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  • Anthony Steen – 1978 Speech on the Loyal Address

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Steen, the then Conservative MP for Liverpool Wavertree, in the House of Commons on 1 November 1978.

    I wish to speak about the part of the Gracious Speech to which I do not believe that other hon. Members have yet addressed their minds. I refer to the great towns and cities and revival of those great cities, because that has been a major plank of successive Government strategies, both economically and socially.

    I think it was the Wilsonian Administration about 10 years ago which started it off. It was quite natural, therefore, that in the Gracious Speech there should be a line about the inner city areas stating that the Government would continue to press forward with their partnership plans. Presumably, the Secretary of State for the Environment will be at the helm, as he has been up to now, directing the operations. This Session he will be armed with the Inner Urban Areas Act and the partnership committees now fully in being. The only problem is that the Secretary of State has now been at the helm for some three or four years and not very much has happened to show his work.

    If one looks at the cities, one will not see the new dawn about which the Secretary of State has been talking. In fact, many people have grown restless when they have seen no evidence that the cities are on the mend. They also find it difficult to reconcile the utterances of the Secretary of State, who keeps ​ saying how gratified he is with progress, with the stark reality which shows our major cities continuing in their rapid decline. How can the Secretary of State possibly equate his optimism with the persistently high levels of unemployment which we find in most of our major urban areas, with the lengthening list of firms wanting to leave the inner cities, or with the continuing exodus of people from the inner areas to the outer zones and the ever-increasing shortage of good homes? I am only sorry that the Secretary of State for the Environment is unable to be with us tonight. In the face of this situation, the provisions of the Inner Urban Areas Act are damaging. I shall explain why this is so.

    The Act has given the poor urban authorities the powers to increase their borrowing. Therefore, those already heavily committed in debt to crippling housing debt charges can just increase those charges. The Act has tempted some of the most deprived urban authorities to become even more deprived. It is driving them deeper and deeper into debt and creating even more problems for them in the future.

    The Inner Urban Areas Act is just one manifestation of the tricks up the Government’s sleeve. It is a mirage created by the Government that prosperity for our cities is on the horizon. The illusion has been fortified by a whole gamut of cleverly chosen named projects which convey positive thinking but which so far have meant absolutely nothing.

    For example, there are now seven so-called partnership schemes covering 15 local authority districts. There are 15 programme districts and 14 recently announced designated districts. These are on top of the existing areas which are included in development area status, special development status and the old assisted areas. No one quite understands what these areas are or what they do. All we know is that there has been no sign of any revival in our towns and cities in the last four years.

    It seems from the Gracious Speech that the Government propose to continue with those schemes and with those names. In the last few years the Secretary of State has followed the publication of the White Paper on policy for the inner cities by doing two things. He has topped up the ​ urban aid programme, which had lost its real force, and he has introduced a Bill, which is now an Act, which will make the poor local authorities poorer because they will be asked and expected to increase their debt charges.

    The White Paper from which we expected so much is no more than the culmination of a decade of activity in research analysis action projects which have now cost the taxpayer £100 million. The House will recollect where all this began—with the urban aid programme, which first came about in 1968. This was to deal with the pockets of deprivation. Then we had the community development project, the educational priority areas, the young volunteer force, the neighbourhood schemes, the urban guideline studies and the inner area studies. Then research was started into transmitted deprivation, followed by the quality of life studies. Then we had the urban deprivation unit and comprehensive community programmes, and the GLC set up a deprived areas project. There are now area management and research trials in Liverpool.

    When the White Paper was published 18 months to two years ago, the nation held its breath and thought that at last, after all the research schemes and action projects, the actual action was about to start. The principal actors seemed to be in the right place, the set-up was brilliant, the lyrics were racy, the producer came from a good stable, and, indeed, it was to be a spectacular. What, in fact, did we see? None other than our old friend Mickey Mouse. The Government’s approach to the cities’ problems has been as meaningful as a Walt Disney cartoon.

