Coalfields Regeneration Trust (Wentworth and Dearne)

John Healey Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to debate the work of the Coalfield Regeneration Trust in my constituency in South Yorkshire. I am proud to say that it has its headquarters in the Wentworth and Dearne constituency, which I am privileged to represent, and it works throughout England, Wales and Scotland. I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) to the Front Bench; he is certainly the hardest working in the ministerial team, picking up the widest possible range of debates and other business on behalf of colleagues in the Department. In his constituency on the south-east fringes of Manchester, the last of the pits, in and around Poynton, was closed some 70 years ago.

It is therefore a useful opportunity for me to underline for the Under-Secretary and his ministerial colleagues the impact of the wholesale closure of the coal industry in a very short time in the 1980s and 1990s and the importance of the review that the Department is currently conducting about the work of the Coalfield Regeneration Trust and the coalfield regeneration programme, led, of course, by Michael Clapham. Parliament is much the poorer for not having Michael Clapham in the House. He was a very strong voice, not only for Barnsley, but for the coalfields, health and safety and workers in all industries in this country.

The timing of my debate is deliberate. I would like the Minister and his ministerial colleagues to understand that there has been good progress, not least through the trust, in the regeneration of our coalfields, but that there is still a lot of work to do. I would also like him to understand that there is strong support in the House, in local government and in the communities in the former coalfields for the work of the trust and of the regeneration programme. The decisions that he and his colleagues make on the review that Michael Clapham produces will be a test of the Government and of whether they can claim to be a Government for the whole country.

I am proud that a Labour Government set up the Coalfield Regeneration Trust in 1999, following the report of the Coalfields Task Force, which noted the coalfield areas of Wales, Scotland and England as having

“a unique combination of concentrated joblessness, physical isolation, poor infrastructure and severe health problems”

in 1998, at the start of the regeneration programme. After more than 15 years in many cases, many of our coalfield communities were still reeling from the unprecedented devastation and deliberate destruction of the coal industry at that time.

Of the 130 pits that were operating in 1981, 124 closed. More than 190,000 of the 200,000 jobs in the coal industry in 1981 went. In the Yorkshire coalfields, some 67,000 jobs were lost—more than one in four of all the male jobs in the coalfield region. In my constituency, there are four wards, in which in 1981, between two fifths and two thirds, in one case, of men aged over 16 were employed in coal mining. That was the extent of the importance of the industry to our areas at the time. There was unparalleled and unique reliance on a single industry, not only for jobs, but for housing, social and welfare support, often for sports and recreation facilities and sometimes for the financial and retail services for the community.

I am proud that the Labour Government set up the Coalfield Regeneration Trust and that its headquarters has been in my constituency for the past eight years, on the site of the old Manvers colliery, which had the first shaft sunk in 1870 and was closed by the previous Tory Government in 1988. When that was closed, its 285-acre site became part of one of the largest derelict areas in western Europe, and one of the biggest regeneration challenges this country has faced. Now, I am happy to say, it has been overtaken by new jobs, businesses and housing.

The trust has played an important part in that regeneration since it was set up, supporting groups and activities in the constituency with more than £3 million. It supported the widest possible range of work, from the Dearne Valley college to the Rawmarsh St Joseph’s football club and the Montgomery hall needlework group in Wath. Across the country, the trust has distributed grants of around £190 million. I pay tribute to the work of the chief executive, Janet Bibby, and her small team of staff, and in particular to the trustees—dedicated men and women—who are chaired by Peter McNestry. They have committed their work to backing the trust and have served the coalfields so well.

The trust is an independent charity and limited company. It supports our communities through grants, but it also supports them by linking up in a more long-term and strategic way with other agencies. It operates in England, Wales and Scotland. Simply put, the trust reaches people and parts of our communities that public agencies simply cannot reach. It helps to rebuild the community and strengthen the spirit of the old pit villages, as well as providing the physical regeneration of the other programmes.

The trust is special because it understands the unique culture and character of the coalfields, because it is trusted by the communities, and because it reaches back with families and through generations, sharing their history, but also helping them to shape their future. In my constituency, the trust gave an important grant to Cortonwood Miners Welfare club. Cortonwood, of course, was the pit where the miners strike started in March 1984. The grant enabled what was still a well-used building to become a one-stop shop for services and, more importantly, the future hub of the community. It supported the Cortonwood Comeback Centre, a group of women who originally formed as part of Women Against Pit Closures during the strike. They kept going, took over the Methodist church with the help of the trust, and ran a support group for the community and attracted other volunteers.

The trust has helped the South Yorkshire credit union, which is based in Goldthorpe in my constituency, and run a programme of debt support as part of a programme across the coalfields. That now helps more than 5,000 people in the light of the recession, and managed nearly £38 million of debt. Otherwise, those people would have been sunk.

