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● 1960: born in Wakefield ● Married with one child ● Education: Christ’s College, Cambridge ● Member of Amnesty International, the Child Poverty Action Group, the World Development Movement and Liberty Political career 2005 Financial secretary to the Treasury 2002-05 Economic secretary to the Treasury 2001-02 Education minister 1999-2001 Parliamentary private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer 1997-99 Member of the employment select committee 1997-present MP, Wentworth 1992 Parliamentary candidate, Ryedale Career 1994-97 Director of communications, TUC 1992-94 Head of campaigns, MSF 1991-93 Tutor, Open University business school 1983-92 Charity campaigns manager for Royal National Institute for the Deaf, The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation and MIND, campaigning to improve the rights and services for disabled people. |
John Healey is a beer man. There is nothing unusual about that for a Yorkshire lad.
But, as the minister for “beer and fags”, Healey pays more than just a social interest in the subject. “You have to try a WPA before leaving,” he says. That is Wentworth Pale Ale to the rest of us, or WPA pronounced “whopper”. “It really is the best ale in the country,” he says. He may have a bias for all things Yorkshire, and this is just one example of the affection and fierce loyalty Healey holds for the area he was born and bred in and later elected to represent.
Healey has been MP for Wentworth, South Yorkshire, for eight years. This March, his status was elevated to financial secretary to the Treasury or, as his staff say, Gordon Brown’s right-hand man.
Work within the Treasury has done little to diminish his focus on South Yorkshire. One of Healey’s first tasks on being promoted to minister in 2002 was to successfully lobby for the reduction in excise duties on beer from small breweries.
Now he is looking at the wider economy. As a self-proclaimed modernist, Healey is hell bent on growing the wealth of a region devastated by mine closures and rocked by job losses in the steel industry.
Improvements have been made within Yorkshire. But Healey’s position, preparing the way for Brown to act, has only served to sharpen his sense of Yorkshire’s place in UK plc. He wants to see the region rise through the league table and become more than just “not bottom”. He also wants to see the market determine its own future, whether that be industrial or hi-tech, complemented by the local government wresting a degree of control back from Whitehall (see box).
He has promised a firm hand against development agencies and councils which seem more interested in competing against each other and protecting their own back yard than delivering some of the largest regeneration projects in the country.
It will be no easy task. The area’s mining past still casts a heavy shadow. Pointing to the far wall of his office, where over 200 pit badges are framed, Healey says: “Wentworth was a very special area when I became MP. The Tories closed 203 pits and we lost over 10,000 jobs.”
Political path
That was 1997, but Healey’s first taste of politics in 1992 was a humbling experience, standing in the Tory stronghold of Ryedale. He came third, securing 13% of the votes. “I’m not someone who wanted to become an MP anywhere at any price. I think you are a stronger MP if you have a connection to the area, so I went and did other things.”
But he had caught the bug and was soon back in politics. Healey was elected MP for Wentworth, as part of the Labour landslide victory of 1997, a position he has held ever since. Emerging unscathed from this year’s election, he secured the region’s largest majority and was promptly promoted to financial secretary of the Treasury, putting a Yorkshire voice firmly into the heart of government.
His elevated position has done little to inflate his ego. The 45-year-old father of one says he is a family man first and a minister second. “All ministerial careers come to an end one way or another,” he says matter of factly. “Central government can have me 24 hours a day in the week and it does, but I take my son to school on Monday and I’m there when he wakes up on Friday morning.”
Splitting the week between London and Wentworth means he can keep a close eye on his home constituency.
Over his tenure, Healey says most of the 10,000 jobs lost in the 1980s and 1990s have been won back. Unemployment dipped to 3.5% last year, well below the UK average of 5.1% and the Yorkshire average of 5.4%. gross value added per head has gone up by more than 30% region wide and Healey now believes a combination of government policy and enterprise zone status are starting to bear fruit.
“In 1997, unemployment was 11% – that is three times today’s level. For the first time it has gone below the national average. If I had said that 10 years ago, no-one would have believed it possible.”
Diversification
Manufacturing still forms a third of the local economy but it is diversifying. For example, South Yorkshire is one of the few places in the country to not only retain its call centres but expand the industry. The local Dearne Valley College developed and offered the first accredited call centre course in the country, helping convince employers to set up shop in the area. This has paid dividends and, last year, Dearne Valley landed the National Rail Enquiries £50m contract and an injection of 300 jobs. This happened while others were mourning the loss of these jobs overseas.