    In Liverpool there have been only three partnership meetings in the last 18 months. These were chaired by the Secretary of State for the Environment himself. There have been a few other Ministers present—from Industry, Employment and Education. Then the leaders of the Conservative, Liberal and Labour groups also attend, and county councillors, the health authority and many others are involved in partnership meetings.

    If that was all we were witnessing, we would perhaps be content that there was one group of people looking once again ​ into the problems of the inner city. But that partnership committee is but one of a great number of committees. There is an officers’ steering committee consisting of more than a dozen principal officers, not to mention the working groups of senior officials on the economy, housing, physical areas, environment, recreation and transport. There is also an inner area sub-committee made up of 20 councillors, and there are more committees and sub-committees than I have mentioned.

    But as the non-statutory bodies—the voluntary organisations and community groups—are not involved in the partnership, despite pressure from this side of the House that they should be included, the voluntary bodies have started to go it alone. They have set up rival partnership committees. The one that is now running in Liverpool has 170 organisations meeting every two or three months, running exactly in parallel to all the other Government committees. The conflict and confrontation are right there in the partnership.

    Despite the buzz and whizzing of papers through the official corridors, the numbers of acres of vacant and derelict land in Liverpool are still around 2,000, and over three-quarters belongs to the city council and nationalised industries.

    Therefore, despite the huge build-up to the effect that all the problems were to be solved, we have still exactly the same number of derelict and vacant areas which are not being used to produce wealth or create jobs in the very area where the partnership committee is at work. It is here that we see land hoarding at its worst. This has caused artificially high book values. Not surprisingly, authorities cannot find buyers because scarcity knocks up the rent and rates as well as driving small businesses away from the inner cities, and jobs with them.

    This is no way to woo back the thousands who have already fled the inner city in the last decade. But surely that is what the partnership is purported to be all about. It is about revitalising the inner areas, creating new jobs and new homes and developing new businesses. What is the point of building new advance factories in inner Liverpool on Government money when there are so may good, empty, older factories which are not used and which, with a little modernisation, rehabilitation and imagination, ​ could be good for use again? What justification can there be now that the Inner Urban Areas Act is in force for permitting the Lucas Aerospace factory, a company which has closed its large old premises in my constituency, to move out into a green field site on the edge of Liverpool, depriving the inner city of both jobs and rate income?

    That makes nonsense of partnership, because that is what partnership would not approve of. There is plenty of space left in Liverpool and many other principal areas which could be used first before green field site development. But green field site development on the edges of a city is always cheaper and the infrastructure in the new sites is more reasonable than if one seeks to put infrastructure back into the inner cities. One reason for this situation is the artificially high land value which the inner city now attracts.

    It is also strange that the partnership concentrates on the inner areas, because many of the large provincial towns, in which the population has moved from the inner city to the outer city, are where the concentrations should be. The populations are no longer in the core areas because, as a result of demolition, they have moved to the edges. Yet the edges of the city comprise the one area—and Liverpool is no exception—not included in the partnership.

    The partnership specifically excludes those major areas of population density and concentrates on inner area revival. It is in the outer city that the social problems exist. The one thing that the partnership areas have in common is that they include a number of marginal seats within their boundaries, and they have also suffered from severe cut-backs in public expenditure over the past five years.

    For example, we were spending £5·3 million on improvement grants in Liverpool in 1974–75. In 1977–78 that figure was down to £1·5 million. Local authority mortgage loans to buy and improve totalled £4·7 million in 1974–75 but barely £1 million last year. If the partnership is talking about reviving the inner city and rehabilitating the older houses, it must be pointed out that the sums of money in the local authority budget which could do this work have been drastically cut.

    What is partnership all about? All one can say about it is that the Government are trying to put right the money they took away. There is no question of giving more money or new money. They are merely putting back and making good the previous losses. If this is all the partnership is about, why set up such an elaborate structure? We could have done without the Minister and his colleagues walking down Dale Street in Liverpool, smiling from side to side and posing for local photographers. But that is what it appears partnership is about, because to date the new money is hardly sufficient to replace the old and the replacement money is accompanied by far greater Government controls and sanctions. First they took it away, then they put it back to what it was before—but with increased controls and sanctions.

