Health, Transport, Housing: Developing a Political Identity for the South East

Speech by Chris Huhne MEP delivered to the South East regional conference on Sat 9th Nov 2002

Let me start by pointing out that in the South East euro region - the 83 constituencies that comprise the South East party region and the new region of Hampshire Isle of Wight Berkshire Bucks and Oxon - we have just passed a special milestone. Until last year, we were a large region of 8 million people that was bigger than four of the EU's member states, namely Luxembourg, Ireland, Finland and Denmark. But last year we also went above the population of Austria, so that now we are bigger than five EU countries. But most people in the South East would be the first to admit that we lack both a political identity and a sense of region.

I do not wring my hands and say that this is all too vast to grapple with. In fact, using new tools like websites, email bulletins, regular mailings, local newspaper columns and letters, and press releases to every media outlet in the region, it is possible to have some impact. And this is not a unique problem: after all, the two senators for California have to deal with a far larger area, with a population of more than 30 million.

Moreover, the more I do this job and travel around the region, the more convinced I am that there are common problems in Kent and Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Surrey. And where there are common problems, there are common solutions and the potential for an effective regional politics. So let me set out three key themes that I believe could be part of a political language in which we address south eastern voters. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but is an attempt to start the debate.

The first would surely be the besetting difficulties of running the same public services that other regions take for granted, simply because of the pressure of unfilled vacancies when we still have a largely 'one size fits all' structure of national pay bargaining. It is no wonder that teacher vacancy rates in the South East are double those in the North West: look at the relative cost of housing. Don't just look at housing: even a pint of beer costs more in the South East, though scandalously we still do not have regional price indices that would allow us to make overall comparisons.

The big contrast is between pay in the public and private sectors, where the gap increases markedly in London and the South East. Private sector workers are paid 13 per cent more in the south east, but just 9 per cent more on average among local authority workers. And these are averages: in hot spots, the pay differences can be far greater simply because neither local authorities nor health authorities are able to raise funds from their own tax bases to meet a particular need.

There is only one way of tackling this problem, which is to get the dead hand of Whitehall out of decision-making that should properly and responsibly be local. And that of course was one of the three key issues that the public services policy commission that reported to Brighton conference, and which I chaired, highlighted. We have to be prepared to hand much more power and responsibility to levels of government far closer to people than Westminster. To reinforce that autonomy, we suggested and the conference approved the idea of a special National Health contribution. The NHS contribution could be regionally varied, thus providing each region with a reasonable budget.

A second key issue is transport. The South East is one of the worst victims of both density of population and lack of public transport alternatives. Britain has the highest rate of car use for passenger transport of any country in the EU. We travel by train around half as much as the French. We have the worst road congestion in the EU. And we spend more time commuting to work every day than any other Europeans. On average, we spend 46 minutes each day, 10 mins more than the French and double the time spent by Italians.

And the reason? Years and years of consistent under-investment. The French have more than a thousand kilometres of high speed rail track, and the Germans have more than 700 km, while we still have precisely none. Even when the high speed rail link is completed, it will amount to barely more than 70 kilmetres of track. Public investment as a share of GDP had been the lowest in the EU for a whole parliament when the Tories left office, and then Gordon Brown proceeded to cut it even more. Transport, as the Prime Minister memorably said, was simply not a priority. Well it certainly is now.

A third key issue surely must be affordable housing, the lack of which is partly responsible for the crisis affecting the public services in the region. If we are to expand social housing, shared ownership and home buy schemes of the sort that can find homes for young people, then we need to build in the areas where there are good public facilities, particularly public transport. It does not make sense parking the low paid miles from transport networks and jobs. So this is a further reason why we should unlock the potential of the brownfield sites that are still there in our urban areas - in Southampton, Portsmouth, Brighton, Reading and the Medway towns.

One of the reasons why it is difficult to unlock brownfield is that the owners often face no costs of simply hanging onto the land: a site value rate that would be levied on the land whatever the building on it would be one effective way of releasing supply. A second problem is often access to what can be old and difficult industrial sites, and I think we have to grapple with the need where necessary to use compulsory purchase powers to make such sites useable and help regenerate our towns and cities.

And there would of course be another political dividend on an effective policy of urban development, which is that we would at least take the pressure off Greenfield sites and stop the sprawl through what remains of our countryside. Vibrant cities and towns with proper incentives for dense land use are the flip side to respect for the natural environment.

I am convinced that we have a tremendous opportunity here in the South East not least because we are the only party that articulates sensible ideas for dealing with the pressing regional problems, and believes in the development of a regional solution. But it is down to us to make the case, and to demonstrate the need to tackle these common problems. We have taken a big step forward with the decision of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight to merge with Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire. We now have just two party regions within the euroregion which is also the government region and the economic development region. Moreover, there is a commitment from January to set up a Joint Policy Committee between HIBOB and the South East party region that has the potential to develop these and other themes. The political opportunity is clear. After all, our region has been singularly badly served by the laissez-faire complacency of the Tories in public services, planning, land use and public transport. It is up to us to make the case, and make the contrast.

We are getting an inkling of how successful we can be from recent local by-elections: the spectacular success in St Mary's bay in Shepway, and the recent swathe of dramatic swings on Thursday. Contests in two different Waltham Abbey wards on Epping Forest Council both saw 30%+ swings from Tory to Lib Dem, while in Stratford on Avon, a 15% swing in Alveston ward saw the Conservatives lose the council to no overall control. It was an appalling week for Labour too, plummeting from first to fourth in Aberdeen as Lib Dem Peter Stephen took the Newhills seat with a 27% swing. And Mark Morris gained the third seat for us in Downham ward, Lewisham, for the Party, again taking the seat from Labour. All told, there were five seats fought last night which were last contested this May. Looked at together, the total Tory - Lib Dem swing over the last six months was more than 10%.

And just look at what others are saying about the political scene. This is not the Guardian, the Independent or even the Times. It is the Daily Mail in an editorial on the 6th: "If the anarchic, self-destructive rabble that is the Tory party doesn't pull itself together, it will soon become the third party in British Politics." And this was the Daily Telegraph: 6th November 2002 was "the most desperate day in the history of the Conservative Party". And this is Bruce Anderson in the Independent: "Before even considering a party's policies, the electorate will make a more basic judgment. Not unreasonably, they will conclude that a party whose MPs cannot be prevented from stabbing each other in the back and from plotting against their leader is unfit to form a government." And this is Lord Robert Blake, the biographer of Disraeli and one of the most distinguished historians of the Conservative party writing in the Financial Times: "The Conservative party in Britain has never been in a worse condition than it is today. ... But I doubt whether a change in leadership is going to do any good: yet another contest between political pygmies is likely to do far more harm than simply continuing with Mr Duncan Smith."

Let's hope he is right. Iain Duncan Smith is certainly good enough for me. I cannot remember a time when political opportunity has seemed to beckon so convincingly since that brief halcyon period just before the Falklands war in 1982 when we managed to lead in the opinion polls. Our virtues are the obverse of the Tories' vices: virtues of unity, loyalty, teamwork, and a belief in practical solutions to real problems. We can communicate those virtues regionally here in the Tories' south eastern heartland, as well as nationally. And if we do, we will succeed beyond our wildest dreams. Here in Eastbourne. In Folkestone and Hythe and South West Surrey and across the region.