Wells Bid for UK City of Culture

Debate between Rebecca Pow and James Heappey

Tuesday 25th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey]

I very much agree. This is a huge opportunity, not just for Wells but for Western-super-Mare. Visit Somerset has been involved, along with several other local bodies, in supporting the volunteers in putting together the bid. However, we need to discuss the differences in Wells’s bid so that the Minister might satisfy himself that the bid process lends itself as keenly to rural areas as to urban areas. Wells’s bid is not about post-industrial regeneration, which was the centrepiece of the bids by Londonderry and Hull. There is a very different opportunity down in Somerset, which I will talk about later.

Our bid draws on a rich cultural heritage that is way out of proportion with the size of our city. We are England’s smallest city, but our cathedral has a centuries-long tradition in music, as has the now ruined Glastonbury abbey, which still hosts wonderful musical events during the year. We have the Glastonbury festival just down the road. There is Arthurian legend all over, with Avalon and Glastonbury itself, which will be a wonderful theme to draw on throughout the city of culture year. There are now internationally significant art galleries in Bruton. There is an opera festival in Wedmore, there are comedy festivals in Wells, and there are literature, food and film festivals. We have Cedars Hall, a brand new world-class concert hall. We are the location for many movies and TV programmes, and so much more. That all goes alongside a rural, agricultural life and an incredible natural history, but we are also embracing our emerging digital arts industry as we tap into the success of those sectors in Bristol and Bath.

The cultural offer is perhaps more developed and diverse in Wells, the smallest of the bid cities, than in other large cities, but let us be clear: we are much less well funded. The bid document quite understandably requires certain commitments about a bid’s underpinning. Does the Minister believe that that is fair, given that we are trying to build a country that works for everyone? We must recognise that that includes developing the economies of rural areas as well as urban areas. I wonder whether, in the few days he has left—I accept that his civil servants are almost locked down in purdah—he will satisfy himself that, when smaller local authority areas bid for such things, the process perhaps needs to be weighted to recognise that they are unable to underwrite bids in the same way as larger metropolitan areas. Are there other ways of doing it?

The great advantage of volunteers coming together as they have in Wells is that there is private sector engagement, which is encouraging. The Heritage Lottery Fund has been forthcoming in explaining what involvement it may have. If we are aiming to create a country that works for everyone, I hope the Minister will look carefully at the process to ensure that all regions can compete equitably, and that the bid process does not disadvantage rural areas and those where local authorities are unable to resource bids more fully.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

I applaud my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to the Chamber. One of the big drivers behind cities of culture is improving economic prosperity. As my hon. Friend says, Wells, with its cathedral, is a glorious location. It was the location for the film “Hot Fuzz”. My dad went to school there, at the Blue School. It is important to recognise that Wells sits in a poor rural environment. The effect of Wells securing city of culture status might reverberate out into the surrounding rural areas, including to my constituency of Taunton Deane and the rest of Somerset, and improve our productivity, which we so badly need to address. As Conservatives, we are addressing it, but we need to do more.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. If someone flew over our constituencies, they would see so many trees and fields that they would think all was well down below. It is so easy to assume that, but there is a hidden deprivation in rural areas that is just as significant a challenge as the challenge in inner-city areas. In fact, dealing with that deprivation is arguably a much greater challenge. Too often in rural areas, rather than deprivation being concentrated in one area and the aim of intervention therefore being clearly defined, families who live in deprivation are on their own. There might be only one family in a hamlet who live in such circumstances, or deprived families might be scattered across a town or a large village, making it much more challenging to intervene in their lives. There is an opportunity for city of culture status to uplift the entire area, so that we can find and engage deprived people who live in isolation—we can do something that could be transformative to their lives.

The Minister will be well aware of several obvious benefits of city of culture status that are common to all bid cities. The most obvious place to start is the visitor economy. Somerset’s visitor economy is already growing—it has grown from £1.2 billion to £1.3 billion in just the last few years. Visit Somerset has been on the front foot in looking at all sorts of ways of marketing our county, with huge success, as have the various tourism expos that have come to the county, several of which I have had the pleasure of hosting. I suspect that the Minister will want to pass back congratulations to Visit Britain, which has brought several international delegations of tour operators to Somerset. I hosted a group of Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Mexican tour operators in Glastonbury just a month or two ago. It was great that Visit Britain brought them to the area to see what we have to offer.

