Reflection & Anticipation

As we approach the Christmas period, it's worthwhile reflecting on the year that has passed and what we can anticipate in 2010.

For me personally, 2009 brought a year of change as I started a senior post at the Financial Services Authority, having successfully concluded my work for the Shadow Cabinet in June. This drove home the reality of the financial crisis, in terms of helping to reform our system of national financial regulation whilst fending off the excessive regulatory zeal of the EU. Work that is very much in progress…

For many individuals and families the wider economy will obviously determine whether this period is a time for rest or worry. As we will be publishing our draft Manifesto in the New Year period, it will be interesting to see how we can combine a message of urgency with one of hope. After the New Year I'll be publishing an article on Conservative Home which should cast an original perspective on the 'Cuts versus Growth' debate that is currently dominating the wider political environment.

Obviously the big event of 2010 will be the General Election. Whether Gordon chooses to go in March or May, one thing is certain – the country needs a change of government and every Conservative must be prepared to do his/ her best. My aim is to get in some good sleep over the next week or so, in the anticipation that there won’t be much on offer later in the year…!

However these issues can wait. I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Follow-up to South Staffs

Having made several trips to the South Staffordshire district over the past fortnight, I thought it would be sensible to provide some follow-up on the various issues that I’ve discussed with local residents, businesses and Cllrs.

1 - On the i54 development and the location of the main access junction, I recently spoke with Steve Holland who is Head of Asset Management for Advantage West Midlands (AWM). Steve explained that the i54 scheme had received outline planning permission for the 235,000m² site and AWM were now applying to develop the first phase of the project (15,000m²). Although the estimated £20 million cost of the M54 access junction scheme was unlikely to be met by central government given the current pressures on the Dept for Transport’s budget, AWM was able to secure additional funding from DfT to match its own spending towards the Wobaston Rd and Vine Island upgrades.

We discussed the option of securing funding through the EU Regional Development Funds (RDF) or the European Investment Bank (EIB) – Steve mentioned that AWM were exploring the former, but that the EIB were seeking a higher rate of return than the scheme could currently offer. He also expected the first tenants to sign-up in the near future – as market forces dictated the scale of return on the initial investment, this should in turn influence the availability of funding for the transport component of the project. Steve kindly agreed to agree to continue our dialogue and I’ll also be consulting some colleagues who are currently involved in similar infrastructure projects.

2 - On local farming and agriculture, I spoke with Clare Greener in the NFU’s West Midlands office (find out more here). Clare is the regional policy officer and we discussed the state of the agricultural industry across South Staffs and the West Mids. She explained that the NFU would soon be surveying its membership on priorities for the next CAP control period, which would begin in 2014. The NFU was focusing on three main areas: improving markets for local farmers; maintaining some form of direct support through the SFP regime; and improving the effectiveness of the Rural Development Fund (which is administered in the West Mids by Advantage West Midlands).

On the issue of a fair market price, the NFU had been calling for a Supermarket Ombudsman for the past four years, and Lord Mandelson was due to make a decision on this issue. Regarding the improvement of farm marketing and management, the NFU was working on this agenda through its network of Rural Hubs in the West Mids (including one in Staffordshire) and Clare also pointed to the work of English Farming & Food Partnerships, which serves famers in a consulting capacity (find out more here). It certainly seemed from our conversation that the system of support needed to be simplified and made more efficient from the farmer's perspective.

I also managed to speak with Andrew Porteous who until recently served as the NFU’s Chairman of the Wolverhampton & Stourbridge branch, and whose family had ran Leyfields dairy farm for the last forty years. Andrew explained that there were 12-13 local dairy producers left in the South Staffs district, reflecting the wider decline in the UK dairy industry in the face of downward pressures on price per litre. The silver lining on the cloud was the entry of new firms such as Robert Wiseman Dairies from Scotland and Nom yoghurt manufacturers based in Telford, which offered local dairy farmers a way of exiting unprofitable contracts with existing milk purchasers.