    Even on the most charitable interpretation, the most that can be said for the partnership in our area is that it is a little more of the same thing, but it has done no particular good for people living in the inner areas. Far from finding cures for old ills, the partnership appears to have done little more than partly refill some of the local authority coffers for special needs—improvement of council housing, rehabilitation of private homes, grants for mortgages and loans and grants for voluntary work.

    Liverpool found its £30 million housing budget increased to £40 million—the level of some years ago—through the partnership. We then had the extraordinary situation of the director of housing passing a confidential note, which everyone now knows about, telling the local authority that he cannot spend £40 million because he does not have the machinery to cope with and process all the applications which will result from the increased cash and saying that, unless he is given more staff and resources or the rules and regulations are changed, he will have to hand back £3 million to £5 million this year. That has happened in an area where the housing is probably the worst in the country.

    There is no point in topping up a fund which has dropped unless it is accompanied by all the paraphernalia and bureaucracy that is needed to run the fund or unless the rules are changed. The partnership will not do that. It insists on playing according to the rules as they ​ have been, rather than having new approaches and innovations.

    I am told that similar problems exist in other spending departments where an injection of funds, far from helping to solve problems, is merely creating new problems within the departments. If the partnership were just this it would be an extremely sick joke, because the new machinery would be fouling up existing mechanisms which were working before the partnership came along. However, I suggest that there is a far more sinister move behind the partnership.

    One may ask whether this is the first step of the Government to establish a sort of regional supremo for the metropolitan areas which the Government feel have failed to rejuvenate their urban areas. Is there to be a sort of local dictator from London to push, chivy and ultimately control the local authorities in the area? Let me explain why I think that this is happening.

    In some ways the Government have lost faith in the Liverpool city council as well as the Mersey county council. They consider those local authorities to be without ideas, but that is not true. The Liverpool city council is already building houses for sale, and the county council has a number of exciting and interesting projects to revive the economy of Merseyside. However, such initiatives are seemingly discouraged because of the partnership’s insistence that every new project that emanates from the city council or county council must come under the partnership scheme.

    There is already talk about setting up sub-committees of the partnership so that the local authorities are subordinated to this new tier of government. Is the partnership to become a new tier of government? Has it been subtly erected above the local authorities so that the Minister has control of what goes on at that level? Can we expect this to be the first stage of manoeuvring in regional control and regional government? Is that what the partnership is all about? If the partnership means a new approach and a new initiative, where are they’? All that we have seen is a little more of the old thing served up in new guises.

    There is talk of the urban aid programme. It is the upgraded 1978 model of the 1968 scheme. It has broader terms of reference and an increased amount of public money. No one has ever seen the urban aid programme tackling our major cities’ problems. On the contrary, it has helped to bring forward some of the projects that are already in the pipeline that the city council would have undertaken in any event. It has helped to do that a little earlier. For example, there is a sports complex in Edinburgh Street, Liverpool. It is stuck in a park in the middle of nowhere. The council has been trying to bring it forward for many years. As a result of the urban aid programme it has managed to start building it now. The complex is virtually completed. However, it will do nothing to solve unemployment, housing or the provision of jobs in the inner area.

    One wonders whether the Government would be better to pay off Liverpool’s housing debt for a few years—it is now running at £28 million a year—instead of all this partnership nonsense. If they paid off the housing debt for two or three years, that would allow the council to spend its own money as it thought best.

    One of the problems of urban aid is that it distorts the existing priority lists of the local authority by pushing forward schemes in which the Government are particularly interested, thus distorting the picture locally.

