Q & A SESSION JIM HANCOCK Bryan if you would go and join your fellow colleagues who are going to be moving now onto those chairs, if I could invite the NWDA Board members to the stage for you to put your questions to them and while they are making their way up, it has been touched upon a few times this morning that the Government’s Sub National Review has called for the regions to develop integrated regional strategies. Now the NWDA for North West which is the successor to the North West Assembly and the Government Office for the North West have therefore agreed that the region should work together over the next twenty four months to produce a North West Regional Strategy. This will replace the existing Res 2006 and enable organisations throughout the North West to improve partnership working by bringing together the regional economic and environmental strategies and their investment plans. Now there is a table going up on the screen here, which highlights the planned timetable of activity. Now I am not intending to go through it all, but the development of the plan will be led by a regional strategy advisory group which will be made up of members from the public, private, voluntary and community sectors and the aim of the group is to help guide the development and implementation of the strategy and ensure that partners can input into the development process. The agency will be consulting with partners on a regular basis during the development of the strategy and will be communicating to you regularly on progress during the development process, so hopefully you will all take part in that. Now, there they all are, I called them the Coconut Shay Crowd last year, that wasn’t very kind, but they have all come back for more punishment, thank you all very much indeed. Let’s now turn to the questions, we’ve got questions on the cards and thanks for those, and also we have one or two in on the emails as well, and I am hoping the people are here who have sent them in on emails to put their questions otherwise I will myself. Now we have got various roving microphones around the room and I am going to ask Val Stevens from Manchester City Council, she is one of the Deputy Leaders of Manchester City Council, if she could identify herself please? And could get near a microphone? It is going to be panel A, and Val would you like to put your question please? Val Stevens Yes, in the light of the presentation I put my question before I heard some of the presentations, but it is basically has the… the strategy plan that the NWDA has for dealing with the present economic situation, is it robust enough and is it going to work? Jim Hancock Bryan? Bryan Gray Well I think that we announced in this building a couple of weeks ago some of the things we are doing to support the economy in these times. I want to ask Evanda Murray just to say a word about perhaps what we are doing to support business anyway, but specifically in tough times, but we certainly as a general principal, as a Board, have looked at what we are doing and said we must move resource to support people who need it at this particular time, so Evanda, perhaps you could…
Evanda Murray Over the last few years we have put a lot of work into the Enterprise Strategy across the region and the Enterprise Strategy of ?? was launched earlier this year and there are a number of building blocks to that and I will just mention a couple. We have already heard a little bit about the work of Business Link, the new streamline service, it has been with its Brokers who will go out giving guidance and support. We do intensive assists, over 5,500 in the last year. We have helped almost 100,000 businesses. So through that one stop shop and targeted support, that really helps an enormous number of companies and I think that building block is increasingly important and Business Link are really working hard and making sure that their people are targeted and well briefed to help companies during this current crisis. And if you haven’t been on the website, I would urge you to do so, because it is an absolute mine of information of all types including some of the issues that we need to address at the moment. The second point I would raise is the finance for business funds that we are putting together, which will be £140 million, which businesses can access particularly at key stages in their growth and that is going to be critical to helping all kinds of businesses and finally I would like to point out the start up programme that we have worked on that has already helped 1,000 businesses and there are more to come. But overall, there is a joined up strategy, there are whole strands of things and yes they are being targeted to the needs of businesses in the current climate but there is always more to do working with our partners. Jim Hancock Val, do you want to come back because you were saying to me earlier some interesting things about how you see this as sort of being a really seminal time in terms of the global economy? Val Stevens Yes, I think and I appreciate what has been said so far, and I think the second part of my question was, is it going to work because I think what…from my perspective, what I have seen of the financial difficulties that are across the world and particularly in the…mostly in the US, had been seen as something to do with the management of the financial sector and misjudgement, but I do feel that it has revealed real shifts in terms of the economy of the world that were already underlying and I think it has revealed that, and what people were thinking might be a financial blip that can be dealt with, with a quick fix, I think has revealed other things, and I think the North West has to think about this, obviously the Government has to think about it, and I think it is more systemic or should I say more structural than people are actually currently presenting it and I think we’ve got to be… beware of that. Bryan Gray Jim, I will ask Steve to comment but just before doing so, I think the important thing to underline is what we have been doing together to strengthen the North West economy over a number of years now and I mentioned just now an example in manufacturing but I could have talked about other things. I mean this economy is much more robust than it was 10 years ago and, you know, the investment at Daresbury, for example, that we saw again on the film, these things give us more confidence, it won’t make us immune from what’s happening in the wider world but it certainly makes us stronger than we would have been 10 years ago. Steve… Steven Broomhead I mean clearly we are in challenging times and rapidly changing times and today is a big day with decisions to be made on this side of the water from here. But the whole point about when we
