and another one…

A different sinking ship this time, but Stephen Byers has announced that he’s not standing at the next election. I can’t say I knew him well, and some of his ideas were definitely a bit right-wing for me, but he always seemed to me to be genuinely interested in policy and genuinely on top of these debates. He was a strong supporter of regional policy when he was at the DTI, although he wasn’t there long enough to make much of a difference, and ought to have been better used by the Labour Party in the region.

The question now is who will Labour choose to stand in North Tyneside, and will the seat be designated an all-woman shortlist (like just about every other seat in the region has).

Another one leaves the sinking ship

Actually that’s really unfair, as Tom Wharburton is definitely one of the good guys. I’m a bit out of date with this as I’ve only just heard that he’s leaving One NorthEast, where he was responsible for writing the new North East Strategy.

Shame, as he was one of the good guys. Nice to work with and intelligent and effective with it, but it’s not surprising when the Conservatives are ahead in the polls and are committed to destroying RDAs. He’s gone to the Housing and Communities Agency to work for Pat Ritchie (!).

By the by, One NorthEast need to update their website more regularly. Not only does this page get Tom Wharburton’s job wrong but it still has Nick Muse on – and he left ages ago. I suppose it’s as well they don’t still have Charlotte Carpenter or Phil Shakeshaft’s contact details.

November’s labour market figures

Better than expected news from the latest labour market figures. North East employment was at 68% for the July-Sept 09 period, still the worst in GB with only Northern Ireland with a lower employment rate (UK ave = 72.5%). This is worse than last month but better than the previous quarter (up 0.8%) – although still much worse than the previous year (down 2.2%, or about 25,000 people).

I’ve long said that employment is the best labour market indicator in the North East, principally because the unemployment figures hide what’s happening to sickness and disability benefits. Nevertheless, is what is most used in the media and was at 9.5% for July-Sept. That’s equivalent to about 119,000 people, and only the West Midlands has a higher unemployment rate. This means unemployment is down about 0.3% (or 2,000 people) on the April-June period, but up 1.5% (18,000 people) on the July-Sept 2008 period.

The Journal chose to lead with the positive news that unemployment figures had fallen in the region (and nationally has risen by less than expected), and attributed this to a rise in part-time workers. I’m pretty sure that the part-time working figures are national however, and there’s no data on what’s happening to the balance between part-time and full-time in the North East.

Just one more quick point – I had a look at international comparisons, and the UK still has above average employment figures. Our employment rate is 69.6%*, which is significantly above the EU average of 64.8%. German employment is holding up well (70.8%), France is at the EU average (64.7%) and Italy (57.9%) and Spain (59.9%) are significantly below average. Japan is also holding up well (70.1%) and the USA isn’t too bad (67.4%)*.

I’m not able to make the exact calculations as to what the North East’s employment would be if measured in the Eurostat manner, but my guess is that we would be at the EU average – roughly 4-5 percentage points below the UK average.

 

* The figures are slightly different figures because Eurostat work with a different definition of the working age population (they have a common 15-64 age group, whereas in the UK we only use 16-64 (men) and 16-59 women)). The US figures work from 16-64.

Fission of excitment in Hartlepool

So Hartlepool is confirmed as one of the potential sites for the next generation of nuclear power plants. My guess is that most local residents will welcome this news, as they will regard guaranteed employment in a jobs blackspot as a price worth paying for the (very low) risk of problems at the power plant.

I guess some people will be up in arms about this, but my bet is still that local people want this plant. It’s interesting how we balance risk. I understand that the statistics show that more people die in extracting coal and gas than die from nuclear power plant accidents. But it’s human nature to worry more about a catastrophic nuclear explosion (and the resultant radioactive fallout) than the steady and regular death of miners. (It probably doesn’t hurt than nowadays our coal is imported from the developing world).

One point of confusion, however. Are the Conservatives who say that this decision should have been made 10 years ago, the same Conservatives who said only 2 years ago that it could only ever be a ‘last resort‘ and that we have to “explore every conceivable method of generating electricity before we go to nuclear“?

All change at ANEC

Well, not really. All the officers stay the same, but I’d missed that Mick Henry is no longer Chair (and presumably Roger Kelly is no longer the Chair of Chief Executives).

I guess four years is quite a long stint, but Gateshead have a reputation as a good council, and despite the Audit Commission’s rating Sunderland does not. I don’t know anything about the new Chair from Paul Watson, nor his Chief Executive (who is fairly new too). With ANEC’s responsibility for running this region’s Leader’s Board, this could be a significant change.