    I should like to ask the Minister, if he ever turns up in the Chamber, one or two further questions. Does he expect to hear proposals from one partner in the partnership in areas of concern which are the responsibility of another partner in the partnership? Is it the Government’s belief that the needs of the inner cities can be met merely by taking existing local authority services and Government functions and trying to extend their boundaries? Surely the Home Office community development project showed the limitations of neighbourhood-based experiments finding new ways of meeting the needs of those living in areas of high social deprivation.

    If the Government are not planning to make the partnership a vehicle for new solutions and the creation of change, the cities have been hoodwinked, as well as the people living in them. All that we are ​ witnessing is another project in the same mould that will deceive and distort. It will do nothing to solve the real problems. If the sum result of the White Paper is another, more elaborate talking shop, dereliction and despair in our industrial towns will continue and worsen.

    It may be that the Government have already concluded that there are no solutions to the ailing cities. If so, why erect such an elaborate fa çade to conceal the truth, undermine local authority powers and block up the existing machinery? I cannot believe that the Government are that stupid. It must be part of a greater strategy to bring the cities under Government control with Whitehall and the Minister in a new tier of government on top and in charge.

  • Anthony Steen – 1978 Speech on Inner City Liverpool

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Steen, the then Conservative MP for Liverpool Wavertree, in the House of Commons on 20 June 1978.

    When the Prime Minister, in September 1976, announced a major review of inner city policy, the whole country held its breath waiting for a major announcement—a plan to rejuvenate the ailing towns and cities of the nation. For the previous 10 years the Government had indulged in innumerable investigations. There had been 15 phases of the urban aid programmes, the community development projects, the educational priority areas, the neighbourhood schemes and the six town studies divided between urban guidelines and the inner city studies. There was a study on transmitted deprivation, the quality of life studies, the urban deprivation unit, the comprehensive community schemes, the Greater London Council deprived areas project, the area management trials and, last but not least, the EEC poverty programme, which is still going on. In all, £100 million of Government money was spent on these inquiries.

    When, in April 1977, the Secretary of State presented the Government’s proposals for reviving the inner cities, it was seen as the culmination of a long line of investigation and research. The Secretary of State said:

    “we have to shift the emphasis of Government policy and bring about changes in the attitudes of local authorities, of industry and of institutions.”—[Official Report, 6th April 1977; Vol. 929, c. 1227.]

    He spoke about a unified approach to urban problems. Little did we guess that that meant a unified approach of all those in the public sector—in local and central Government—to the exclusion of private sector and industry, of even the unions, of the voluntary organisations, the insurance funds, the banks and the local people themselves.

    The Secretary of State spoke of the immediate priorities to strengthen the economies of the inner cities, with suitable firms being encouraged to establish themselves in the inner areas. He spoke of policies of population movement, and from what one can gather he meant that the people were to be brought back into the inner cities.

    The White Paper that followed, presented to Parliament in June 1977, recognised that a halt had to be called to the outflow of population. Liverpool has lost 150,000 people in the 10 years up to 1976. That is 22 per cent. of its population. The plan then was to set up special partnerships, but after a year we learned from a parliamentary answer that the Secretary of State had chaired the second meeting of the Liverpool partnership committee. The right hon. Gentleman said:

    “The Committee discussed key issues and priorities. It agreed that to improve the quality of life for those who live and work in the inner city, so as to minimise the outflow of population, must be the overall objective. Measures to improve employment prospects would make the most impact. Other priorities in the physical and social fields were also discussed. Specific proposals will be developed for the committee to consider at its next meetings.

    The Committee also agreed on arrangements for consulting voluntary organisations”

    —we are still awaiting those—

    “as the work proceeds, including the establishment of a central information point on the partnership and the production of a newssheet.

    The Committee took note of a proposed submission by the City and County concerning the urban programme for 1978–79. They noted representations by the City and County Councils about the Inner Urban Areas Bill and the proposed new magistrates court ​ building in Liverpool.”—[Official Report, 13th March 1978; Vol. 946 c. 27–28.]

    That answer was given nearly a year after the partnerships had been established, and a year after the White Paper. That was about two years after the Prime Minister had called for a complete review.