launched the document, it was to begin a regional dialogue between all the organisations and employers, public sector in the region. Every month we will produce an update on the state of the economy. We will send out to Government, we will work with local authorities in the business organisations so they input into that document, so we are going to be extremely vigilant and obviously things may change and we may have to shift our priorities as an agency to make other interventions if circumstances change in a way that I hope they don’t. Jim Hancock Thank you very much. The Brick Economy apparently… that is the term we have got to get used to. Brazil, Russia, India, China. Now, let’s bring things a little bit closer to home, Ken Gallion, can he identify himself please, Ken Gallion from Wirral Council. I think we are on Panel A again. Thank you Ken. Ken Gallion Good morning. Ken Gallion from Wirral Metropolital College actually. You mentioned this morning infrastructure, you mentioned transport. Is it not time to provide a high speed modern transport link between the two major cities of Liverpool and Manchester and their two airports? Bryan Gray I mentioned briefly, talking about the Northern Way that we are looking across the North at how we can increase connectivity both within the North and between the North and particularly London and the South. You know, it ranges from silly little things likes Todmorden Curve that Julia mentioned, you know £3.5 - £4 million for 350 yards of railway line that would halve the journey time from Burnley to Manchester making a huge difference, so we have got to really keep pressing at these little things but also the big ones, as you say, the connectivity between Liverpool and Hull actually and then the South. But these things cost a lot of money and they require us to put together convincing arguments to Government and that’s why we need to really have the proper evidence, and that’s what the Northern Way is seeking to do, because one of our three priorities is transport, and then we have all got to work really hard at presenting that evidence and making that case. I think I have said before that one of the lessons, I’ve learnt many, many lessons, but one lesson was from Gordon Brown actually when he was Chancellor and he said to me when I was arguing about something or other, he said, when the tanks are parked on my lawn I listen, and we got to do more about parking tanks on his lawn and making people in London listen to our issues. Jim Hancock Ken do you want to come back? Ken Gallion No thank you. Jim Hancock OK, thank you very much. OK now let’s move onto the environment, and I would like to take a question from Kevin Slack please. Kevin’s just along the row there, I think it is again going to be Panel A.
Kevin Slack Kevin Slack, Director of Cauld Appeal Architects. We as architects together with our design partners in structural, mechanical and electrical engineering have the skills to deliver sustainable solutions across a wide range of sectors but whilst the public sector with its public responsibilities largely signed up, many private sector clients see this as an optional extra in tough times, it gets discarded. What is the agency doing to encourage the creation of sustainable developments in the private sector? Bryan Gray Joe, do you want to answer that? Joe Well, it is not an easy choice, mostly we encourage in dialogue, I mean we have our own sustainable development programme and sustainable procurement programmes and they are already in operation, but in fact to encourage the private sector to get involved is obviously a much more difficult situation than we had thought originally. But it is on the programme and we have to work through it, there is no quick fix on this. Jim Hancock Kevin do you want to come back? Kevin Slack It’s really just how people requiring new buildings can be matched with people who are going to provide the solutions for them really. Joe I think there are specific examples, like when we invest in buildings, refurbishment we insist on environmental standards and I think the public sectors have got to do that in a more challenging way to leverage our money and our influence in terms of valid standards. So you know, that is certainly something we can do and looking…you know one of my sort of pet things is why knock buildings down when we can refurbish them, and there is too many people want to knock things down in my view, and of course all of the energy that’s been invested in that building is then lost, so we need to be clever at reuse. Jim Hancock Thank you very much. Now no session of environment questions would be complete without Frank Kennedy of Friends of the Earth, Frank if you could identify yourself please? Just up here. We will give Panel D a chance this time. Frank Kennedy Thank you for that introduction. I would like to ask what Board Members feel we require from Government and elsewhere to hasten the conversion of the North West’s to a low carbon economy? Bryan Gray
