John Cole, BBC
Prime Minister, is this really a new initiative or just a repackaging of existing policies?
Prime Minister
No, it is not a re-packaging. It is an intensifying of our existing policies. Of course we did have the ideas in the beginning: the Urban Development corporations, the Enterprise Zones and of course always trying to cooperate with the private sector. What we are doing now is getting all departments to come together, see where each is spending their money and try to concentrate it on those areas of greatest need and in those local authorities who are most receptive to getting private enterprise to help out because you do not get jobs unless you get private enterprise.
So it is, yes, a new tremendous sharpening up of the policy, advancing at it on a broad front with all departments and a new initiative with the private sector which of course is helped by the general thrust of the manifesto policies at the last election.
John Cole, BBC
You have laid great emphasis - and so have your colleagues on the private sector. How much new public money is there in this initiative and how much new private money would you hope to attract? [end p1]
Prime Minister
Well, the public money, the new public money, is about £250 million. We have found in the past that you attract three or four times the amount from the private sector which you put in for the taxpayer. So you put in about an extra £150 million. You can quite easily get up to about £400&en;£450 million. You see, in the areas which you have seen in the Urban Development Corporations, a lot of the new buildings, a lot of the new companies, a lot of the new Arts work is totally private sector money but it comes there because in fact you are able to take what was formally derelict land, put all the proper services into it, start on a new environmental policy and that will bring the private sector money in provided the local authority welcomes it. Not all of them do, I'm afraid.
John Cole, BBC
Do you find the local authorities, which are mostly Labour in the large cities, a great obstacle to what you are trying to do?
Prime Minister
Some of them have because some of them have been charging very high rates knowing full well that the business pays quite a large proportion of the rates and they were charging such high rates that the companies said “Well we simply cannot take these costs, we must start up elsewhere”. So in fact they were frightening away new business and new small business which of course creates the jobs.
John Cole, BBC
Do you think it is safe to try and bypass democratically elected local councils? [end p2]
Prime Minister
We are not bypassing them. We are giving them the opportunity to change but also our manifesto is changing the whole basis of rates so that business will no longer be at the mercy of extreme left-wing local authorities.
Also, in Urban Development Corporations, as far as planning permission is concerned, it goes to the Corporation and not to the authority so you do not get the problems with planning permission and you do not get the problems with rates. Those are two enormous pluses. When you add to them the policies on housing, giving people in council houses a new choice, a new chance, giving people in education who feel they are not getting the right education, again, a new opportunity.
John Cole, BBC
But isn't there some kind of risk in losing worthwhile planning controls in congested city areas?
Prime Minister
No, I do not think so. If you look at the Urban Development Corporations, look at what they have done; they are in areas where land is derelict, where the local authorities were doing precious little. Just look at Dockland in London. Several local authorities, for years those sites were derelict. It was not until Government came along and said “Right! We shall take the whole thing over in an Urban Development Corporation” - you usually put on some people from local authorities. Look at the results. They have been fantastic. So of course we are taking the success, revivifying it and applying it to areas that have not yet had it. [end p3]
John Cole, BBC
The problems with Britain's inner cities are very long-standing, even chronic. Do you think you can solve them by this scale of initiative within the rest of the century?
Prime Minister
Yes, I think we can because do not forget, allied to this initiative is the fact that our policies have produced industrial and commercial growth, produced a higher standard of living. As you got that growth, so you get more opportunities to expand into areas which have not yet profited from it. I do not know whether you saw in one of the newspapers today: already the north east is running out of the older factories to offer to people who want to come in and develop. That means that some of the derelict land which is under Urban Development Corporations, which had all the new services, clear and new services put into it, that is ripe for development and therefore there are new chances coming to those people who have not yet had enough variety of jobs coming into the areas.
John Cole, BBC
And finally, if this is genuinely a new initiative, why didn't you announce it to Parliament in the usual way?
Prime Minister
It is an intensification of existing initiatives - not any one department but five or six or seven, all of us coordinating on a scale we have not done before - but I understand that Parliament wants a statement, so Parliament will almost certainly have a statement if it wishes to have one.