Yorkshire and Humberside

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 23 November 1973.

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Photo of Mr Roy Mason Mr Roy Mason , Barnsley 12:00, 23 November 1973

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Lomas), first on his excellent, unselfish choice of subject for debate—the future of Yorkshire and Humberside—when he was successful in the Ballot, and secondly on his first-class, knowledgeable speech. He had obviously put a great deal of work into it. Above all, he set the right tone for the debate. I am only sorry that it was marred by the petty, churlish irrelevancies of the only two Yorkshire Conservative Members to take part.

The debate has been commendable. Every one of my hon. Friends who was present at the last Yorkshire and Humberside debate but was not called to speak has managed to catch the eye of the Chair today, and we shall have had 18 contributors, including the Minister. It has been a first-class example of co-operation and group work. Our regional group activity is unparalleled in the House.

We have been most grateful to the Minister for his attendance. I think that he has heard some part of every contribution, and he has hardly left the Government Front Bench for more than a few minutes during the debate.

On the general problem of the regions, I feel first that our country is still plagued by the Potters Bar barrier. Investors, developers and speculators tumble over themselves in the one-tenth of the country below Potters Bar, and the situation is further aggravated by the development of Maplin and the Channel Tunnel, while nine-tenths of the nation struggle to live and expand. The economic imbalance between the sliver of the South and the vast regions of the North must change, and is bound to change.

I believe that the change has begun and that the barrier is starting to crumble as many investors and developers scramble over it to go to the North. I am hopeful that many of them are now going into our region of Yorkshire and Humberside.

United Kingdom Governments, irrespective of the Common Market's future regulations and possible aid to regional development, must still rectify the continuing and inefficient economic imbalance. We cannot go on wasting so much of our nation's resources, our under-utilised local authority services, our communications, the underdeveloped areas, our surplus manpower and our ample land.

For many years it has been a costly exercise to pump Government money into the North to try to get it on the move. Our economy cannot grow at the desired rate to satisfy demands for fuller employment, increased exports and a higher standard of living until the whole of the nation's resources is utilised to the full. I say to all concerned with investment and commercial and industrial development that the attractions of Yorkshire are now becoming evident. Some of the Government's policies are working through. It must be accepted that some have proved attractive. Millions of pounds has been poured into Operation Eyesore and the derelict land reclamation scheme. The money has been used for hundereds of projects and hundereds of acres of derelict land.

The English Tourist Board and the Yorkshire Tourist Authority have been taking advantage of United Kingdom grants and loans. Last year they received £2½ million in loans and grants to modernise and extend hotels to cater for Yorkshire's thriving tourist trade. There were 259 industrial development certificates granted for Yorkshire and Humberside last year, with the prospect of additional employment to the extent of 12,880 new jobs.

These encouraging developments, allied with special financial assistance to industry within the terms of the Industry Act—there have been hundreds of applications—prove that the Yorkshire region is at last on the move. The environmental drive and the cleanup campaigns by the Government and local authorities are making the region a more attractive place in which to live and provide a bedrock on which to thrive and expand.

Investors and developers will be foolish to ignore the trend. The investment risk is lessening all the time. Now is the time to invest in the region. The Minister knows that no Government can ever again afford to neglect the regions. When aid was curtailed two and a half years ago, a million people became unemployed. The spectre of the 1930's begin to rise. It was a frightening sight. I am pleased that it is now vanishing as financial aid to the regions gathers momentum.

I am becoming increasingly worried about the collapse of the Government's economic strategy. The regions are bound to carry the brunt of any national economic failure. The balance-of-payments deficit, continuing price rises, frightening bank interest rates, the prospect of higher steel prices which will work their way through to most household goods and the cutbacks in expenditure on roads, social services, and housing are all indications.

If ever a point has been made forcibly, it has been made today by all my hon. Friends, including my hon. Friends the Members for Huddersfield, West, Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) and York (Mr. Alexander W. Lyon). They have stressed Yorkshire's housing problem. I would deplore the curtailment of developing communications. It would be folly. We desperately need to open up more of our county to assist the flow of goods, to help halt rising costs and to keep our industries competitive. If we are to take advantage of the new interest in our region by the investors and developers, better communications are of paramount importance and must remain so.

I must tell the Minister that we want an economically strong region. That is a matter which is of more importance than merely trying—perhaps for political purposes—to shorten last year's dole queues. However strong the regions have become will now be put to the test. We will see whether the Government's new regional policy will be able to stave off depression in Yorkshire as it battles to combat rising inflation. That is the test which will have to be faced. The Minister will have to be able to say that the bedrock is now strong enough to withstand the inflationary spiral.

I hope that the Government are recognising the newly-established Yorkshire and Humberside Development Association and are prepared to give it financial assistance for the establishment of its controlled planning centres. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have been encouraging the association's formation, and now that it is there we must continue to give any encouragement we can. I hope that the Government are prepared to give financial encouragement.