Why don’t we ask Joe and then Peter to….. Peter I’m sorry, I was just thinking, how can we hasten the low carbon economy? I think we have got to…I think the best thing we can get government to do actually is to go along with the increase in energy prices. That’s what’s going to do it faster than anything. We have just seen the effect of the higher energy prices on consumption of fuel in the North West, I think it went down 10%. So if…what we need actually is not this huge variability in energy price, but an increase and a stability at a higher level, that will improve investment in new carbon technologies. The trouble is at the moment, the price of fuel, certainly in the past few years has been too low to get that investment going, so that’s what I think actually has to happen but it has got to happen slowly otherwise we put lots of businesses out of business. Jim Hancock Frank I would like you to come back. I mean my observation is that of course in a sense the high fuel prices have been a great chance to try and advance the cause of low carbon economy but the political response, I mean you know Gordon Brown said as he left Manchester to go to New York, I’m going to get petrol prices down, that’s the political response isn’t it? Frank Kennedy Yes, I perhaps hoping to hear something about opportunities to train people and to develop business activity in the fields of energy efficiency renewables across housing, business and transport sectors and whether the Development Agency and the region can’t play a considerable part, after all we have got, for example, the windiest shore line in Europe in persuading Government to use this opportunity to invest now proactively. Bryan Gray Well I think we agree with that, I mean there is…I mean you have seen, I know, the climate change action plan which talks about what we need to do to reduce our impact on the environment and also there is an opportunity and it’s been estimated by the £30 billion opportunity in terms of investment in new energy technologies and you saw an example of the energy ?? earlier on in the film and that’s one specific example of the way we want to work with the supplier chain and West Cumbria take those advantages. So I think we are doing many, many things actually to support companies and Evanda’s mentioned one of the ways we do that to take the opportunity that renewable energy particularly brings. I do also think as a region though, and a guy referred this earlier, we will have to have a proper debate about things like wind farms and where investment takes place. Jim Hancock OK. Now, could Steve Miles from the Radisson Edwardian Manchester Hotel identify himself please? Panel E. Steve Miles £11 billion I believe is the economic impact of tourism to the North West. Do we think it would be a good idea to organise an interactive seminar with all the relevant stakeholders to enhance the North West Development Agency’s tourism strategy?
BRIAN GRAY Well, Brenda Smith’s not here today, but I will pass the idea on, but I would just like to say that I think Brenda in particular who has led that on behalf of the Board, has done a really fantastic job and we took on responsibility of tourism a few years ago and our Director of Tourism, James Beresford, and again he is here today somewhere, I think did a really good leadership job working with the 5 sub regions on tourism and you saw in Phil Redmond’s presentation on the Capital of Culture some of the benefits that we’ve got from that approach in recognising tourism as an important economic sector in the North West. So in terms of specific, very pass that idea on. JIM HANCOCK That would be good, thank you. I’ve got some good news for you. Apparently there is going to be a seminar on the 18 th October in Southport and if you look on the NWDA web site you can get some more information on that. That is November 18th. Can I identify Jason Spencer please. It is going to paddle B and this is a subject which we sort of touched on with Brian, but I’m sure Jason has a point of view about the change. JASON SPENCER Yes, it was touched on earlier, but I would just like to ask the Board what the impact of a change in Government would be to the North West Development Agency. SIR MARTIN Can I take this opportunity just to link back several questions that have been asked and also some of the questions between Brian and Jim earlier. I think it is rather unfortunate that the general tenor of the debate is whether the powers devolved to English region should be reduced. Let me try and put the counter argument. Let’s just talk about railways for a moment. There are decisions being made in Scotland where a third main line is being built and opened between Glasgow and Edinburgh because that is a local decision, a decision has been made to prioritise railways and the decisions are made locally. One of the ways we can tackle the environmental issue is by investing more in public transport, but that is not one of the things that at the moment has been fully devolved to our regions. Far from talking about whether those powers should slip back to ITAW, what we should be doing, as north westerners, is addressing the issue about how to take it forward. Let me just give you an example of the Todmorden curve that is self evident that should be decided locally and be decided straight away. But let me just strengthen that argument. Where powers have been sent to the regions, the tropical medicine school was talked about earlier. Bill Gates offered a very considerable sum of inward investment to this region, provided a decision was taken to renovate those buildings very quickly indeed. He wasn’t interested in the delays that would have occurred if that would have been sent to London for a decision. In fact there is no way London could have decided to invest in that building on the timescale that Bill Gates decided was necessary for his investment decision. So what I would argue is, we should be making sure that the discourse is about how more things can be decided in our region and across the north, not less because that’s the way to get the priorities that we want done fastest. JIM HANCOCK A rallying cry there from Sir Martin!! Do you want to come back Jason at all? Because there is a sort of feeling that the tide is going out on regionalism and not in this hall and I think Sir Martin’s rallying call is absolutely apposite, but I think the case has got to be made and