If that lead is to be maintained, a greater focus needs to be put on research and development, says Healey: “Yorkshire’s R&D levels are very low and, without that, we haven’t got a future.”
Healey has been working at a national level, through central government, to try to encourage that future. Over the past five years, £700m has been claimed through the R&D tax credit scheme, says Healey.
Developments in the Dearne Valley hope to capitalise on this. Healey praises work done by the Rotherham Investment and Development Office, which has supported the Manvers area regeneration. This site, situated between Rotherham, Barnsley and Doncaster, is brownfield in the true sense of the word. Since the 400-acre masterplan was adopted in 1998, work has battled ahead to remediate land contaminated with colliery spoil, coal and subsidence.
Reclamation is virtually complete and work is forging ahead on three sites including: St Paul Development’s Brookfield Park, an 84-acre ex-colliery now at masterplan stage; the 3.5-acre Century Business Park, now undergoing reclamation work; and Fairways business park, a £100m mixed-use scheme creating 1,500 jobs.
Healey is not just aiming for a hi-tech nirvana. Developments will target industrial as much as office and hi-tech jobs. He gives short shrift to any snobbishness over allocating employment land for distribution. “It is a very narrow view. We want to support distribution with our location and our links. You can’t allow a free-for-all but jobs are a premium for any economy,” he says.
Dearne Valley
This will be borne out in the Dearne Valley where Healey says sites will be prepared and occupiers will be allowed to determine the market demand. Political intervention will be kept to a minimum, with influence only used to create a more rounded offering including shops and leisure, something Healey admits has not always been the case:
“If I was starting again 10 years ago, then I admit we ought to have designed more character into Dearne Valley and made it more sustainable. We have CABE involved with Express Park, which will be a combination of incubator offices, retail and leisure.”
But not all has gone to plan here. Express Park, a 280-acre portion of the Manvers regeneration programme, should have featured a multi-screen cinema at the heart of its £100m mini-village. Plans were pulled after official objections by Barnsley council that it would jeopardise nearby towns. It is precisely this thinking Healey wants to eradicate. “We have to have joined-up thinking,” he says. Pointing to similar problems with objections by Sheffield authorities over the £350m Yes! Project, mooted as the largest leisure project in Europe, Healey adds: “We have now got to drop the objections and get these projects off the ground.
“If we are ever going to produce star cities to match London, then the people of Sheffield and Rotherham have got to work together to produce economies of scale.”
Rotherham cannot be successful without Sheffield and, unless that is recognised, it won’t happen.”
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The North East’s resounding “no” may have kicked regional assemblies into the long grass, but John Healey believes there may be more than one way to devolve power. Healey wants to see the local economy, including business support and RDAs, run to a locally tailored programme rather than through Whitehall. “Yorkshire’s problems are very different from those of South Devon,” says Healey. “From my work in the Treasury, it quickly becomes apparent that some of the market failures, like the skills problems in the labour market, are local problems. “You can’t sort that using a national model run remotely from Whitehall. It would be much more effective if analysis and policy was led locally.” He is sensitive of those worried this will merely add another layer of bureaucracy. “The prospect of regional assemblies has gone for this generation,” he says. “We now need to persuade people who use the services that there is as little complexity as possible and demonstrate to them that they don’t need to apply nationally to draw down things like funding. “It will only work if the centre genuinely lets go. It is an argument that is constantly made and remade but we now need to go further.” |
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From the desolation of the post-mining days, South Yorkshire has staged a significant recovery. Over the past five years, it has seen unemployment plummet, and GVA per head increase by 30%. It’s a performance of which Healey is justifiably proud. “We are now keeping pace with increases seen in the South East, compared to a huge economic gap in the 1980s and 1990s. “I’m under no illusion that the strength of the national economy has helped and, in a recession, places like South Yorkshire tend to be hardest hit – they are first in, last out. Healey admits that London continues to power ahead, but adds: “As a government, we want to close the gap. The North East and West have inevitably been below the South East but there is no reason why that can’t change.” As president of Rotherham chamber of commerce, Healey has noticed a sea change in business attitude. “Nowadays, you meet the business community and they complain about the pressure points of success, such as skills, recruitment and competition from the Far East and China. It was very different eight years ago. “They complain about business regulation and, when we can, we have reacted to that.” Healey points to minimum wage. “Initially, business said the admin was costly and complex and we changed aspects of it. We now reckon that has saved £100m in South Yorkshire. “Eight years ago, we were known as the low-cost capital of Britain. There were worries about job losses but we introduced the minimum wage and added to the employment base rather than diminished it.” |
