Housing Development and Political Stability

Subscribe to the Spectator and get twelve weeks of Britain's most incisive politics coverage, unrivaled books and arts reviews, and so much more, all for just twelve pounds. Not only that, but we'll also send you a twenty pounds Amazon gift card absolutely free. As a subscriber, you'll also be able to listen to all our other podcasts ad free. Go to www. spectator.co dot uk forward slash voucher to claim this offer now. Terms apply thank you very much to all of you and Steve very kindly agreed to come and chat about levelling up as it used to be called pride in place, both an evolution and arguably, we'll discover, an improvement on some of the ideas that we had in government. When I was Secretary of State, Steve occupies that role now. And we'll have a conversation which will give Steve a chance to explain what it is that the government hopes to achieve, what they've learned from the mistakes that the previous government made. But inevitably, we're meeting at a time when uh there is some political speculation about issues other than levelling up in pride and place. And I know that all of you are a thoughtful cerebral policy -oriented audience because that's the type of audience the spectator has. But Steve, I must begin just by asking you what your reflections are in the broadest sense about the last forty-eight seventy-two hours. Must you really ask that, Michael? In general . Well I mean gosh, I I well first of all it looks really bad to the public, I think, when governments do this and they they send us to that place down the road to take decisions and enact legislation to make their lives better and tackle the challenges that they face. And I I genuinely think it turns the public off when we turn inward and start talking to ourselves as my party has been doing these past um these past few days. Now as it turns out you know Wes isn't mounting a leadership challenge. I my belief is he doesn't have the numbers to do that, so he's he's pulled back from doing that, but he's resigned from the cabinet and I'm sorry to lose him as a colleague. I've I've known him for a very um a very long time. I think I think he was given a huge opportunity by the Prime Minister, who took Wes off the backbenches, put him into the shadow cabinet, then into the cabinet as health secretary, a fantastic job, and he had more money to spend than any previous health secretary has ever had. So I'm sorry he's decided not to uh not to continue with that. But the business of government will continue. Thank you. Thinking of that mission, thinking of Pride and Place and the role that it plays , both in your department, but also in the government. The Prime Minister has often emphasized how central this is to his vision. And it there's been buy-in across the government. area where there is any sense of dissent within the Labour family about the importance of this agenda. How would you define it? How does it differ from what I and the Tories were trying to do? I I think there's a trajectory actually, but um I mean you can trace it back a long way. Uh Hazel Blair's uh communities in control agenda if you remember that in the in in the late noughties. Then big society, uh David Cameron came in with, which didn't really turn into what I thought it had the potential uh to turn into. I think the next person that really picked that up was you uh with the leveling uh the leveling up agenda which also didn't deliver what I thought it had the potential to, partly because it didn't get the backing of the Treasury really, partly because there were political tensions within the Conservative Voter Coalition. The ball blue wall and the red wall saw their interests rather differently and that led that led to political problems. So it it's part of a developing agenda which for me is about how do you give people back more control over the things they see around them in the aspects of our lives that we use as the prisons to understand whether politics is working for us or not. And those things for me are our our family, our workplace and our hometown. One of the imperatives behind leveling up, uh as we saw it, was to address uh geographical inequality. Uh partly the fact that uh the north and the midlands were lagging behind in terms of growth and productivity and opportunity relative to the south-east and the east of England. But also within those regions, there were inequalities. So Manchester, to take a city at random, has a thriving economy, but the towns around it, uh Rochdale, Oldham, uh uh haven't uh shared in that prosperity in the way that they might. To what extent is Bryde and Place uh a means of addressing some of that regional inequality? Well I I should explain, shouldn't I that the Plied in Place program that we have, which is a five point eight billion pound program targeted on just under three hundred very poor communities, is a specific funding programme and we're not talking just about that. No. This is about a much wider agenda, exactly. Which is about local public service and democratic and state reform. So much, much, much bigger than just that one uh funding stream. But the the the issue you point to there is a very big problem. I I read some commentary written by Rachel Wolfe, who I think you were to commissioned to look at the impact or lack of it of the levelling up agenda. And she pointed to the absolute necessity of invest ment in big infrastructure, Northern Powerhouse Rail, the Oxcam arc. You need that, but it's never going to deliver within the time frame of a single parliament with a single political cycle. So people will hear politicians talking about big change, but they won't feel change. And we need change you can feel. Otherwise people will not believe that change, that that that change is coming. So we need things that will happen more quickly in localities, but we also need to make sure that that when big infrastructure is coming in it's not just those places the big cities that we're connecting up with a new new rail infrastructure it's all of the towns in the periphery that's people's hometown hometown.' Thats what they really care about. So we need to be looking at how we put in further infrastructure, uh whether that's physical or whether it's skills, bringing in the investment, uh, and allowing towns to develop expertise of their own, like they did in the century gone by. You know, Nottingham would be known for shoemaking at one point. That kind of localized expertise has gone, and yet people were very proud of their town making a particular thing. And I I used to live in Sheffield. I was at university there and then I stayed living there after I graduated because I I loved it so much. But it was a steel town, Sheffield cutlery. I still won't use any cutlery in my h When we were in government we identified some particular towns as places which were uh proof points, uh areas where there'd be some additional