Despite that, the reality is that Somerset is still too often the drive-through county on the way to the far south-west—that is music to your ears, Mr Streeter, but Somerset has so much more to offer and I am sure you will not begrudge us if we hold up visitors a little longer at our end of the peninsula. So much more could be done in the visitor economy in our part of the south-west, and it would be great to see the city of culture status acting as a catalyst for a growth in visitor numbers. It would also be fantastic to see the city of culture status acting as a catalyst for infrastructure improvement—the railway lines south of Bristol are not planned for electrification, while the line from Reading to Taunton and down to the far south-west is perhaps not being electrified as quickly as we might have hoped. Perhaps a major, internationally significant tourism event, such as city of culture events or something along those lines, might be a reason to accelerate the improvement of those lines.

City of culture status might be a great hook for a number of airlines that have been looking at bringing in daily services from Bristol airport to New York, Doha and Istanbul. Perhaps city of culture status might be the final encouragement they need to commit to those services, which would be great not just for Bristol and the greater Bristol area, but for the whole south-west peninsula. City of culture status could be a catalyst for that, and for road improvements. My hon. Friends the Members for Bath (Ben Howlett) and for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) have been doing some great work on improving the route from the M4 down through Bath and into Somerset and west Wiltshire—it would be great to see that succeed. I have been working on getting some improvements to the A39 and the A361 for cars coming in from the M5 at Bridgwater north, in order for them to access Mendip more quickly. What a great thing it would be if city of culture status was to be the catalyst for those road improvements.

The Minister has been doing great work on broadband and mobile phone coverage—they have improved enormously in our part of the world in recent years. Given that there might be some growth in the emerging digital arts industry in the Somerset area, city of culture status might also catalyse that need for digital connectivity and see us accelerate.

[Rebecca Pow]

I wonder if my hon. Friend will give me the pleasure of intervening again, as I am the only other Back Bencher here?

[James Heappey]

I would be delighted.

[Rebecca Pow]

I feel I am speaking up for the rest of Somerset, and perhaps the Minister might listen to this. Productivity in the south-west has historically been below that of the rest of the country—we are at about 7% and the rest of the country is at about 8%. Does my hon. Friend see city of culture status as a great opportunity to address that? The knock-on effect could be enormous. If we had a city of culture in the south-west—that would be unusual because the money is all going north—it could do so much good and have a big impact on productivity.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is an excellent battle buddy to have in today’s pursuit of the Minister. She is entirely right that productivity is potentially one of the big gains, and I will come to it shortly.

City of culture status might help to achieve other things. We are blessed in Somerset with some outstanding schools and colleges, but too often we are training people up and giving them an education with which they think they have no option but to move away to pursue their careers. City of culture status might attract inward investment and create a buzz about living in Somerset. It might come about alongside the introduction of a university of Somerset in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and alongside excellent work on the arts—Strode College in my constituency delivers skills in digital arts and marketing and so on. In some small way, city of culture status might help to rebalance Somerset’s demographics by keeping young people in the county.

If we manage to improve the infrastructure and create a younger workforce with the right skills that are needed by the industries that are there and that are emerging, we will achieve a significant productivity boost, as my hon. Friend suggested. That would be a fantastic legacy for Somerset, not only because it would change Somerset’s stars in terms of the population’s skills and the availability of the workforce, but because the availability of the newly skilled workforce would bring with it inward investment, which would bring new companies. That would be hugely exciting. Perhaps we could see city of culture status as part of the legacy of Hinkley Point, which is already doing something to rebalance our region’s economy.

