I should like to see an existing Secretary of State and his department, either Environment or DTI, given, and being universally recognised as having, an unambigous lead role in regional policy.

On a previous occasion we have been told that the Department of Trade and Industry has this function, but is it not the case, I ask, that the Department of the Environment leads and chairs the regional boards while the DTI has the lead responsibility for industrial aid and development policy? However that may be, the perception needs to be cleared up. Much else, I suggest, would then fall into place.

Whoever was the clearly recognised Minister with the lead responsibility for co-ordinating the totatity of regional policy would of course need to lay special stress on the problems of the North. The Minister should, I suggest, be seen as the Secretary of State for England, and his department as the Department for England, as indeed the Department of the Environment was once seen in the first half of the 1970s. The prime task should be the unlocking of local initiative, the attraction of new industries, and the preparation of coherent plans for the proper exploitation of the community regional development fund.

I am quite aware of the fact that the present Administration has an idiosyncratic definition of the word "plan". In that case let us by all means use the euphemism "strategy", as in the "medium-term financial strategy". It might be possible to revivify the regional economic strategy boards, or even recreate in a modified form the regional economic strategy councils in the place of the Northern, North-Western, Yorkshire and Humberside Regions, with specific timetabled tasks to undertake. I suggest that Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds were and are the natural centres, though I say so with respect to two of the previous speakers. I believe that in revived or resurrected form, these bodies should—and I use the frightful jargon of our times—be more bottom-up and less top-down. The close involvement and the strong leadership of the local communities are, as they always have been, absolutely essential. Indeed the revivified or resurrected councils could meet jointly at regular intervals under the chairmanship of the designated Secretary of State, perhaps as a council for the North, perhaps, indeed, in York.

Something on these lines, which is in conformity with the existing pattern of machinery of government would equip the lead Secretary of State with a rather better armoury than he has at his disposal now. It would go some way to meet the aim of the noble Lord, Lord Alport, short of a totally new department or a new development agency, though it is true to say that the latter would in my view be far less messy in terms of machinery of government.

I have tried to be constructive. I end by repeating that my fear of going along the precise road of the noble Lord (though we share a passion for the same destination) is threefold: first, a new Minister without a strong department would cut no ice, however fancily he skated. Secondly, the superimposition of a big territorial department on to a functional system in England would not work, or not quickly enough, in my view. Thirdly, to institutionalise it by creating a new Minister and a new department might conceivably emphasise rather than moderate the deep division which I believe is now developing between North and South. That would, sadly, work against the noble Lord's concern for national unity; a concern which, as Lord Elliott of Morpeth said, we must all share.

As the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has stated so eloquently, there can in my view be no doubting the very real desperation and real despair felt in many parts of the North.

11.23 p.m.

Lord Underhill

My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Alport, for putting down his Question and highlighting what is not just a Northern problem, but a problem for the whole of the nation. As other noble Lords have said, if it only gave us the opportunity to hear the maiden speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield that alone justified the noble Lord putting down his Question. The right reverend Prelate showed not only compassion and deep sincerity, but also pride in the people he represents.

The noble Lord, Lord Alport, said that he was an Essex man; so am I—but just over the border in the first district council of Essex. He referred to the debate in another place on Tuesday last which dealt only with the Northern region, but which gave us some valuable information, statistics and views. I note that the noble Lord's question refers to the "Northern counties of England" and I am assuming that covers not just the North, but the North-West, Yorkshire and Humberside.

I shall not repeat all the statistics which the noble Lord, Lord Alport, gave us. I shall say merely that I agree with all the figures he gave. However, I remind your Lordships of one matter in particular; that is, that the northern areas to which I have referred have lost 730,000 jobs since 1977. That is 60 per cent. of the whole national job losses. That is what we are faced with. We have a situation in which 60 per cent. of the new firms start up in the South-East. Regarding the problems of North and South, I may have something more to say on this on Friday afternoon when we deal with the Channel tunnel.

The right reverend Prelate reminds me that I am three-quarters of the way through reading the Church Commission's report, Faith in the City. The commission has reported: We have been deeply disturbed by what we have seen and heard". Despite the personal knowledge of the noble Lord, Lord Elliott of Morpeth, the report stresses that the Church Commission saw the serious disparity between North and South. It says in the report: The poverty reflects the structural inequality of the nation". There is social deprivation in many parts of the three regions to which I have referred. The North of England Regional Consortium was set up some four years ago by the local authorities and other bodies in those three regions, first, to fight the proposal to develop Stansted as a third London airport, which was something they believed would further endanger development in the North; and, secondly, to promote jobs in those three northern regions. The consortium issued recently a report which the Daily Telegraph of 30th September described as giving a bleak picture of creeping economic and social depression in the North of England.

As the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, has said, the problems are not only in the North. As I think noble Lords know, for a period I worked in the West Midlands. Although I am an Essex man, I still feel that I have some attachment to the West Midlands. Incidentally, that is why I always run a British Austin Leyland car. Seasonally adjusted, the unemployment figure for the West Midland is 14.9 per cent. That is less than one point lower than in the North-West. Therefore, when we are talking about special proposals for the regions, the West Midlands, as the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, said, would also wish to be considered.