Secondly, I hope that the Minister will keep stressing the urgent need to clean up the county and speed up the drive to halt dilapidations. In every study and report of the problems of the area, this is the paramount recurring theme. I am pleased that it has been decided to have a fresh survey of land reclamation. This is especially welcome because much more needs to be done, and we look forward eagerly to publication of the report.

Thirdly, there is the question of communications, particularly the need to press on with better east-west links to open up Humberside. The Humber Bridge will open in 1976, and this necessitates an improved road network, which will reveal a vast sector of our country ripe for development, with cheaper land available, a pleasant environment and space for good planning.

I want to stress also the need to go ahead with investment in the South Yorkshire waterway. This waterway, stretching from the Humber to Sheffield, could open up the heart of our county. If investment can be obtained to widen and deepen it for 500 to 700-ton barges, we could move trade and merchandise from the centre of the region to the Continent. This whole wide strip of our region would flourish as a result.

Soon, with the Civil Aviation Authority's report at hand, we shall have to demand better air communications. There are many possibilities. Some of them have been mentioned in the debate. They include an extension to Yeadon airport, Thorne Waste, Balne Moor, or pressure on the Ministry of Defence to hand over a redundant Royal Air Force station. We cannot afford to frustrate tourism and trade and the further development of our region, both domestically and between our region and the Common Market.

Fourth, there is the question of the Hardman Report. It came in for criticism, and rightly so. Our region is starved of service employment. The report was prepared by civil servants for civil servants to protect civil servants, and it proved to be a damnable disgrace for Yorkshire and Humberside. Hon. Members must keep on with their claims for Yorkshire and Humberside to be recognised for the transfer of some Government establishment. When Government establishments are transferred to a region they create a general reaction in communications, in purchasing power, in the need for new homes and in the spin-off of more jobs. That must be our aim for Yorkshire and Humberside.

What of the special problems of our basic labour-intensive industries as they shed their labour? We must recognise that with further nationalisation there is likely to be rationalisation and that these major industries have to modernise in order to be able to compete both at home and abroad. We must therefore move towards a policy which makes a work-in, a sit-in or a workers' protest demonstration out of date.

Does any industry do this? I think that one does. I think that the British Steel Corporation is the prime example. It has a plant closure policy which involves six months' notice of closure of a small plant and two years' notice for a large plant. It also has a social policy division. I suggest that the major industries, public or private, should follow suit.

Within this time scale—and it may not be long enough every time in practice—there should be a Government responsibility to guarantee that the projected job loss will be made up by alternative industry being established in the district where the closure is to take place. I believe that only a policy of this kind can stop the tendency towards economic imbalance between North and South.

Now we have a problem which will aggravate the problems of all the regions, and not only those of Yorkshire and Humberside. This is the development of Maplin airport, with its seaport complex. I fear that this, allied with the Channel Tunnel, may brake all progress on regional development.

Maplin's initial estimate is nearly £1,000 million. It will be a massive airport creating 10,000 jobs, a seaport with quayside developments, and new communications from London to Foulness—a colossal investment which may reach £3,000 million. Should all this go ahead it will suck the North dry of any major new developments for the next decade. It will be the biggest regional development blunder of all time. It will receive a massive chunk of Government investment and backing and it will cause a great diversion of our national resources. It will encourage the further migration of professional expertise and manual labour and will bring civil war in the construction industry—fighting to obtain some of the massive contracts as well as developing homes and services in that region.

In fighting to regenerate our region we feel that we are always on this rapidly revolving treadmill on which the most frantic pedalling hardly keeps pace. I warn the Minister that, if Maplin goes ahead as planned, it could exhaust us and most other regions as well.

In the longer term—and this may be more appropriate for a future Labour Government to enact than it would be for the Tories—more power must be granted to the Government for industrial intervention in more regional economic planning and expansion of the public sector. There must be a clear political commitment to effect a change in the disparities between regions. Exhortation of itself does not work satisfactorily or quickly, causing a lot of effort with little and slow return. We must use the power of public purchasing to stimulate investment and industrial activity in the regions and where substantial grants of money are involved, whether investment or capital grants in specific industries, an equity stake for the public must be secured.

We must also be ready to redesignate regions, development areas, intermediate areas, neutral zones and congested areas, with investment grants and Government aid going according to need. We shall also need to continue a payroll subsidy. The Government intend to get rid of the regional employment premium and the CBI has indicated that in the Northern Region this will cost between 15,000 and 20,000 jobs. We should be prepared to carry on with a payroll subsidy to encourage the movement into development and intermediate areas. There should be no grants or subsidies for neutral zones, but we might impose a congestion levy on employment in congested areas.

We must be ready more positively to tackle much more severely Whitehall dispersal and the movement of nationalised industries and the heads of national unions back into the regions from this congested metropolis. Only by such a set of positive proposals, which is in keeping with the continuing seriousness of our nation's regional imbalance, can we begin to use all our people and all our resources to the full.

The Minister has the opportunity and the time to let us know how the Yorkshire and Humberside Region is progressing and to give us what is virtually an annual report.