loud and clear, because we could have a government coming in which is fairly hostile to the idea of regions. JAMES SPENCER And I think the recent Think tank Report is something which kind of shows that as well. I think from what you are saying is that our destiny is really within our own hands. SIR MARTIN Well, I certainly hope so. JIM HANCOCK And now this is one of these internet questions and I am wondering whether Graham Edwards is here, or whether he just sent an internet question in. Is Graham Edwards here? Yes, good, so we are going to have him on Paddle A I think. GRAHAM EDWARDS My first point, if I may make it, is how pleased I am that we have been in such good hands in the north west for the last 6 years anyway and secondly, I am a member of the international business forum, very much interested in the Internationalisation Strategy, so I would like first of all to say that the International Strategy is indeed a very different strategy to the Industrial Strategy. But my question really concerns the extent of which the farming community which was mentioned earlier, is to be seen, it is our largest manufacturing industry and I noticed that in our strategic documents we talk about food and drink. We don’t talk about the farmers. We, in my view, we should be, and I think you made this point yourself a little bit earlier. Could I really ask can we be sure that we will bring the farming community into the food and agricultural group and analysis and could we also be sure that our international strategy is a little bit better defined, although I do understand that it is a relatively new initiative. JIM HANCOCK Peter, if you would like to deal with the farming point….. PETER Yes thank you Brian and thank you for the question. I don’t think you can mention food and drink without relating it straight away to agriculture and we get the criticism of maybe not featuring too often within the regional strategy. But I think it is firmly implanted in there and the fact that we have to deliver the English rul development funds for England illustrates the importance of agriculture, particularly to the north west. And I think this is an exciting time and deliver it we will, but we need to deliver it in a fashion that we can see the results of in the future. Too often in the past there has been monies particularly in rural areas post some disasters that have happened in the region that have been spent and we don’t get the legacy, we don’t see the continuance and the benefit of that original investment, so we have got to be absolutely 100% sure how we invest actually does stimulate that economy for a lasting effect. The implementation of the RDPE and not only that, but also the euro development funds is a route we can do this. But today we have heard a lot of the use of the word connectivity and I hate when we talk about rural and urban. I think we have got to move forward and what an opportunity we have in the north west when we have got such a rural area right on our doorstep and we need to get that link between rural economies and the urban economies, to get the link between the value of that and that sort of environment that is out there, to the business
environment of the urban conurbations. So it might be lacking in words in certain areas in the strategic documents, but its not when we come to sit and talk about it to the Board and I can assure you we will be taking it forward very seriously. I am quite aware I have come in the wrong uniform today. I am a Lakeland shepherd and all the talk about sheep, I should have been here with a dog and a stick! JIM HANCOCK Graham, do you want to come back at all? GRAHAM Yes please if I may. It is the Internationalisation Strategy that rather more concerns me in the sense that we really are becoming and have to become in the north west a knowledge based economy with our science and technology and R & D leading the world. This comes out in some of the central government reports, so I am rather anxious that our Universities and our small businesses with R & D in the north west related to farming are seen as a very very significant part of north west internationalised growth, because the investment that we’ve made in R & D over 25/30 years, comes back to us in the form of royalties and share capital of overseas companies and it’s those sort of things that seem to me to be the long term interests of the north west, rather than just the trade. ROBERT ?? Yes, it’s a very interesting and interlaced question. I think in terms of the internationalisation strategy, the push has been towards greater emphasis on looking at those overseas markets who will invest readily into the north west and we are making great progress. We are the leading region in that context, often linked to the knowledge economy and we have seen the strength of our universities, the knowledge base, the recent launch of our 70 million VCT programme, all linked to leading edge industries which will sell well abroad and induce foreign investment here into the north west. It is very important indeed. The flip side of that I think is also the ability of north west business to export and this is where our manufacturing base sits us very well places indeed, and we’ve heard before how financial services particularly have suffered, especially in the south east, not so in the north west where we provide great value in that area, but I think in industry, our industry is embedded and exports well. Aerospace, we heard Bentley today, Automotive, Chemicals, Farmer, all ideal for that export opportunity, so both ways round, extremely well positioned. JIM HANCOCK Thank you very much indeed. Is George Azeer, one of our other emailers around? There’s George, paddle A again. GEORGE AZEER My name is George Azeer from China Business Consultancy International.. My company is focussed on the support of the UK Companies, particularly northwest companies doing business with China. Also to help Chinese companies coming to here. Actually there is huge potential for the UK and China. As you know, they are two Countries whose relationship is very good and their international trade has increased this year three quarters, about 40% increase, but there is still huge potential for the UK businesses in China. There is a lot of opportunity. My question is for the north west as a regional development agency, do you have a China strategy to support UK businesses to China? JIM HANCOCK
