Inequalities of Region and Place — House of Lords, 2021-10-14
Topic: Housing
John Horam (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, on his maiden speech. It had all the fluency of his father, and that, as he may be aware, is the highest possible praise in terms of oratory It is a great pleasure to take part in a debate launched by my noble friend Lord Liddle—I can call him my noble friend—whose commitment to his Cumbrian roots is so manifest, including in being a councillor in Wigton. I too am a northerner: I was born in the village of Grimsargh, which is now part of the city of Preston, the administrative capital of Lancashire. Preston is known locally as "proud Preston", and there are many proud industrial towns in that part of the world. There is Burnley, which at one stage had produced more cotton than any other town in the world, Blackburn, Nelson, Colne and Accrington. When I was growing up there in the 1940s and 1950s, there were textile mills, mines and steel and engineering works, and they were thriving. We believed in the north that essential goods such as textiles, steel and coal went south and, in return, we got trivial consumer goods such as pet foods. However, in the 1960s and the 1970s, all that changed as the mills and the mines disappeared, and Britain became a service economy based on a booming London and south-east Successive Governments, starting with Lord Hailsham with his rather risible flat cap, attempted to address this growing imbalance. Will the present effort fare any better? We do not know, but it certainly does not lack ambition. For a start, it has a good title. Despite some remarks we have heard during this debate, I think that "levelling up" has some flavour and guts about it, rather than "regional policy", which had a rather dry-as-dust tone. More importantly, we have a Prime Minister who knows that his electoral fortune depends on delivering it because his 80-seat majority is composed of red wall constituencies in the north and Midlands. "Levelling up" is in the title of the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and, as has been said, we have a junior Minister in Neil O’Brien who has long proselytised for central policies in this area. We also have my noble friend the Minister who will reply to the debate today. Although born in the south, he has a good north country name. I can tell him that there are many Greenhalghs in Lancashire, and he should be proud of that We have a levelling-up fund, a community renewal fund, a shared prosperity fund, and free port and towns funds. We have the beginnings of effective localism in the shape of city mayors. Here I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and agree with my noble friend Lord Liddle. Do not underestimate the power of a dynamic individual. Think Andy Street in the West Midlands, Ben Houchen in Teesside, and, going further back, what the Chamberlains did for Birmingham. All this can make a difference if properly handled. In my own area, we hope that Preston will combine with Chorley and South Ribble to make another city area I also think that levelling up will help the south. As the Prime Minister said when he was Mayor of London: "Do we want the south-east of Britain, already the most densely populated major country in Europe, to resemble a giant suburbia?" That is the way it is going and people do not like it. They are fed up with the endless housebuilding, the relentless congestion, the destruction of open country and the sense of overcrowding. Properly conducted, levelling up should help with this So should curbing the mass immigration that the Blair Labour Government instigated in recent years. Over 80% of our population growth has been down to immigration. I note that my noble friend is a Minister in both the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities and the Home Office. I therefore hope he will point out to his colleagues in the Home Office that they could make a major contribution to his problems as a Housing Minister by reducing the too-high level of immigration we have had in recent years. If we did that, we would not need to build 300,000 houses a year; the blue wall seats would be just as happy as the red wall seats. I hope he will pursue this point between the two departments with all the vigour and energy of his Lancashire forebears.