What if, having brought all of that expertise and know-how to the county, and with follow-on industries coming behind, there was city of culture status helping to reinforce what a wonderful quality of life one can have when living in Somerset? It all seems to work and the timing is right. I hope the Minister agrees that he has a significant opportunity to do something not just for the city of Wells but for the south-west region as a whole.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend is giving a catalogue of reasons that make Somerset glow and sound such an attractive place, which it is. We also have the massive wildlife offer in the Somerset levels, which is very close to Wells and which we could build on. Taunton in my constituency is the county town of Somerset, but it could build its links with Wells. We are trying to build our cultural offer. Similarly, we have the international Somerset County Ground. We could build the whole offer in Somerset, focused in Wells, but with spin-offs.

[James Heappey]

My hon. Friend is contributing powerfully on behalf of our county and her constituency. She is entirely right. England’s smallest city cannot do this alone. This offer encompasses Glastonbury, Shepton Mallet, Frome, Cheddar, Wedmore, Street and villages all over the county, but also places slightly further afield such as Taunton, Bath and Bristol. This is a hugely exciting regional opportunity.

The Minister might say: “So what? Every bid says city of culture status will bring more tourism, boost productivity and bring inward investment.” He is not wrong. However, that is where a bid from a small city in a rural setting becomes interesting. The challenge of yesteryear was the regeneration of post-industrial cities. The new challenge for the next decade is how we build more resilient communities that can deal with loneliness, an ageing population and the challenges of mental health, and particularly dementia among that ageing population.

Somerset has those problems acutely and is in the nation’s vanguard when it comes to the ageing population. City of culture status could be seen as an opportunity for the arts to bring communities together and enhance the culture of volunteerism, which already exists in our communities but which could become so much more, and therefore to build networks of people who are looking out for one another. It would be hugely exciting if the arts and city of culture status brings them together in the first place.

I hope the Minister will reflect that there is an economic challenge in the south-west. Although there are not the brownfield sites seen previously in other bid cities, he might reflect that the south-west has lagged behind in inward investment for some time, and that a flagship project of international significance could really drive the local economy. It would be exciting, and therefore ticks all of the boxes of a more conventional bid.

I hope the Minister also sees that one of the Government’s great challenges over the next decade will be tackling loneliness and helping the elderly to live independently in their own homes, so that they do not need adult social care and do not need to be in hospital. City of culture status could be a catalyst for developing that resilience, building that network of volunteers and embracing the huge horsepower that exists within community and voluntary groups. If a celebration of our community, culture and shared history can be used to create a legacy of support and of looking out for one another in a resilient community, that is hugely exciting.

Mr Streeter, you have indulged me and my colleagues from Somerset for long enough. It has been a huge honour to pitch to you and the Minister the value of a bid for Wells to become the UK city of culture. I know the Minister does not make the decision, but I hope that we might be successful in reaching the shortlist in due course, and that he will go away full of enthusiasm for what we have to offer.

Ultra Low Emissions Vehicles

Debate between Rebecca Pow and James Heappey

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon. I echo the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) on securing the debate.

I agree with all that has been said about the need to promote ultra low emissions vehicles. It is clear that we have to do so to meet the carbon targets that we have committed to and because air quality is increasingly featuring in the public conscience. Court cases about air quality may force the Government’s hand more quickly than the requirement to meet our carbon plans.

Our plans to reduce transport emissions by 2020 are already quite challenging. The Energy and Climate Change Committee, on which I previously served, produced a report that looked at how the Government are progressing towards meeting those targets. It was apparent that hitting the targets we set for 2020 will be very difficult indeed. The transition to biofuels will help, of course, but there are real challenges to achieving that transition, given the capability of some of the cars currently on the road. Obviously the quickest way to meet those targets, both for 2020 and beyond, is to adopt ultra low emissions vehicles.

The technology is hugely exciting. When the Select Committee visited California just before we finished compiling our last report, we visited Tesla. Seeing the vehicles there, I came to understand that they are no longer golf carts or milk floats; they are proper cars that will really excite people the world over and will achieve significant saturation, even if the market is left to its own devices. A small plug: I am delighted that Tesla is going to come and speak to the all-party parliamentary group for Globe UK, which I chair, in a few weeks’ time to explain its vision to colleagues in Parliament. Of course, other manufacturers are doing great things, too—it is not just Tesla—but I have seen that factory, and what it is doing really is very impressive.