I must express much sympathy with the administrative view which the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, expressed. We have the success of the Scottish Development Agency, the Welsh Development Agency, the Industrial Development Board in Northern Ireland and the Highlands and Islands Development Board in Scotland. The party for which I am now speaking has no current proposal for an individual Secretary of State for the North. We believe that our industrial, economic and financial policies should be ones for the whole nation, but it may be that we shall need to give some particular attention to special regions.

In our 1983 election manifesto, we reaffirmed a commitment to the establishment of a Northern regional agency, and said that there should be similar agencies extended to other English regions where there was acute need. Our new document, dealing with a jobs and industry campaign, proposes to assist the growth of local economies through a network of regional enterprise boards. We are also working out a new approach to regional policy.

Many local authorities are already doing what they can to help to rebuild their local economies. That was one of the tragedies of the destruction of some of the metropolitan counties, which had established enterprise boards which had started to develop on a regional basis—because that is what the conurbations were—to cope with some of the economic problems in those areas. We have no firm decision yet on how best to reform local government. That is still being examined, particularly in the light of the recent Local Government Bill. But certain regional services such as health, water, sewerage and the various regional ministries need to become much more answerable to elected members than they are at the moment. We have to study not only regional development, and this does not require just the appointment of a special Cabinet Minister. It can be done by a proper national economic financial policy which gives special attention through these development agencies to the regions as and where they are required This Unstarred Question from the noble Lord, Lord Alport, reminds us once again that there is a dangerous inequality between North and South. Anybody who journeys, as I did from the Labour Party Conference, not on the motorways but travelling by the side roads from Bournemouth back to my home on the north side of London, and then travels up North, will see that we are in grave danger of creating two different worlds which do not understand each other. That, I believe, is the importance of Lord Alport's Question tonight. There is a dangerous inequality. Not only must we seek to solve the problem of that inequality, but certainly we must do nothing whatever that will aggravate that problem further.

11.32 p.m.

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, during the previous debate I had occasion to telephone my wife. Earlier this evening, she had been listening to the "PM" programme and was somewhat surprised to hear the noble Lord, Lord Alport's reply to a question on what response he expected to his debate tonight. He apparently said, "An ill-considered one". I can assure the noble Lord that many man-hours have gone into speech today. Furthermore, I have listened intently to what has been said by your Lordships tonight. I am not convinced there is a need for a Minister for the North. The boundaries of the North are open to individual interpretation; but, for the purposes of the debate, I will (like other noble Lords) assume the region broadly lies north of a line from Liverpool to Hull.

Even so, this vast area of the country covers smaller regions which would, I believe, not countenance being grouped in this way. They would say with some justification that their problems are different from those in other areas in the region.

This Government have in the past considered the matter of a Minister for the North, and stated that the main reason for turning down this idea is their belief that the institutions we now have are already providing effective help to the North. Indeed, the region receives more industrial and commercial investment aid per head than any other region in England; although not, I accept, Northern Ireland or Scotland. Furthermore, it would not be possible to add a Minister to those institutions, and an increased burden of Government would prove necessary. What is more, other regions would certainly ask to be treated in the same way. We would be back on the road to regional government. Indeed, there is currently no regional Minister either in or out of Cabinet.

That is not to say that the Government are not aware of problems facing the North. My Lords, we are very well aware of the problems, many of which your Lordships have mentioned tonight. The Government's present structure provides a number of Cabinet Ministers whose responsibilities include regional matters. For example, the Secretaries of State for Employment, the Environment and Trade and Industry have responsibility for local employment, regional tourism, and regional infrastructure and industrial development. These responsibilities of my individual colleagues are in addition to their responsibilities for national policies.

Under the scheme that the noble Lord, Lord Alport, has outlined to us this evening, these, so far as they pertain to the North, would be stripped away from them. And to what advantage? This arrangement that we have now allows for exactly what the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, was asking for—that is, the targeting of resources to areas of particular need and at the same time does not lose sight of the principal aim of strengthening the national economy.

The Government are convinced that a strong regional economy of the type we all seek comes from a strong national economy; and we cannot escape the fundamental link between them. Our Government therefore strive towards a healthy national economy, which in turn bolsters confidence in, and performance of, local economies. The success of a region must rest primarily on the success of the state as a whole.

Many of the problems evident in the North, which have been so ably described tonight, are, as my noble friend Lord Elliott of Morpeth has said, a direct result of technological change, market shifts and the world recession. We know that many thousands of people have lost jobs in the last couple of decades. The problems are deep-rooted, and the Government are not turning their backs on them. However, we are very far from gloom and despondency, especially as the picture is getting much, much brighter. My noble friend made this point much more fully than I am able to do at this late hour.

Since the Government came to office in 1979 their key contributions to increasing the stability of the economic climate, in which industry can flourish, have been to bring down and control inflation and public borrowing and to encourage business enterprise.

