Former MP for Aldridge-Brownhills
I intend to confine my remarks to New Clause No. 2. Although the reference to commercial buildings is to be welcomed, I do not think that it goes nearly far enough. Underlying the Government's thinking there is still the mistaken notion that we can attract back into inner city areas manufacturing employment which will generate new jobs and a new inner city economy. At a time when the number...
I agree with the hon. Gentleman completely. What is needed is a re-examination of regional aid so that it considers not only the economies of regions but the great disparities within regions. The contrast between the poverty of the inner cities and other parts of a region can be just as great as that between an area in the South-East of England and the development areas. That sort of...
To whom?
Can my hon. Friend produce one vestige of statistical evidence to support that claim? Can he produce one example of an inner city area where manufacturing employment has increased?
No small firm needs an IDC at all. If the hon. Gentleman looks at the small firms in Birmingham, to scarcely one is big enough to require which he is referring, he will find that an industrial development certificate.
I had not intended to intervene on this new clause but I am very concerned about many of the fallacies put forward about the effects of the IDCs. I believe there should be a complete review of our regional policy, but to suggest that inability to obtain IDC certificates has in any way produced the economic problems of the inner cities seems to me unsupported by the evidence. The reason for...
I take the point about Typhoo Tea, but we are talking about linked firms, and there are not many engineering firms linked with Typhoo Tea. The argument I am developing is simply that most of the small firms in the inner cities are the firms which characteristically occupy the inner cities and do not require IDCs. They are likely to be affected only if the firms to which they are linked...
I, too, welcome the Bill as far as it goes, but my interest is slightly different from that of some other hon. Members. I do not represent a new town in the House, but I am a new town councillor on Milton Keynes Borough Council. Naturally, I see things very much from the Borough Council's point of view and from the point of view of a member of an elected authority with a large and...