care and attention initially in order to try to make sure that that our version of leveling up uh um worked. Three of them were Blythe, Blackpool and Grimsby. Some people might have pointed out that those were areas where there were conservative MPs sitting on small majorities. What cynical people they are. Those conservative MPs are no longer there. But uh are there either localities or other tests, not uh uh sort of uh targets that you've got to reach come what may, but tests that you 've sort of set yourself internally where you think I'm really determined that we can see measurable improvements in this type of town, this type of community. Well, I think I think we have to do it that way. I think it's a very sensible way. You can't just impose revolution everywhere. This has to be evolution and we need to learn as we go. It's such a big and profound uh change. So yes, what what what I want to do is identify places and areas and with different circumstances, focus on different areas of uh challenge um and see how these approaches work and then you take the learning from those different approaches and that is what shapes your uh your emerging agenda. You mentioned earlier places like uh Nottingham and in particular Sheffield, where the traditional industries have gone. It's not to say that there aren't all sorts of uh exciting enterprises and obviously a very talented population there, but call it what you will glob,aliz ation or uh economic change more broadly, has meant that the what was the beating economic heart has been torn out of both of those well of many cities actually. Are there examples of other comparable countries, whether in Europe or elsewhere, where political leaders have managed to rest ore uh that sort of sense of economic hope alongside community revival. I think we should learn lessons from wherever we can learn them. I was um I you know when I was uh at Lambeth, I was part of a network um of leaders of cities globally. And then we had a conference in South Korea. There were people there from Madrid, Barcelona, which did a fantastic job at this. Estonia, which is a country, I know not a city, but it's got a city sized population doing incredible things with digital access to public services. Uh Taipei in Taiwan was doing doing similar uh similar work. Uh in Seoul, the mayor of Seoul was leading a very community-led model of regeneration. So I think we can look to all of these places for inspiration. I think we can look to what the UK does overseas. The UK is a global leader in international development, and in international development, you try to build the capacity of communities to adapt to and cope with change on their own terms in a way that will allow them to prosper. Into the future. And it's it's long baffled me why we don't take that expertise and learning and apply it in our own country country. So I I would like I'd like very much to do that. Our default model here is you see a problem, you set up a service and you use it like a la laser beam to try and resolve that service, but do that enough over a long enough time and you just incapacitate communities, yeah, and take away their ability to try out things for themselves, to be self-reliant, to become more resilient resilient. And I think you take away aspiration in the end by doing it that way. So we need a different model of support. Yep. It's there aren't many people who uh spontaneously praise Boris Johnson these days and and um you might not think that I would be the first to do so. But that point that you made was definitely something that was in his mind. So whatever criticisms may be directed at Boris of. the One points that he appreciated and felt is that the the Brexit uh referendum was, of course, about the European Union and other related issues, but it was also a signal from a significant part of the population who had felt, as you say, that their their perspectives, their interests had been either overlooked or neglected by uh by government. Thinking of the private sector, we've talked about government, we've talked about local government, we've talked about empowered citizens and lessons from other governments. What role does the private sector properly pla y in pride and place? Whether that's local enterpr ises or more broadly some of the uh the big players when it comes to construction, development and investment. Essential partners, right, is how I see it. So the model of place-based delivery that I was talking about earlier on would need to bring together services from the public sector but also the private sector. The commissioning model I was talking about is actually, quite blind to what sector provision comes from. So that there are three things you're trying to identify through that commissioning process. First of all, is the outcome a particular group of people want to achieve. It's not for the state to tell you what you want out of your life. It is for you to tell the state. So whatever issue or problem you have, what is the outcome you want to achieve? And then what is the intervention you want to achieve that outcome? You shouldn't be restricted to these two or three things that are on offer. If none of those are suitable, how do you shape an intervention that will really get me to what I want? And then the third part of that is who should provide that intervention. And I don't think by default it should be one particular sector. I think we've far too for far too long prioritised the provider interest, whether that's private or public in public service provision, and therefore not considered properly or fully the the user interest. Um uh one thing politics watchers here whose phones may have flashed up with a news alert let me give you fair warning of something that I will I will mention in a moment because what I'm going to do first of all the news Josh Solymans who is the Labour MP for Makerfield has announced that he would like to step down and his intention apparently is to make way to allow Andy Burnham to contest the consequent by election in order to come back into Parliament. I'll ask you about about that in a second, Steve, but I don't want to spring things on you unfairly . In in in in a before we get there, two other things, so time to think. The first thing uh that I was going to ask about was to what extent there's a tension between new development, new housing, big infrastructure projects, and the notion of communities taking back control. To what extent is there a bridge, metaphorical bridge, to be built between what a community feels and the need for that new On your what was the first point again? I'm too distracted by makeup views. We don't want these houses. Steve Reed , look, we do need this investment. How do you reconcile them? Well it's it's it's we need to be doing things with people and not to people. So I think people are much more likely in their own community to accept proposals for significant levels of