Broken promises
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised when politicians don’t keep their word, but the sheer bare faced nature of it can still be breathtaking.
I remember clearly sitting opposite David Cameron when he visited Brierley Hill before the election and asking him whether the regional development agencies (RDAs) would be abolished. He said there was to be no one size fits all solution and where there was local support, they would be retained. It was a line echoed by business secretary Vince Cable a few weeks ago. He added that RDAs in the Midlands and the north were most likely to be retained because of the scale of the economic problems these areas face.
Now it turns out that once again fine words butter no parsnips. Hidden away amongst the major announcements in George Osborne’s Budget speech on Tuesday was the news that all the RDAs - including Advantage West Midlands (AWM) and East Midlands Development Agency (Emda) - are to be abolished. Local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), comprising local authorities and the private sector will be set up to spearhead economic development in the regions.
Apart from the time and effort - and cost - spent abolishing one group of organisations and setting up another, it’s hard to see how this makes sense. In the West Midlands the local authorities don’t all get on, to put it mildly. A number of them have big problems of their own with high levels of debt and the need to handle broad cost cutting measures imposed by government. Apparently, councils will have the power to raise more money locally, for example by keeping some of the extra business tax they raise from successfully attracting new employers to an area. Given that inward investment is thin on the ground at the moment, that isn’t likely to amount to a fat lot.
One can’t help concluding that the Conservatives have had it for the RDAs from day one. They were created by the Labour government elected in 1997 and are an easy target for quango bashers and those who can’t open their mouths without moaning about public sector waste and red tape. As one AWMer said to me yesterday “the writing was on the wall”.
Of course, mistakes have been made by the RDAs - as they are by all public and private sector organisations - but they have undoubtedly worked hard to facilitate regeneration, improve skill levels and to quickly establish task forces to help those who lost their jobs at the likes of Rover and LDV.
And given that the government’s priority is supposed to be saving money, where is the logic in abolishing an organisation such as Emda which has proven that for every £1 it receives it creates £9 for the local economy?
It is to be hoped that the LEP plan gets fleshed out as quickly as possible so that these organisations can hit the ground running once the relevant legislation is in place. The fear is that as the RDAs are wound down we will enter another period of decision-making limbo just when the regional economy can least afford it.
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