3 - On contested development, I’ve spoken with the offices of Dominic Grieve MP (Shadow Sec of State for Justice) and Bob Neill MP (Shadow Local Government Minister), regarding the trend in gypsy developments in South Staffs and the surrounding areas. There are two concerns here – the use of privacy clauses to cover ‘minority’ groups under the existing Human Rights Act and the lack of local authority discretion over planning applications. On the former, the Conservatives will replace the Human Rights Act with a Bill of Rights that will iron out this inconsistency. On planning policy, the Conservatives will provide more flexibility to local authorities, to ensure that they are not second-guessed by the planning inspectorate or appeals process – I provided policy advice for the Conservatives Green Paper on local government, which can be accessed here. I’ll be speaking further with both MPs, regarding how our general approach would engage with the specific circumstances in the South Staffordshire district.

4 - On the rural economy and local transport, I’m arranging to speak to Nick Herbert MP (Shadow Sec of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs) and Stephen Hammond MP (Shadow Transport Minister) in the New Year, to discuss the relevance of Conservative policy for the South Staffordshire district. I worked on our police reform policy alongside Nick’s team, in his previous role as Shadow Sec of State for Justice. Nick is also the Chair of the Conservative Rural Action, which campaigns for our broader rural policy (find out more here). I’ve also supported our Transport team - the Conservatives thinking on local transport policy can be accessed here. Tobias Ellwood MP (Shadow Tourism Minister, whom I worked alongside in Rwanda) will be forwarding some guidance on our policy towards rural tourism, which is so important to the South Staffs local economy.

Cheslyn Hay, Great Wyrley

Yesterday I followed up last weekend’s visit to the South Staffordshire district with a trip to Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley, which lie to the north of the district approx two miles outside Cannock. These settlements are former mining villages, whose residents now mainly travel to Cannock, Wolverhampton or Birmingham for work. As I walked around each village and spoke to local people and businesses, familiar themes came up in conversation.

The availability of local public transport was a frequent concern – on Sundays local residents can only rely on an hourly bus to Cannock or Wolverhampton and similar frustration was voiced with the rail service available at Landywood station. Care for the elderly was another worry – one lady expressing her anger with the Government for refusing her unemployment benefit, despite the fact she left her job to become a full-time carer for her mother (now deceased).

I ended my visit with trips to The Colliers Arms and The Talbot in Cheslyn Hay. Both pubs lie at either end of the local High St and have been around in one form or another since the late 19th/ early 20th centuries. At the Colliers Arms, I spoke with a single mother who missed the post-office that had closed in Cheslyn Hay two years ago, leaving the closest office a mile-and-half away in Great Wyrley. Another man expressed concern over the lack of facilities for young people, mentioning the overlap between under-age drinking and anti-social behaviour. He mentioned that his son was a member of two local golf clubs which offered excellent facilities for a combined average fee of £2 per day, and asked why more couldn’t be done locally.

Moving onto the Talbot, I introduced myself to a mixed group of regulars and explained my interest in their local area. One of the men was rather the worse for drink and challenged me over the issue of social care for the elderly. Before I had the chance to respond, he walked over and bundled me out of the door, exclaiming that if I couldn’t promise anything what was the point of talking! Undeterred I walked back in inside and spoke to one of his friends. He explained the man’s father was being forced to sell his house in order to pay for social care.

Somehow the group relaxed towards me and an animated discussion began. Anti-social behaviour and facilities for the young, pensions and care for the elderly, local transport, welfare dependency, lack of trust in politicians. The landlord who had moved up to South Staffs to get away from the stress of London, the lady who was concerned that politicians had forgotten how to listen. The young labourer forced to travel all over the country looking for construction work, the retired grandmother who had lived in the village for the past forty years and was worried for her grandchildren’s prospects. The man who had earlier manhandled me even offered to buy me a drink, continually expressing worry over his dad’s situation.

Eventually as the time came to leave, we shook hands and parted company. As I travelled back from Cannock back to Wolverhampton, I felt both saddened and angry. These people should have formed the primary focus for an incoming Labour Government and yet seemed to have been bypassed over the last decade. The scale of challenge for a would-be Conservative Government couldn’t be more stark, in the midst of the most severe recession this country has encountered – on the one hand we need to win back the trust of local communities in places like Cheslyn Hay and Great Wyrley, on other we need to show how we can help improve the quality of their lives.

Certainly enough to think about on the train back to London.

Remembering Derrida

Away from South Staffordshire, last night I attended the annual Christmas party organised by the in-laws to one of my closest friends.