    To many people in Liverpool this has all been a very sick joke, a bitter pill, because they have been able to see little improvement in the inner city, and all the evidence indicates that things are getting worse.

    The White Paper that was published in June last year called for a new approach to housing. It sought to put a stop to the bulldozer and to prevent local authorities from hoarding land. Great concern for environment planning, education, social services and health was expressed. You name it, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and it is in the White Paper. The aim was to revive the inner city, the Government’s Utopian dream. But it is a facade. As we can see, there is no visible change in the environment in the city. The policy for the inner city is not failing; it never got started.

    I want to give three instances to illustrate the view that I am putting forward on behalf of a great number of people in my constituency and others that the Government’s much publicised urban revival programme is not happening in one of the most deprived and needy cities in this country.

    I cite three examples, but I could cite a great many more. Take the case of the 100 houses which are to be built on a green field site known as Crawfords playing field, in the middle of a residential area in my constituency. It has from time immemorial provided a magnificent open space, just the kind of environmental improvement of which the White Paper speaks for the population that lives around it.

    This has been on the plans of the local housing association, Merseyside Improved Housing, which, of course, is a publicly financed body. The plan is to build 100 houses, which will entirely destroy the environment and the amenity.

    The Liverpool City Council has gone along with this plan. It is giving planning permission. This will mean that the site will be developed and the 100 houses will ​ be built on it. This will destroy its tranquility and its advantages.
    In one of the annexures to the White Paper, which sets out the policy and how everyone should go about it—

    Mr. Robert Parry (Liverpool, Scotland Exchange)

    Will the hon. Member give way?

    Mr. Steen

    No, I shall not give way. I am sorry. It is because in the last debate that I had on Liverpool, when the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) was speaking, he refused to give way to me. If the hon. Member for Liverpool, Scotland, Exchange (Mr. Parry) will excuse me, I should like to try to finish the arguments that I am putting forward.

    The important point here is that paragraph 21 of the annexure to the White Paper says:

    “The fall in population in many cities provides opportunities, as funds permit, for creating more open space in inner areas for recreation and visual enjoyment. Dual use arrangements with local schools may be possible. Not all environmental improvement requires a lot of extra resources.”

    The paragraph goes on to deal with a great number of things that local authorities can do to improve the amenity and the environment.

    But in this case the local authority is not proposing to do anything at all to stop this butchering of a green field site from going ahead. Perhaps the Minister can explain how this can be when there are about 1,200 acres of unused land in the partnership areas alone in the inner city, and of those 1,200 acres, 800 are owned direct by the Liverpool City Council, a further 200 are owned by nationalised industry and there is very little land in that partnership area which is privately owned.

    So we have the Liverpool City Council giving planning consent for a green field site in the middle part of the city, we have the inner city with vast tracts of vacant land in the city council’s ownership, and we have a public housing association, funded entirely by the Government, building houses on a green field site which is of amenity value.

    This, of course, is in direct contradiction to the principles expounded by Ministers in successive speeches and in the White Paper, and in many ways in the ​ Inner Urban Areas Bill. There is no point in talking about the wish to bring back houses to the inner city when in the next month or two a start will be made on desecrating a green field site and bringing population further out of Liverpool into the middle city. The green field site is not in the inner area, it is out of the partnership area.

    Perhaps the Minister will be kind enough to explain how that squares with the Government’s policy, bearing in mind that the Secretary of State is chairing the partnership committee in the area.

    I should like now to turn to a secondary point flowing from that, namely, that the argument of the city council is that the families who will be living in these houses will come out of houses which are near to the site and which are to be demolished. Again, the Secretary of State has consistently stated, over and over again, starting at the habitat conference in Vancouver in 1976, that Britain has pensioned off the bulldozer, and that in the cities the bulldozer will no longer go on knocking things down. But in Liverpool it continues at an alarming rate. Hundreds of families are being displaced and pushed outwards as the bulldozer continues. This is a good example.