Of course, one of the latest grants—small but nevertheless important—was used to set up a boat house on the lake that occupies part of the old Manvers pit site, in conjunction with the British Canoe Union. A new form of activity and use for the coalfield area has therefore been created.

In fact, since the trust began, it has created 119 new community facilities, and refurbished and improved more than 2,000. It has helped more than 17,000 people in our communities to find work and more than 115,000 to get skills and training for the future. It has worked on child care places, social enterprises, community transport, and debt and financial advice, and it has helped nearly 10,000 people to become new volunteers in projects within their communities. It is special and it works in special ways, because it recognises the special challenges in the coalfields.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I am speaking as a former miner and as the chair of the all-party coalfield communities group. We recognise and welcome the trust’s work. However, the Audit Commission, in its 2008 report, praised the physical and economic regeneration, but made the point that in former mining areas throughout the country, there were still high levels of worklessness, low skills and poor health.

[John Healey]

Indeed, and my hon. Friend chairs the all-party coalfields group very ably and plays an important role. He is right, and the National Audit Office recognised that progress had been made. Some of the gap with the rest of the country in jobs and skills has been closed, but a big challenge remains ahead. That is why the work of the trust and the wider programme is necessary for the future.

The trust works in unusual ways that are especially suited to our coalfield communities. It helps groups to develop ideas in order to bid for support. It ensures that the support that it can give goes beyond the grant of money and assistance. Most importantly, the trust backs projects that increase opportunities for local people to get involved. That is why more than 250,000 young people, in the projects that the trust has supported over the years, have become involved and part of the activities that the trust has supported. That is why nearly 10,000 people have volunteered as part of the projects.

The trust is backed by local authorities in the coalfield communities, a network that is ably led by Ian Watts, the leader of Bolsover council. It is backed by public agencies that often use the trust to deliver programmes better than they can themselves, as the £3 million jobs, skills and training programme run by the trust in the east midlands demonstrates.

Most importantly, the trust is backed by independent evaluators. In 2007, the Department for Communities and Local Government commissioned a review of the trust’s work, which said that it

“has made an important contribution to the transformation of the coalfields. Initially the Trust was…a responsive, opportunistic regeneration grant donor…over time the Trust has taken on more of a strategic role, supporting larger schemes…including the targeted multi-agency work…developing stronger links”—

with the wider coalfield regeneration programme—

“and other delivery partners such as at Shirebrook or through its work on the impressive Breathing Space Centre in Rotherham.”

The NAO has said something similar and that the trust’s family employment initiatives produce work and jobs at a better rate and for more people—and at less cost to the Treasury.

As my hon. Friend said, there has been progress but there are still problems. The 2009 report by the NAO said:

“The gap with the rest of the country has narrowed, but many coalfields remain among the most deprived areas in England.”

A range of problems remain, related to those communities’ former dependence on coal mining and described in one of the reports as

“unique challenges in the coalfields with inner city type deprivation coupled with rural isolation.”

That is why the CRT is needed now as much as it was in 1999. It is needed in the coalfield areas that are still struggling and those that were hit harder in recession and will find it harder to grow again in recovery.

There is one other reason why the work of the trust should recommend itself to the Minister’s Tory ministerial colleagues. The Prime Minister today spoke of the big society. It is not new, but it is important. It is important that it complements, not substitutes for, public services and investment. The Prime Minister criticised Government as top-down and top-heavy. The trust has always worked from the bottom up—in, with and for the coalfield communities. It supports the big society actions, but it supports the men, women and young people in the small pit villages in our country.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful speech on behalf of the CRT. In my area the trust has delivered 83 young people into jobs through the work that it has done in collaboration with the future jobs fund, and is planning to help another 150—funding pending. Does he agree that that shows that it is organisations such as the CRT that have the real knowledge of the coalfields that the Government should tap into?

[John Healey]

My hon. Friend has a lot of experience in this area, and he is absolutely right to say that the trust combines running jobs programmes with providing skills, health care and child care and all sorts of other support that recognises and tackles the often complex barriers that prevent people in our villages from getting into the kind of work that they need.

The Prime Minister said today:

“The rule of this government should be this: If it unleashes community engagement—we should do it.”

The Coalfields Regeneration Trust does just that. It unleashes the potential, the energy and the commitment of individuals and communities in the old coalfield areas, and the Government should back the trust for the future. If they do so, they will show that, despite our deep doubts, they are a Tory-led Government unlike the Tory Government of the 1980s and 1990s, and that they will not turn their back on the coalfields, as the previous Tory Government did.

I hope that the Minister will be able, in advance of the important review that Michael Clapham will produce, to give us his full commitment to that review on behalf of the Government, as well as a clear commitment to the publication of its report, and a strong commitment to seeing the trust and the regeneration programmes continuing in our coalfields throughout this Parliament and beyond.