This is always great fun, with a mix across generations and geography – some older friends living up the road, other younger ones travelling in usually from work. I arrived just after the carol-singing and recognised familiar faces from previous year’s festivities. Conversations were resumed where they had left off, ranging from politics to film-making, British comedy to painting and babies to grandparents. However this time something unexpected came up.

After finishing reading a bedtime story to my friend’s two children, I made my way into the kitchen where I was introduced to a demure-looking lady. She explained her professional background lay in literary theory, with an acute interest in continental philosophy. Asked whether she followed the work of the late Jacques Derrida, she responded positively and explained that she had met the professor when he had last visited the UK – he had kissed her on both cheeks and she had nearly fainted!

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher/ literary theorist whose work on deconstruction provoked fascination and ridicule alike. Born in 1930, he passed away in 2004. Our paths had crossed earlier in 1992, when I was a doctoral student at Cambridge. I was in the habit of attending fringe seminars and was sitting in a philosophy class when his name cropped up, only to be dismissed by the lecturer. Later in the term, the controversy flared higher when the University authorities awarded Derrida an honorary doctorate, despite vehement opposition from members of the University’s own philosophy faculty and others (see letter here). A series of lectures was organised in Cambridge to cast illumination on Derrida’s work, culminating in Derrida himself coming over to present a seminar and open lecture prior to receiving his doctorate.

When the dates of his talks came up, I made sure I was early in the queue. It wouldn't be appropriate here to try and describe his presentation from beginning to end – for an introduction to his work, try to get hold of copy of a book by Christopher Norris titled “Derrida” and originally published by Fontana (see here). Needless to say, for both those who were either enthralled or enraged by his work, he demonstrated an acute sense of intellectual curiosity, accuracy and wit. Afterwards I asked him to sign a leaflet advertising the seminar, which also featured a poem written by Paul de Man concerning the Holocaust. Seeing his face contort with anxiety, I immediately felt foolish – it must have bordered on the sacrilegious for him to deface such a text with an ‘autograph’. Nevertheless he obliged, and I was left with a rather foolish memento of an extraordinary occasion.

Reflecting on his life and the dispute around his work, I’m saddened that such a clever and kind person attracted such energetic attempts to isolate and disown him. Regardless, I’m glad to have had that conversation at last night’s Christmas party and for my memory and curiosity to be re-awakened.

Bus to Perton

Last weekend walking from Tettenhall, I stopped to ask directions for Codsall from a man waiting at a bus-stop. He pointed out that there wasn’t a direct bus but it would be fairly easy to get there via Perton. The availability of local public transport is a significant issue in South Staffordshire for those without recourse to a private car and most journeys between the villages require a trip into and back out of Wolverhampton.

Mike and I chatted as we waited for the Perton bus. He explained that he used to work for the council, serving as a school caretaker and then helping to keep the street-scene clean. Mike said that he was concerned about the rising incidence of anti-social behaviour in Perton, combined with under-age drinking, and mentioned that he had been recently mugged in the lane which connected Tettenhall to Perton – he’d been knocked of his bike, which had then been stolen.

Our bus arrived and took us to the Perton estate, which was built on the site of a former RAF station over the 70s and 80s and has a population of approx 12,000. I couldn’t help but be struck by the uniform style of housing – Mike had joked that Perton residents themselves sometimes got disorientated while driving through the estate. We eventually arrived at the shopping centre in Anders Square which marked the middle of the estate and which also was home to an interdenominational church.

Outside the Sainsbury’s store stood two gentlemen collecting donations on behalf of the Albrighton Rotary Club. I donated my spare change and chatted to one of them about the estate's history. Apparently the origins of the square’s name lay in the second world war, when the Dutch national army were housed on the base in preparation for D-Day. Today, one cannot help but feel that the layout provides an all too-ready opportunity for young people to gather in the absence of alternative recreational opportunities, hence Mike’s comments on anti-social behaviour. The square is largely hidden from the road and access is obtained through several disconnected approaches.