    Therefore, instead of these houses being rehabilitated, which apparently is Government policy, that is not happening in Liverpool to the extent that it should be happening, and the bulldozer continues as the houses decline. If the Government were serious about the revival of the inner city, they would see that mortgage facilities were available for the pre-1919 houses, which at present are not within the local authority grant scheme. The older houses in the inner city will continue to be demolished, whereas the Government’s policy is to revive them. Perhaps the Minister can deal with that point as well.

    Mr. Parry

    Will the hon. Member give way?

    Mr. Steen

    No, I shall not give way at the moment. I am sorry.

    Mr. Parry

    It is on one quick point.

    Mr. Steen

    All right.

    Mr. Parry

    I thank the hon. Member for giving way. He refused to give way ​ to me earlier because my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Garston (Mr. Loyden) refused to give way to him on a previous occasion. The hon. Member is attacking the Liverpool City Council. At present, the council consists of a Liberal-Conservative pact.

    Mr. Steen

    I am grateful for that intervention, but the hon. Gentleman is wrong. It is a Liberal pact. There are Labour councillors and Liberal councillors, and the Conservatives are holding the balance of power. On this issue—the green field site—the Liberal and Labour councillors are united. That is what I have been told. I understand that they will not swap this green field site for some of the derelict acres of waste land. If the situation is otherwise, I stand to be corrected, but I am told by totally reliable sources that it is a Liberal-Labour pact—perhaps those councillors have not heard what has happened here—and the result is that this land is to be built on.

    I must move on now to my second example, which makes nonsense of the proposals in the Inner Urban Areas Bill and concerns the development of small businesses in the inner city. I pass over the “fourteenth Budget” and the damage done to the small trader by an extra 2½ per cent. on the payroll tax—which has been mentioned quite a bit since that “fourteenth Budget’—and I turn directly to the case of Pine Engineering. Pine Engineering is a small, successful precision engineering company in Liverpool.

    Mr. Pine has told me that his company is planning to move because its premises are to be demolished for a public building programme, inner roads, and so on. Mr. Pine’s situation is in a constant state of flux, because the county wants to build the inner road and the Liberals on the city council say that they will not have it. There is constant uncertainty. But Mr. Pine knows that if he is forced to move he will not be able to remain in the inner city. The Minister should recognise that.

    Inner city land is currently valued at between £30,000 and £36,000 an acre. Land in the outer areas of Liverpool is currently valued at £9,000 per acre. Mr. Pine cannot possibly transfer his business to one of the vacant derelict sites in the inner area which are owned by public authorities and nationalised industry, because he cannot pay at the rate of £36,000 an acre. The Inner Urban Areas ​ Bill will not do him the slightest good because he cannot avail himself of any of its provisions and it does not allow him to get finance to buy or lease land.

    The most that Mr. Pine can do is to move into one of the Department of Industry’s advance factories, which are being built, or one of the Liverpool City Council’s advance factories, which also are being built. That is what is happening. One will find that existing businesses are transferring to the advance factories, and the amount of new employment and new industry coming into the Government’s advance factories and those of the city council is minimal.

    Thus, the Government’s aim of increasing the number of jobs and raising the level of prosperity in Liverpool is not being realised because of the artificially high land values which have been attracted by the public open spaces. So long as the local authorities are allowed to hoard this land, as nationalised industry is allowed to hoard it, the artificially high land values will continue. As I said in the Standing Committee on the Inner Urban Areas Bill, until the Government do something about land values in a place such as Liverpool, we shall see small businesses moving out and job creation reduced, and the inner city will go from bad to worse and decline My third example is the Victor works of Lucas, which is in my constituency. This is to be closed, with a loss of 1,400 jobs. I was delighted to learn that the Government are to help in the building of a new factory and that Lucas is to be able to employ 400 or 500 of those men at that works. But—one would hardly credit it—that factory is to be built on a green field site outside the city boundaries, in, I believe, Wilson Lane, in Huyton, and no jobs will be created in the inner city.