The argument for such cars is compelling. They are not milk floats. They have all the gadgets and oomph—I think that is the technical term—that cars need to turn the heads of proper petrolheads. They are also amazingly cheap to run. Of course, they now accelerate like proper cars and have all the gadgets inside like proper cars, but it is the fact that they can run for hundreds and hundreds of miles for pence that makes the real difference.

I agree with colleagues that the existence of a second-hand market is important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane rightly said, the Government should focus their attention on really screwing down on the fleets to ensure that they are aggressively encouraged to become ULEV fleets as quickly as possible. Vehicles are invariably in fleet service for only a very short time—a year or two—and it is those vehicles that filter through to the second-hand market most quickly.

The Government need to address three barriers to the roll-out of electric vehicles, which the Minister has heard me talk about previously. First, we need to get the charging network right. The challenge is not the charging network at service stations on motorways and trunk routes, because service stations all over the country now have electric charging points. Nor is it the charging network on driveways at people’s homes, because the Government’s excellent grant scheme ensures that when someone buys an electric vehicle they can install a charging point on their private land. It is residential curbside charging, particularly in areas of high population density. If someone goes out in any direction from here, it will not be long before they find high concentrations of people living with no private parking. Having a curbside charging network—probably buried in the curb stone—would be an extraordinary infrastructure project.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend is making a serious point. Is that not where the hubs that I talked about could be useful? We could have hubs in various areas in cities so that people do not need to park and charge on the curbside; they can go to the hub, which they join on a membership basis.

[James Heappey]

I, too, had the pleasure of meeting EV Hub, and its initial model focuses on commercial fleets. The reality is that, if every vehicle has to go via one of those hubs when it leaves its parking spot each morning, the scale of the demand will be unworkable. We have to find a solution to curbside charging for those who do not have off-road parking of their own.

We also need to find a way of incentivising businesses to install electric vehicle charging points in their work car parks. When we visited California, a number of businesses made a great virtue of that and let people charge their cars for free while they were working. It would be worthwhile to find a way of encouraging businesses to do that.

The second barrier is the preparedness of the energy system itself: quite simply, do we have the generation capacity to meet the likely increase in electricity need? Is the energy system—the wires and switches—capable of dealing with the clusters in demand when a lot of EVs are charged in one street or neighbourhood at the same time? Is the system smart enough yet? Has it been digitised so that we can mitigate that clustering in both time and space by load-shifting, so that cars are charged when the energy is available at the cheapest possible point? We risk exacerbating the peak energy price in the evening if we do not have that digitised load-shifting capability in place. If everybody comes home and lazily plugs in their car before they go inside, alongside switching on the kettle, cooking supper and all the other things that go on in homes when people first get home at night, demand will increase massively.

Thirdly, people will need certainty about the future tax regime for how we charge people to drive cars. It is blatantly obvious that Her Majesty’s Treasury is not going to give up the receipts it currently gets for fuel duty without a compensating tax in place, and I suspect that that will be very pricey. If we are really going to encourage people to go for electric vehicles, we need to be very clear—perhaps in a Green Paper alongside the modern transport Bill—about what we are thinking of for an alternative way of raising tax from motoring once people transition and we lose the fuel duty.

We can work through all that, but the Government need to be clear about their role in encouraging the transition. The grants that are in place are doing an excellent job and, as a result, people are being encouraged to look at EVs in particular. The more EVs come down in price and, crucially, the more they increase their range, the more people will see them as a viable option and be incentivised by the grants. The size of the grants will be the indicator of how serious the Government are about facilitating the transition.

My plea, however, is that we do not penalise the drivers of diesel cars. I declare an interest as the driver of a diesel car, who thought I was doing the right thing by buying one, because it produced low emissions and was efficient. We have our diesel cars now and, if we are to be incentivised to transition away from them, the Government need to recognise that we did not do the wrong thing by buying them—quite the contrary, we thought we were doing the right thing.

The transition is happening, the technology is compelling and Government intervention is the throttle in the process. To meet the fourth and fifth carbon budgets, however, we surely require the Government to put their foot down fully on the accelerator.