Gordon Brown and Labour treat second city as second rate

Feb 28 2008 Agenda

Ahead of Labour's Spring Conference, Andrew Mitchell MP, shadow minister for Birmingham, reviews Gordon Brown's first eight months in office.

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A warm welcome to Gordon Brown and the Labour Party who are holding their Spring Conference in Birmingham this weekend.

After nearly 11 years of Labour government it is quite a compliment that they have decided to pinch another Conservative idea by holding their conference in Britain's greatest city.

If we can influence the Government so much in opposition, just think what we could do in power.

The trouble with Labour is that they are a southern centric, inward-looking government. Tony Blair, and now Gordon Brown, has for too long treated the second city as second rate. This is totally unacceptable. Birmingham has been snubbed time and time again by the mandarins and politicians sitting in London.

Take New Street Station. This is a classic example of Labour attempting to spin reality and take credit for a situation which actually demonstrated dithering and incompetence from the start.

Eventually, the Government was forced - almost kicking and screaming - to take action after united calls from politicians, businesses, the public and media from across the city and West Midlands.

We shouldn't have to beg and plead for our own money.

Despite Gordon Brown's so-called new politics of transparency, this major funding announcement was made during a Parliamentary recess rather than being introduced first to the country's elected representatives.

It was, quite simply, a cold, calculated effort to steal the limelight, rather than giving the credit to the people of Birmingham who stood firm against this southern centred Government.

How many announcements and non announcements did we get before our own money was handed back to the city?

But I must warn the Prime Minister and his Government that this demonstration of unity was not a symbolic gesture.

We will continue to stand up for our interests in the West Midlands and now that victory for the Gateway project has been secured we will look to our Government to deliver many more essential improvements that need to be made to our regional transportation and infrastructure to ensure this growth continues.

Labour are good at talking, good at making plans, good at laying down thousands of targets and good at setting up reviews.

In fact Gordon Brown has ordered no less than 52 reviews during his first eight months - with promises of more. That is one every four days. The Minister for the West Midlands promised us a plan by Christmas which has also vanished into thin air.

The truth is that we don't need more plans, reviews and press releases - we need to see action.

In stark contrast to the tumble dryer - all spin and hot air Labour Government - the Conservatives are delivering for Birmingham under the leadership of Coun Mike Whitby.

Lobbying by Birmingham City Council was essential to the Government's decision to grant the necessary funding for New Street, they have delivered a three star local authority and kept a steady 1.9 per cent council tax for the last three years.

With inflation at over three per cent that equates to a tax cut and puts more money in people's pockets.

The Government's attitude to Birmingham strikes me as 'A Tale of Two Cities'; the one seen by our Labour Government as stuck in a 'malaise of modesty' and lacking ambition as indicated by the Minister for the West Midlands, and our dynamic, diverse second city which is flourishing, experiencing rapid growth in business, population and prosperity.

As my shadow cabinet colleague, George Osborne has pointed out, Birmingham is the most technologically advanced city in Europe and with nine universities within a hour's drive of the city, Birmingham and the West Midlands are well-placed to capitalise on the immense possibilities of the 21st century global economy.

But for Birmingham it is both the 'best of times' and the 'worst of times'. As the strength of our Second City increases, Labour continue to focus their attentions on London.

We need a government that acts quickly and effectively to make sure Birmingham's potential is fulfilled.

On law and order, violent crime has soared by 74 per cent in the West Midlands under Labour.

Statistics released by the Home Office have shown that firearm offences in the West Midlands increased, from 946 offences in 2005-06 to 979 in 2006-07.

Gun crimes recorded by West Midlands police accounted for one in 10 firearm offences in England and Wales in 2006-07. This was the third highest in the country, after London and Greater Manchester.

On health, the Government are going to allow the reduction of emergency surgery facilities at Birmingham's City Hospital.

They fail to understand that an accident and emergency department should be able to deal adequately with surgical emergencies instead of sending them out of the city to Sandwell.

We've been badly let down again by the London mandarins.

On skills and employment, startling figures show Birmingham falling behind other British cities when it comes to a range of work and benefits statistics.

One in three is economically inactive. One in five working age people are claiming out of work benefits.

Claims for Job Seekers Allowance are more than double the national average. One in five have no qualifications. Moreover, five of the top 20 constituencies with the highest levels of unemployment are in Birmingham, including the Minister for the West Midlands' own constituency, Hodge Hill.

These figures are a damning indictment of Labour's welfare to work policies. After 10 years and almost £4 billion the New Deal has failed to tackle worklessness.

On housing, Ministers have revealed that the £95 million Pathfinder Scheme to improve housing in the poorest neighbourhoods of the West Midlands has demolished more homes than it has built.

The Sandwell and Birmingham Pathfinder Project was supposed to provide high-quality and low-cost housing in areas which have been blighted by poor housing in the past.

But in the past four years it has demolished 525 properties in the West Midlands while only 191 were built. This is totally unacceptable. How is this providing the radical and sustained action that people in these communities were promised?

What is possibly most concerning is that this negligence in planning reveals that the Government seems to have had no real population strategy for Birmingham and the West Midlands at all.

It should be a basic requirement that government plans for changes in population. Sadly this appears not to be the case and Birmingham, as the second city, is a prime example of government failure.

Traffic congestion, housing shortages, skills gaps and unemployment are all failures that lie directly at Gordon Brown's door.

As Deirdre Alden, Conservative parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Edgbaston recently stated, "The Government has fundamentally failed to properly plan for the increasing population numbers in Birmingham.

"This is putting huge pressure on the City Council's resources, as it is on other councils across the West Midlands.

"If the Government had planned for a growth in population then there wouldn't be a chronic shortage of housing and there wouldn't be a risk to the green belt which Labour is now threatening, as well as building upon many gardens. We are paying once again for the Government's incompetence."

Labour, particularly under Gordon Brown, is the party of bureaucracy. In every facet of public life, it exhibits all that has come to define the bureaucratic age.

Top-down centralised state control, under-mining social responsibility - this has been characterised in the West Midlands by a plethora of quangos and government agencies which have failed to deliver over the last 10 years of Labour misgovernment.

Conservatives seek to dilute this system which has failed people in three ways; firstly by giving people more opportunity and power over their lives, secondly by making families stronger and society more responsible and thirdly by making Britain safer and greener.

Our political approach is to lead Britain into a new post-bureaucratic age, characterised by action rather than reaction.

The paradox of this government is that while Gordon Brown tries to control all sorts of little things in areas he should stay out of, when it comes to the big things, like the need for a serious and coherent strategy to address population growth and demographic change, he has presided over a massive failure of fore-casting and planning.

Birmingham is Britain's greatest city and it's time for the Government to "be brave and to be bold".

It's either time for them to deliver or time for us to be the change.

* Andrew Mitchell is also the Conservative Member of Parliament for Sutton Coldfield.