    Mr. Eddie Loyden (Liverpool, Garston)

    Wilson Road.

    Mr. Steen

    Wilson Road—I am obliged. How the Government justify the investment of millions of pounds in a factory outside the city boundary, which means that the jobs which could have accrued to the city centre will not be there—this is one of the problems of the inner city—I cannot understand, especially when the whole direction of their policy is supposed to be for the ​ revival of the inner city and the building of new factories. I wonder how the Government justify that, and how the city council allowed it to happen.

    There is a population drift of 25,000 a year from Liverpool. Thirty per cent. of those living in the inner city want to get out. Unless new businesses are put in the inner city as a conscious policy, that drift will continue.

    With the city council’s aid, the Government are abandoning the housing programme which would revive the inner city, they are giving up the intention to create new jobs; and they are financing new industry outside the city boundary.

    What have the Government done to persuade the council that this is not the way to conduct their business? What does the Minister intend to do to halt this drift? To the people of Liverpool, it appears that he is simply shuffling the chairs around on the deck of the “Titanic”.

  • Anthony Steen – 1978 Speech on Inner City Land

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Steen, the then Conservative MP for Liverpool Wavertree, in the House of Commons on 4 April 1978.

    I beg to move,

    That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make it compulsory for local authorities, nationalised industries, other public bodies and statutory undertakings to dispose of vacant land in their ownership in certain circumstances; and for connected purposes.

    The aim of the Bill is to compel those local authorities guilty of land hoarding either genuinely to develop vacant land in their possession within a limited period or to put it on the open market by way of public auction so that others can do just that.

    The scale of land hoarding by local authorities and nationalised industries is not fully known. Suffice it to say that ​ 250,000 acres of prime land, mostly in the city centres, lie dormant. There are over 16,000 acres of derelict or vacant land in London. There are over 2,000 vacant acres in Liverpool and 1,100 in Birmingham. In Liverpool 60 per cent, of the vacant land in the inner city belongs to the local authority, and a further 20 per cent, is in the ownership of British Rail, the water authority or other public undertakings. Much of this vacant land has come about as a result of massive demolition programmes and the failure of the public authorities to rebuild on it.

    The consequences of this land remaining dormant are far-reaching. It creates an artificial demand for what is left in the inner city. It sends land prices soaring, and rents with them.

    Secondly, as a consequence, new factories and offices are preferred to be built on the green field sites on the edge of the city, where land is cheaper.

    Thirdly, the failure to create jobs or to provide homes in the inner city results in a mass exodus of population. Between 1966 and 1976, Liverpool lost 22 per cent, of its population—150,000 people; Manchester lost 18 per cent.—110,000 people; and Birmingham lost 8 per cent.—85,000 people.

    Fourthly, by reducing the rate base, the city councils have inadequate funds to provide services for the businesses that remain. The small firm is, therefore, penalised by massive commercial rate demands, and often loading on top of it for refuse collection.

    Fifthly, inadequate rate income in the inner areas means that domestic ratepayers in the middle and outer bands of our cities are increasingly subsidising the provision of services in the city centres. If wealth is to be created in our cities, a prerequisite is that the dormant land there must be used to the full. So long as it lies idle, it attracts an artificial value which, as it continues to rise, makes it less and less possible, for anyone to buy.​

    The Bill would therefore force public authorities to make up their minds. Either they can develop their land and build homes and factories on it, creating new jobs and providing accommodation to tempt back skilled workers who left many years ago, or, if they prefer not to develop the land themselves, it will automatically be auctioned at the market value to the highest bidder and with a covenant that the buyer must develop it within a limited period.

    If vacant land remains tied up with public authorities, our cities must continue to die. Small businesses will continue to be driven out and the domestic ratepayer will get less and less value for his money.

    The nation’s attention is focused on the revival of our cities, yet without the release of dormant land there can be no such revival. It is the cornerstone of our return to prosperity, but there is no hint of such a plan in the current Government legislative programme. That is why I seek leave to introduce this Bill.