The national economy is now better, in many important aspects, than it has been for some years. British output is rising—now at its highest ever level. This continuing growth means that people have more money to spend on goods and, what is more, more money to invest for the future. There has been a good deal of concern in the North—and it has been expressed in your Lordships' House tonight—about the need for more capital investment. This is happening. Investment in business, in manufacturing and in construction and service industries all rose strongly last year; in fact by about 14 per cent. Total fixed investment in 1984 was valued at £55 billion. That was an all-time high, but it is expected to rise even higher this year.

So there is real growth nationally, with higher output, more investment and more industrial activity. Much of this encouragement comes from the hundreds of new businesses which are starting up every week. Not all of them thrive, I know, but in the five years from 1980 to 1984 there was a net growth of 140,000 businesses registering for VAT purposes. So the national picture is not gloomy; and the results of the Government's policies to energise the economy are not lacking in the North.

November was the third consecutive month in which the underlying level of unemployment has dropped. Between April and November this year 385,500 job vacancies in the North were notified—9 per cent. up on the same period last year. And I should add that only about one-third of all vacancies are notified to the public employment service. Last month the unfilled job vacancies in the North of England totalled nearly 35,000. That is nearly 17 per cent. more than in the same month last year. There are currently about 250,000 people benefiting in the North from the Government's continuing wide range of employment and training measures.

I know, too, that the industrial base of the North is still largely dependent on traditional or largely declining industries, but the region is becoming increasingly less reliant on these as other industries grow. For example, 10 years ago the pharmaceutical industry hardly existed in the North-East, but it now employs at least 5,000 people. Well over three times that number are engaged in electronics-related industries, ranging from component manufacturers to computers, radar, fibre-optics and opto-electronics. The retail and distribution trade is also performing well and thousands of jobs are being created from new developments; for example—one among many—Argyll Stores' £25 million investment programme will create 500 new jobs; and the shopping centre at Coulby Newham, South Middlesbrough, should create 1,500 extra jobs.

There is no shortage of good news in the North. Industry is on the increase. My noble friend Lord Elliott referred to Vauxhall Motors' plans to build the new Belmont four-door saloon car at its Ellesmere Port plant, and this will create 600 jobs next year, with a further 600 in prospect by 1989. A £3 million computer-aided design and manufacture computer centre recently opened in Middlesbrough and could bring more than 5,000 high-tech jobs to the area by 1995. British Petroleum's plans to build a £100 million acetic acid plant at Saltend, near Hull could create an estimated 1,000 construction jobs over the next few years. Over 200 new firms have been established in Consett since the closure of the steelworks in 1979. A shopping and leisure complex costing over £100 million—the Metrocentre—is due to open in Gateshead next year, creating between 4,000 and 5,000 jobs. It may even be more.

A similar scheme due at Elswick, West Newcastle, could provide another 1,500 jobs. When the Greater Manchester Exhibition Centre has been completed, it will provide about 1,000 jobs. In Leeds, the Burton Group propose to develop their former factory site into a transport and warehouse complex providing 1,000 jobs. J.I. Case have taken over the former International Harvesters plant in Doncaster, creating 300 to 500 jobs. This surely is evidence that industry and employment in the North are not all bad.

So far as long as long-term unemployment is concerned, help is to be provided to assist the long-term unemployed in looking for work by expanding the number of Jobclubs—11 of which are already operating in the North. The postal contact initiative, recently announced by my right honourable friend the Paymaster General and to be launched in the near future, will help around half a million long-term unemployed people get back into the job-hunting habit, and give them the opportunity to benefit from the professional advice and support and wide range of services offered by Jobcentre staff. Two new ideas to help the long-term unemployed were announced on 12th November and will be pilot tested for six months from January 1986: the Job Start Scheme and in-depth counselling for every long-term unemployed person. Three of the nine pilot areas announced on 28th November are located in the North, at Billingham, Preston and Huddersfield.

I am not using these hard facts in order to fudge the problems. I am simply trying to illustrate the positive side to the region's economy. A stronger economy with many more people being able to take up employment is of course what the Government are aiming for. So the position in the North is improving, but it is a long road and we must not be steered off course. The revitalisation of the North will be accelerated when it can attract new investment.

The right reverend Prelate in, if I may say so, a notable maiden speech, said that we need to be loved. How I agree with him that this is so of the North. I am afraid, however, that, as he remarked, the negative image of the North which some people, including, on occasions, some of your Lordships, choose to put forward is one of the reasons for the difficulties of which we have heard tonight. If those whose task it is to boost the North persistently sell it short by stressing its problems, to the total exclusion of its successes, its prospects are so much the worse. I hope that we shall hear again from the right reverend Prelate, both soon and often.

And so, my Lords, I have sought to show that things are happening in the North, and positive things at that. Can anyone really believe that all that I have outlined happened spontaneously, without departmental—hence Cabinet—involvement. Can any noble Lord believe—the noble Lord, Lord Bancroft, obviously does not—that it would be right to create a new department of state, at a time when things are improving so much in the region, and when it is Government policy to ease the burden on both taxpayer and business by reducing the number of Civil Servants—a process, I might add, in which we have been spectacularly successful since 1979. What extra could a Minister for the North possibly accomplish? The arrangements I have mentioned do exist and they are working well. I see no reason why they should not continue to work and to protect the interests not only of the North but of the whole country.