Kelly’s unanswered question

Just one quick though occurs to me following the publication of the Kelly review into MPs expenses. Why are second jobs still allowed?

Why should MPs make thousands on the lecture circuit (like William Hague until recently) or advising a dodgy multinational, but not allowed to employ a hard-working spouse?

Lots of MPs in the region employ their wives – Jim Cousins and David Clelland to name but two. I’m fine with this, and these two cases doubtless represent excellent value for the taxpayer. But surely Kelly should have done something about MPs spending time on a second job when taxpayers are paying them a salary to represent the constituency?

The Public Service Paradox

Interesting start to Matthew Taylor’s latest blog (he’s in the region to talk to an ippr / RSA audience).

He says his Granny taught him that if you didn’t have anything nice to say, then it’s not worth saying. Then he mentions a new ippr report into public services in the North East, and passes on quickly without mentioning its contents.

Is it possible that he didn’t like it? Matthew Taylor doesn’t do subtle – so I think we can assume he didn’t.

Yin and Yang – good bank, bad bank

So Northern Rock is to be split into two, and receive another £8 billion of taxpayers money. Not my area of expertise, but it seems to me that this is good news for the region..

The Journal seem to think that guarantees will be made so that the ‘good bank’ stays in Newcastle, and have a quote from Deputy Regional Minister Roberta Blackman Woods hinting in that direction. The fact that Tesco are creating 1000 jobs here makes them the favourite to purchase the new ‘good bank’. Either way this looks like being brilliant news for the Tyneside economy.

But will it become a mutual, like the sensible and secure old Northern Rock Building Society before Adam Applegarth was let loose in the asylum.  I love mutuals and co-ops, but it’s difficult to see how this can be done. The tax-payer owns the new ‘good’ bank and can’t give it away for free, certainly not with the current public spending projections. The depositors are going to have to buy it from us. But how are they going to find the billions of pounds that Tesco or Virgin are willing to pay? I guess they could borrow against future profits, but that seems too difficult. A mutual Northern Rock sounds like a pipe-dream I’m afraid.

Great Expectations

Will the region’s officials ever wean themselves off press releases which contain hopelessly unrealistic expectations?

Yesterday’s Journal revealed that Science city bosses hope to create 4,000 jobs after confirming that a £6 million fund will allow scientists and engineers to come to Newcastle to spend some time developing businesses. Apparently 40 companies are expected to be created, each eventually employing between 60 to 100 people. My question is, do they really believe this rubbish or are they just trying to spin their way into a headline in the Journal?

First, after what has happened in the last 18 months you would think that we had learnt that we can’t predict what is going to happen in the economy. Why 40 companies? Why won’t some of them employ 500 people, why would some not employ just 5 people? Why adopt such a simplistic approach?

Second, do they really believe that they are such expert venture capitalists that they can create 4,000 jobs at a cost of £1,500 each. SFIE* is a grant scheme that has been subject to robust evaluation over the years, and even on the most optimistic assumptions the cost per job is in the region of £20,000.  The Science City numbers are simply unbelievable.

I just wish officials in regional economic bodies would be a bit more realistic about what they are doing, and I definitely wish the Journal would stop just printing their press releases without any critical thought.

*SFIE is Selective Finance for Investment in England, and used to be called Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) and has existed in much the same form since the 1970s. The best evaluation work, done both for academic journals and Whitehall, is led by Colin Wren at Newcastle University.

Now where’d I place that engine of growth?

A friend of mine was telling me the other day about a firm in Stanley that was making solar panels, and was creating a bit of a buzz in regional circles (which I think means that One NorthEast think it’s great and give it some free publicity).

But it made me think about the big push in industrial policy in this region, the push behind renewable technologies. There does seem to be a lot of potentially important projects running in the region – think about electric cars and batteries at  Nissan in Washington, or the wind power in Blyth, or the Carbon Capture and Storage scheme, linking up a number of firms in Blyth, Lynemouth and in Teesside.  And then note that none of them are within the built-up areas of the city-region.

It’s only a couple of years since we were told that city-regions were where it was at, that this was the key to economic growth and that the outlying areas needed to think about becoming commuter towns and forget about hosting any significant industry. Now the big push is for this Green Jobs revolution, the majority of whose schemes are located in those very former industrial areas we were urged to forget about. With the best will in the world, I doubt anyone could detect a city-region agglomeration effect in Washington and Blyth.

I think there’s one of two lessons you can learn here – either that in regional policy trends and fashions come and go, and its best not to place too much trust in today’s fashion (it’ll be unfashionable in a couple of years). Or that the city region people were just plain wrong. Or both.