I think we have got the gist of your question….. Sir Martin SIR MARTIN Yes, I think we can truthfully say as an Agency that we have been very conscious throughout about the opportunities of developing still further the links between China and the North West in particular. You are absolutely right, it is a major set of opportunities in both directions, both at the science and technology end, but also a whole range of other areas. And what we have done is worked very closely with leaders of the Chinese communities both in Manchester and in Liverpool to seek to support where they come forward with initiatives of some of the opportunities which they see. I think you are right. I think it is a very important and enriching part of our economic future, to have closer and closer links with China. JIM HANCOCK And to be fair to Sir Martin, when he was Vice Chancellor of Manchester, was one of the first Vice Chancellors to go out to China on the academic side. If you will forgive me, I wont come back to you for a follow up, because I want to try and get through to our last two questions. Is Elaine Chadwick around? Paddle C. ELAINE CHADWICK Good morning. I would like to ask the Board, how do you see the role of further education colleges in bringing about economic growth for the north west? Did that come over? Not the future of further education colleges, but how you see the colleges impacting on the growth of the economy. ?? Let me start, because although I worked at the other end of the post school education system, I think FE colleges are absolutely fundamental to the skills agenda that we’ve been talking about today, because skills come in a whole range of interlinked levels. One of the things that we have done really well in and Burnley college is a good example, is to create opportunity to FE level, but also roots forward for those who want to and can into HE, initially perhaps on the very same site. The University of Cumbria was conceived in the same way, not as just a University, but as taking FE students who are being trained, as we heard, through the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency for example, but for some will go on to do degree level and higher degree level work, so I think that FE College is fundamental to providing the links between school based education and for some the opportunity to go into higher level of education and the more we can tailor that, as somebody said earlier, and Steve said actually, to the regional needs of regional employers, not some national, exclusively national framework, the more we shall ensure those young people go into jobs that in turn enrich the economy and feed back into society. So the answer is central. JIM HANCOCK And our last question. I hope Kevin Burke is here. Yes, there we are, Paddle E is going to get to him first. KEVIN BURKE Good morning. My question relates to how we are going to push forward the size and technology agenda in the north west. As you know that is fundamental to our success in the north west so far. We’ve got a huge demographic trough about the hit the country. In the north west that is particularly bad. We need to encourage more of our young people to stay here, to get involved in
science and technology. What is the Agency strategy to try and keep those people here, keep them in the Science and Technology arena? ?? Just say that one of our key partial successes, but only partial, is to ensure that more graduates now stay in the north west than any other area outside Greater London, so that is a success. But what we haven’t yet fully done is synergised what those graduates want to do in the economy and whether there are enough science and engineering based jobs and opportunities entrepreneurial or as employees to make sure that the talented students who want to stay here, can all stay. So we have done a great deal, Daresbury is another example, 80 companies all employing graduates in the science and technology areas, part of growth, bio-medicine, right across the region, but actually it is an area where we can do still more. We produce very many talented graduates in the north west, the more of them want to and can stay in the knowledge based economy, that is the economy for the future, the better for all of us. JIM HANCOCK Well that completes our question session. I know all the Board members didn’t get a question, but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. They are all working very hard, even if they didn’t have questions today. I see Mari Rimmer from St Helens here and Tony McDermott who is doing so much work to try and get that second crossing of the Mersey, to the Chairman and to all the members of the Board thank you very much indeed.
Right, as the Board depart, it is going to give me grate pleasure to introduce our keynote speaker. Born in Lancashire, John Willman was appointed as UK Business Editor of the Financial Times in 2006, responsible for a team of specialist industrial reports and regional correspondence, with a wealth of experience in business coverage, he has won a number of awards, including Financial Journalist of the Year at the 2001 British Press Awards. He was also named the winner in the banking category at the 2002 Business Journalist of the Year Awards. He has written and contributed to several books and has extensive broadcast experience, having appeared frequently on BBC TV and radio, SKY, and CNN. Eat your heart out….Robert Peston. Please welcome one of the most influential business journalists in the Country….JOHN WILLMAN.