Mersey blight to renaissance...a long and winding evolutionary road

The “renaissance” of many of Britain’s great Northern cities over the past 20 years has been pretty well documented.
Lord HeseltineLord Heseltine
Lord Heseltine

A combination of Government intervention and European money has seen city centre after city centre transformed from post-industrial relic to gleaming commercial centre.

For Michael Heseltine, that most interventionist of Conservative politicians, the process began way back in the early 1980s, when he arrived on a recession-blighted Merseyside as Liverpool teetered on the brink.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Looking back on that period now, he draws parallels between his celebrated regeneration work in Liverpool’s dockland area and the coalition’s “City Deal” programme, which offers extra powers and funding to England’s largest urban areas.

“Those 18 months in Liverpool, you could almost say they were a ‘City Deal’ in a tiny way,” he muses. “But maybe not so tiny – the Tate of the North (art gallery) is quite a big thing, isn’t it?

“And did you know the Albert Dock is attracting six million visitors a year? And they wanted to knock it down... Amazing.

“The cities I know have been transformed over the past 30 years. We’ve begun a huge restoration – the issue now is to build on it and extend it.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It is not just the cities of the North which are enjoying something of a renaissance. Lord Heseltine himself, now an octogernarian, has rarely been more in vogue.

His report last year for the Chancellor, George Osborne, setting out how public spending should be overhauled to get regional economies growing again, made compelling reading.

More surprisingly, perhaps, for such a radical strategy involving the mass devolution of public funds away from Whitehall, it drew glowing praise from across the political spectrum.

Within days, Mr Osborne was promising concrete action. By the time of the Budget in March, the Government had said it would accept 81 of Lord Heseltine’s 89 proposals for change.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Sitting in his office high up on the seventh floor of the Department for Business, the one-time Deputy Prime Minister smiles at the suggestion he has never had so much influence.

“I wish!” he laughs. But he accepts it is quite a feat that at the age of 80, he is effectively helping to write the Government’s new industrial strategy.

“I think it’s amazing,” he says. “I wrote my autobiography in 2001... But I mean, there’s a new great raft of stuff – which doubtless I’ll get round to. But I had retired. I had gone.”

Six months on from the publication of his report, he admits he is delighted with the initial reaction, but knows the battle is far from won.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“The initial response was as good as I could have dared hope,” he says. “And then the more substantive response, in which 81 of my 89 recommendations were accepted, was extremely gratifying.

“But you can very legitimately say to me: ‘come on, that’s (just) words – what about the beef?’ And I ask myself that question.”

For all the Chancellor’s warm words, the crunch moment will come on June 26, when Mr Osborne unveils his post-2015 spending plans.

This is when Lord Heseltine’s central idea, the creation of a “single pot” of Whitehall funds for local areas to spend for themselves, will become a concrete part of coalition policy.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Lord Heseltine wants the pot of money to be as large as possible – he has identified £79bn of existing funds he believes should be devolved for “local growth plans”, drawn up by the 39 local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) across England.

Other voices in Government are more cautious. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, suggested this week there may not even be a specific pot of funding at all – rather that each local area could just bid for new powers and funding on a case-by-case basis.

Lord Heseltine makes very clear this is a long way from the radical plan he envisaged.

“I think that would not be a satisfactory outcome,” he says.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“First of all, it means central government has clung on, kept control of all the budgets – which is of course what some people would like to do.

“It means the Government would have gone back on its preferred regional agents, the LEPs – I find that difficult to believe. It would mean the local authorities were back in the driving seat.”

The Chancellor, he makes clear, must set out precisely which areas of spending are being devolved to the LEPs and how much money is available if the scheme is to be successful.

“How can you get 39 LEPs to bid for an invisible pot?” he asks, shaking his head.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“They don’t know the size of the pot; they don’t know how ambitious to be; and if they don’t know the composition of the pot they don’t know what to include in their bids.

“I don’t see how ‘invisibility’ is compatible with what the Government has said.”

Lord Heseltine accepts his plan is “controversial”, but sees it as no more than a logical progression of the work which began in Liverpool all those years ago.

“I do think it’s been an evolution,” he says. “Eighties, Nineties, Noughties, and now this. This is the next big step.”

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

But what is it that keeps him so engaged with this regeneration agenda, when most people would be enjoying the trappings of wealth and retirement?

“It is absolutely fascinating,” he says. “You can probably detect that this is 30 years of my life.

“It’s not something I just rushed in and had a new idea. I’ve been working on these things slowly, remorselessly, and their time has come. I hope.”

He points to his childhood in Swansea for further clues.

“It was a prosperous, middle class background, but you couldn’t live in Swansea and not be aware of the scars of the industrial revolution,” he says.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“It’s very much a city on the wrong end of London centralism – even the wrong end of Cardiff centralism. So to me, my life has been involved in, or aware of, these dramatic issues.”

For many people, of course, Lord Heseltine’s life will always be tied up with that of Lady Thatcher, whose funeral he attended last month.

He is reluctant to discuss his feelings on that solemn day at St Paul’s Cathedral. “There was just one thing,” he says. “There were only seven of us from the original Cabinet. That was the thing I noticed.”

He chuckles ruefully.. “A bit worrying, really...”