development if they feel they can help to shape it. So you know I've been in an MP now for thirteen years, I was a counsellor for fourteen years I think before that. So I've had a long experience um of this kind of issue. And what what communities always come and and tell you is they don't like the look of it it's out of keeping there isn't the community infrastructure the the roads the public transport the GPs they need to have access to the information that will show them that this can or can't work. They need certainty that that infrastructure will be coming in with uh the new development and they need to feel it's in keeping or suitable and what they want. And I think when you treat development and development as if it's a spaceship that's just gonna land uh on a community over which they have no control. Why would anyone welcome that? Yep. I unsuccessfully, it has to be acknowledged, tried to take a similar approach. I came up with uh an acronym uh to describe what it was we were trying to do. I said that new developments should be beautiful, so that they they're in you know in keeping with what's already there. There should be infrastructure, exactly as you said, alongside that, the GP surgeries, the new schools. I said that there should be some sort of democratic input so that the community felt that they were part of it rather than it just being imposed. I felt that there should be concern for the environment, biodiversity net gain, whatever it might be. I said that people should uh feel that they were seeing a neighborhood built and not as you say a new dormitory uh plugged down. The initials of that spelt B-I-D-E-N Biden . Oh. And so I said And rather like Joe, the policy didn't necessarily take uh take root. But one member of my private office said, well, Biden may not be the perfect acronym, but if you rearrange the letters, they would have said in bed, and I think in bed with the Secretary of State will be even less popular than Biden. But it's interesting how you know we've thought we've thought quite similarly about some of these issues, despite coming from very different political traditions. And I think that's because we've listened to what communities have been saying. Yeah. But also it didn't happen. You know, so I think there are things we can learn about why is it that even though you're the Secretary of State and you sit in a big hoff office in Whitehall and you have thousands of civil servants. What is it that blocks some of these things from happening? Is it you know one of the reasons might be, I mean I'm interested in your views, but stability of and continuity of leadership driving the agenda because it takes quite a long time to get changed through a system. And I think we've maybe chopped and ch changed too much. You know, the way your your government doom scrolled through quite a lot of leaders, I'm still hoping mine won't follow that pattern. Yeah. But I think I don't think it's helpful. No, no, I you and it it it is actually directly relevant because my predecessor in the role, Rob Jenrick, I don't know what he's doing now. Um Answers and PostgreSQL. But Rob had some quite exciting and interesting uh proposals for for planning. But there was a big backlash from Conservative MPs who felt that he was going too far and it would mean too many homes in the in their areas. So so I came in and then uh Boris fell subsequently and there was a the a Tory leadership election. And I'm not trying to draw parallels here, but internal leadership elections in which party members have the vote mean that sometimes the candidates listen more to the party members than to the wider public. Not always. On this occasion, our party members, remember we were coming close to the end of our time in in government, though we didn't necessarily know it, were very worried about each individual seat. And so quite a lot of the party members said, you know, scrap these housing targets and so on. And so both Liz and Rishi said, yeah, we need to. There was the brief Liz uh period, then Rishi came in and he'd made that pledge. And whatever else one could say about Rishi, he felt I've got to honour it, that is what I said, even though these are changed circumstances. And so we had a sort of watering down, essentially, of the of the tightness of housing targets. And even though I did my best in my own way to find ways to try to maintain the momentum, overall the sense throughout the whole system , was the foot has been taken off the accelerator. That gets communicated in a variety of ways. And there are tools available to Steve, as there are to any Secretary of State through the planning inspectorate and elsewhere to try to keep local authorities off up to the mark. But leadership from the top involved both pulling every lever that you can, but also the overall sense of direction. And again, without wanting to be um uh too self critical, one of the things that I think that you did, both in opposition and in government, is to give that clear sense of direction overall about the the need to work with people but to overcome those obstacles. Any reflections on the maker field by election looming and the possible return to Westminster of the Mayor of Greater Manchester? Well, I mean first I'm sorry that Josh has taken that decision because only been in Parliament less than two two uh years. So I think I think that's a shame, a shame for Josh. There's a few hurdles before any particular candidate gets selected um and then elected, so I don't think I should say too much about that. What what I would say though, I think that point about stability is an important one. We live in incredibly challenging times. Well politically. But you go to these towns we've been talking about just now and speak to people and the lives they're living, incredibly challenging. And there are big issues that we as politicians have to grapple with about the role of the state, public services, how you support the investment in infrastructure that can spread the wealth of the nation much more fairly than it has been up until now. And I think I'm not I'm genuinely not talking about one particular individual here. But if anyone thinks there's a caped superhero that's coming our way who has got all the answers to these problems, they've got another thing coming because these are actually challenges that we all need to resolve together. And I think part of what's come out of the conversation we've been having here, Michael, is this is not just a conversation about politicians. We as politicians are links in a chain that go right through goes right through society. And if we really want that change then we have to open up decision making in your own community over the public services that you use to the people who are right there on the front line delivering them um using them and some of the models we've talked about allow that to happen. That is the long hard work change there there is no