Caroline Flint is one of Labour’s survivors, serving under Tony Blair when she was first elected as an MP in 1997, progressing to the Cabinet under Gordon Brown, before a very public falling out, and now elected by her party colleagues to serve in Ed Milliband’s shadow Cabinet.
In her latest role as shadow secretary of state for communities and local government she finds herself in what she describes as a “collegiate” shadow Cabinet. “Meetings are discussions,” she tells Estates Gazette. It must be a far cry from her experience under Brown, whom she has previously criticised for “negative bullying”, creating “constant pressure” and treating her as “female window dressing”.
“Ed’s personality is such that he is very open and wants us to feel that we can have discussions, because the fact is that we have to reflect on why we lost the general election,” she says. “It is not just someone giving their sermon and that is it.”
But her time for reflection must be limited: as Eric Pickles’ opposite number and the woman charged with providing a viable alternative to his localism agenda, Flint has had to watch from the sidelines as the coalition government sweeps away vast swathes of the infrastructure New Labour created.
Just minutes into her exclusive interview with EG at her House of Commons office, Flint is railing about the coalition government’s decision to scrap regional development agencies, the public bodies established by New Labour to bring about economic development in each government region.
A cry of “Argh!” is followed by a more eloquent assessment: “It is very unfortunate that Vince Cable did not stick to his guns when he said that he would take an individual look at every RDA.
“I may be biased, but I thought Yorkshire Forward, my RDA, was doing a good job,” the Don Valley MP adds. “My husband’s family in the North East would say the same about theirs, and I think Advantage West Midlands was a good RDA, too. It was short-sighted to, at a swoop, just lose them all.
“Part of the strategic leadership of the RDAs was to be able to see beyond what can be done alone, and what more you can do working with others. The fact that in my own region [Yorkshire], councils of all different persuasions were able to come up with priorities for regional transport, for instance, was a world away from some of the bun fights that used to exist in the past.”
The 49-year-old former Lambeth council officer is unimpressed by the coalition government’s new regional growth fund, which aims to fill the gap left by the RDAs by giving £1.4bn over four years to local regeneration projects.
She says the fund, chaired by Lord Heseltine, will be a poor substitute for the RDAs, which received £1.4bn a year from the Labour government to spend on enterprise and growth. She questions exactly what the focus of the fund is. “I keep hearing of some other groups that can bid for it as well – not just the RDAs,” she says.
Localism is good
Flint is also sceptical about the local enterprise partnerships, introduced to replace RDAs through encouraging ties between the private sector and local authorities in more “natural” cross-boundary business areas. So far, 30 have been approved, but Flint says they could lead to neighbouring towns competing for similar types of inward investment.
Yet the Labour MP says that, as a concept, she is not necessarily against localism – as much as anyone, she says she wants to see a good planning system with the least amount of hostility possible.
“Localism is good, parochialism is not,” she says. But, whether talking to community groups or developers, she argues there is still great concern about the lack of detail in the Localism Bill, which leaves “more questions than answers”.
She adds: “You could have a situation where we are going to end up with a right dog’s dinner all over the country in terms of how different communities approach this and the different levels of support they get from their local authority.”
One such case in point is the introduction of neighbourhood plans, which will determine local planning policy.
“I have always thought we should be encouraging, usually through a local authority, a place-shaping exercise where there is a real and open discussion about the needs of a town, village or community,” she says. “But sometimes those needs go beyond the village boundary because the knock-on effect of development elsewhere is something that you just can’t ignore.”
Flint, who as housing minister in 2008 was at the centre of a political storm when she was photographed with confidential briefing documents detailing the severity of the housing crisis, worries about how communities that are full of people with “different priorities” will be able to pull together a plan that is fair to everyone. “Who is going to make sure that not just the ones with the loudest voices or deepest pockets have their voices heard?” she asks.
She is keen to add that she is all for innovation in the planning system, but does not want people’s expectations raised only for them to then be disappointed.
If I could change one thing…
But if Flint could change one thing introduced by the coalition so far, it would be the way it has gone about cutting public spending to reduce the deficit. “I certainly wouldn’t have front-loaded the cuts and I wouldn’t have chosen to get rid of the deficit within four years. Those two choices, which I stress are choices and not a necessity, are dictating policy at the moment.”
Despite the prime minister’s assertion to the contrary this week, Flint argues that the Big Society concept is a mask for spending cuts. “This is really an ideological argument about the role of government,” she says. “They don’t really want the government to take a role in anything any more, but there are good reasons why a government does need to take a lead sometimes.
“Taxpayers expect government to show leadership and take charge and provide some national standards on the ways things operate in our life, whether that be with education, health, or to do with planning, building control and development regulations.”
After nearly 14 years as an MP, Flint is having her first taste of life on the opposition benches, completing her fourth month in the shadow Cabinet last week.
“It is certainly different because you are not a prisoner of the red box so much, that’s for sure,” she says.
“It is hard as well because you haven’t got the resource of a whole civil service behind you. But we are where we are, and we have to get on with it.”
She says she can still hardly believe that a “Tory-led government with a LibDem top-up” is running the country.
But while she professes a desire to woo the public with a plethora of policies to outshine the coalition, so far Flint is keeping her powder dry. “Part of our way back is to show we are in touch with the concerns of people in this country and then come up with the ideas to show Labour is more in tune than the other lot,” she says. “After all, that is basically what politics is all about.”
