London’s Economy

I would love to take an intervention, but we are already behind schedule. Secondly, differences within London exist in the enormous variations in funding support for different parts of London. There are parts of London that because of their deprivation quite rightly attract reasonable levels of grant, but as someone who represents a suburban area, parts of London at the other end of the tail of funding distribution also have a combination of private affluence and public squalor because of the lack of support for local government. When we talk about London versus Britain, such qualifications must be borne in mind. Following on from points made by hon. Members, there is a danger of the institutions of London becoming excessively dependent on what I would call mega-projects. First, on public transport, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Hendon and others who have spoken about the importance of Crossrail, which is extremely desirable for London. None the less, there is a real danger that a fixation with one massive project is overshadowing the large numbers of incremental projects that can be done quickly on the suburban network and on the London transport underground system, as the hon. Member for Orpington (Mr. Horam) rightly stressed. Such projects are relatively low cost and, in many cases, have no costs attached as they simply provide an extension to a franchise and give greater security to investors. I hope that Crossrail can co-exist among all that improvement, but there is a danger that the fixation of people in London government with one big prestige project that may happen in many years to come will crowd out the more mundane, but equally important improvements. A second example is in relation to London airports, which is an issue of major concern in my part of London. Many of my constituents are airport workers and many residents are concerned about the environmental side effects. I am always being told that continued and large-scale expansion of London airports is essential to the London economy. Frankly, I doubt that. Slots for aircraft are allocated inefficiently and aircraft are often highly underutilised. Large numbers of people who pass through London are transit passengers and are not from other parts of the UK, but other parts of the world. It is obvious to me that such demand is as it is presented. There are massive environmental side effects such as noise, pollution and ground pollution. Most of the boroughs—Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat—in the relevant parts of London are actively campaigning against expansion. We need to bear that in mind when arguing for the constant expansion of infrastructure and facilities. Thirdly, the hon. Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Field) and for Hackney, South and Shoreditch referred to the Olympics in positive terms. I do not disagree with that broad tone, but we have reached the point when the debate is becoming rather sour. One group of people are asking why we bothered with the games in the first place and another group are denouncing the others as professional cynics. That is not helpful. There are two propositions of which we need to be aware. The games could be a great boost to London or could be a disaster. It is not altogether clear that they will turn out positively and we need to focus in a practical sense on the difficulties. For example, it appeared this week that the London borough of Newham has produced a major report questioning many of the gains of regeneration, of which that area is supposed to be the main beneficiary. We need to consider what the problems are and why the design does not fit what was expected. The other issue is that we made a bid for the Olympics on the basis of costs that were wholly unrealistic and that have been revealed to be much higher. Since the Economic Secretary is here, I will say that, at some point, the Treasury will have to explain why it signed off and gave a financial guarantee on the basis of such wholly unrealistic costs. We now have the real practical problem—not just general pros and cons—that London taxpayers do not want to pay more council tax. People have a strong and entirely understandable resentment against paying more through the lottery. Another good example was the chairman of the National Opera saying yesterday that it will result in cuts in the arts and therefore in culture, which is central to London. Taxpayers in other parts of Britain are saying that it is not right for them either. So who is going to pay? It is a real bottleneck. The one lesson that has to be learned is that a tougher approach must be taken on the question of funding and on the venues that are chosen, including the media centre. It may seem a trivial example, but I heard the other day of a proposal—it is part of a package—to create a shooting range at Woolwich at a cost of £18 million that will be demolished three weeks later for a further £8 million, yet we have perfectly good international ranges within a few miles of London. Such extravagance is envisaged on a large scale. Someone—the Treasury is certainly involved—has to get a grip on it; otherwise there will be a complete draining away of confidence. That will do great harm to London and to sport. With those qualifications, I thank the hon. Member for Hendon for saying what many think. I speak not so much a national spokesman but as a London MP. I am proud of the city. It has achieved much, and we want it to continue to succeed.