In terms of tackling anti-social behaviour, Labour’s introduction of local Crime & Disorder Partnerships (CRDPs) was meant to stimulate dialogue across the various agencies which together could help to reduce the incidence of such behaviour. However, all too often these partnerships have ended up serving as little more than talking-shops, with few benchmarks set for co-ordinated action. Reflecting on the Perton estate, one can understand the importance of using the urban planning process to ‘design’ out crime and disorder in the first place.

Local democracy

During the course of last weekend, I spoke to various Councillors in South Staffordshire.

Having stood myself as a council candidate in London, it’s always interesting to speak to local representatives around the country and understand how they approach their role. Most of the Councillors I spoke to held a combination of roles at the Parish, District and County council levels. This gave them a strong understanding of how specific issues intersected with the spectrum of decision-making structures across the county and district.

A good example centres on the local priority of securing affordable housing. South Staffs has been delegated a target of building approx 3,500 homes in the regional spatial strategy, of which the District Council has already completed around half its quota. Of the remainder, the Council has adopted a twofold strategy: firstly, allocating housing build across the villages that span South Staffs District, in a way that the incremental addition of new homes creates least pressure on existing communities and services; and secondly insisting that for developments greater than 5 homes, at least 30% should be composed of affordable housing.

The role of local Cllrs in this process has been to guage the potential impact that such development could have on their respective localities and to survey local feeling on these issues, whether through the medium of local area forums or ad-hoc community meetings.

The Cllrs themselves come from various backgrounds, some trained in the private sector as engineers, others from the public sector, having worked in the police service. Either way, the common bond they share is a concept of local stewardship, providing care and leadership for the area in which they have lived and worked, often for many years.

Local Cllrs often get a hard press, which makes it important to highlight those places where local government is working well. South Staffordshire District Council has been consistently marked highly in assessments by the Audit Commission and has received awards relating to its development of innovative practice. All of which supports the case that provided responsibility is matched with accountability, there is an imperative in delegating more service and funding flexibilities to local levels of government.

i54 Development

On Sunday afternoon I met up with several local Cllrs in South Staffs, to discuss the forward priorities and pressures facing the area. One of them kindly drove me to the i54 site, in order that I could see this development for myself.

The i54 development covers approx 220 acres on the boundary of South Staffs and Wolverhampton (the site was a former sewage treatment works) and will eventually host a technology-based business park. The development is on the northern side of Wobaston Rd, with the M54 motorway running across the northern section of the site.

There are several aims underlying this project: to deliver major employment opportunities (an estimated 6,000 jobs); maximise job creation potential in key industries; and contribute to the diversification and growth of the regional economy. With the University of Wolverhampton and General Electric Aviation rumoured to be amongst the prospective tenants, the development will clearly present significant economic opportunities for South Staffs.

However… there’s a hitch. The local Cllrs explained that Advantage West Midlands (RDA), which was originally down to support the project to the tune of approx £65 million, had hit a budgetary brick-wall. This meant that the original motorway access junction to the M54 had now been shelved, with the main access junction now being moved to Wobaston Rd. This will clearly have a major impact on local traffic congestion, feeding back to places such as Bilbrook and probably undermining the net benefits for localities in South Staffs.

The reason why this issue struck a chord with me lay in a former life. When I was working at the Treasury, I helped to develop a major policy which created a framework of Regional Funding Allocations across the English regions (more background here). The aim was to encourage central government departments focused on transport, housing and economic development issues to delegate more influence over these funding decisions to local & regional bodies. In turn these bodies would be expected to pool their resources, so that these could be optimally allocated across the respective areas over time, thereby maximising overall net benefits. In ordinary language, this policy would support co-ordinated investment across housing, transport and economic development, so that funding/ project delivery gaps did not emerge and the net benefits of investment were not diluted.

The policy was piloted for the 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), but only partly operationalised for the 2007 CSR. The i54 situation highlights the gap between strategy and delivery. If AWM cannot afford to connect the site to the M54, simply moving the access junction to the other side does not represent a sustainable solution. Creating more congestion will create costs for residents and businesses alike, thereby reducing the net benefits of the development. Instead, the regional funding model should operate by pulling in sufficient investment to complete the original scheme (sourced either from the regional housing or economic development budgets), so that the full benefits can be captured. As returns accrue back through the respective tax take from the tenants, the monies could then be returned back to the original funding source.

I think I’ll be contacting AWM over the next few days, asking for more details around this situation…