Leading the growing city of Milton Keynes is somewhat ‘like Sim City for real’, Peter Marland tells chair of Progress Alison McGovern as she tours the country meeting the Labour leaders who are governing Britain
Alison: When you became leader what was your top priority? What was the first thing on your to do list?
Peter:
The living wage, I think. In Milton Keynes, like it is everywhere, we’ve got a real problem with housing affordability. We’ve got a problem of a twin-track city so we’ve got lots of knowledge intensive jobs, lots of well-paid jobs, Home Retail Group. Actually people who grew up in Milton Keynes tend to be on minimum wage because our schools aren’t brilliant. So actually it was about campaigning and raising up the wages for people who are really struggling and they’re still really struggling. So that was the first thing.
Alison: Do you think there was a sense that the people who voted Labour in Milton Keynes, that they voted for that? How did you communicate it?
Peter:
We had a really clear manifesto which was actually delivered to every house. It was about ambition. It was about talking to people and understanding what they want. We had Arnie Graf in when he was part of the solution and we did lots of citizen engagements. We actually listened to what people wanted. Then we used, ultimately, our values and our principles to turn those into policies that spoke to people’s concerns and spoke to the concerns of a really broad consensus.
Alison: Tell me about the values point, because clearly most people will immediately identify living wage campaigners with campaigns we’ve run in the Labour party over the past few years. How has it taken decisions? Why does it make a difference that you’re a Labour leader? That’s what I’m asking really.
Peter:
I think the difference was that we didn’t just say ‘pay the living wage because it’s great for people being paid there’. We engaged with businesses so actually we were saying, and we’ve got more businesses signed up I think than most other places in the south … because your turnover of stuff is less here. Actually it promotes good working relationships and we were able to campaign on that … In a place like Milton Keynes, you have to say it’s an economic thing, it’s a prosperity thing, it’s a job creation thing, and it’s about an ambition. Not just pay the living wage because it’s good, but pay the living wage because it creates more jobs, pay the living wage because it helps people live, it helps people afford a house, and all these things. It was tying in a wider narrative of our values rather than just saying, ‘It’s good, believe us that it’s good’.
Alison: Do you think, therefore, it’s your responsibility not just to have that vision for the council, but actually for the city as a whole?
Peter:
Yeah. I mean, we became the first no overall control cooperative council and that’s double-edged. It’s firstly about how we continue to deliver services when we haven’t got any money for them. I have this thing I’ve found: the way that you make a service popular is try and cut it. If you try to close a library, some dusty building that hasn’t been used in years, suddenly it becomes the most popular thing in the world. But actually what that allows you to do is have a conversation with the public to say, ‘What do you value about libraries, why aren’t you using them, how can we make them more valuable?’
So actually we’re doing things like putting self-service in. Actually they’ll show up to put concessions in there because look at bookshelves. How do bookshelves survive? Actually it’s because they’re providing nice spaces for people to go and look at their iPads, or read, or sit and have a coffee. We’ve got to make public services like that as well. It was about the co-operative model of co-delivery of services, but it was also about actually saying the council are going to be doing less. Actually we’re going to be facilitating more, so you’ve got to communicate that wider vision for a city.
Alison: Let me just take you back to Milton Keynes itself. It is a growing place. What does that mean for this sort of political vision? It’s somewhere where a lot more people are going to come and liv, so how has that impacted on your leadership?
Peter:
It’s challenging, and it’s challenging for two reasons. One because we are growing so we have twice as many children in nursery this year … which is a massive pressure on things like children’s services. As you’d imagine, we’re building seven new schools and expanding 12 more this year. We had Sharon Hodgson down a couple of weeks ago trying to explain that, and she was really, actually listening about how can you expand and provide schools when we’re going to lose control of them.
It’s really important to that agenda not to see things in isolation. You can’t sell a house unless there’s a school, and a doctors’ surgery, and all these sorts of things on the estates. We’re not talking about building a couple of hundred houses, we’re talking about how the western expansion area is 30,000 houses that are going to go up between now and 2025.
Alison: Do you worry about the cohesiveness of a place like Milton Keynes with that?
Peter:
No, because people come here because I think they buy into that vision. But being a Labour leader in a place like Milton Keynes, or Swindon, or any of these places that are growing is really challenging because people don’t move somewhere like Milton Keynes unless they’re aspirational. Unless they want to do better for themselves because actually it’s a place that you could.
So that means actually we’ve got a really ambitious population and that cross-cuts things like gender, it cross-cuts things like BME populations. It cross-cuts really most things so it’s not just about viewing people in sections. It’s about seeing that wider vision. You’ve got to be aspirational. We’ve got to be able to fit in the aspiration.
Alison: Do you see aspiration, then, as a part of Milton Keynes’ self-identity?
Peter:
Milton Keynes identifies itself as a can-do place. I say that comes from two aspects. The first aspect is, it has always been growing and it has always been sort of new. So it needed a shopping centre, so it got a shopping centre. It needed a music venue, so it got Milton Keynes Bowl and then it needed a football club, so it got a football club. It’s always had to aspire to things and then get them.
Next on the list is things like a conference centre, and a skyscraper … sort of like Sim City for real.
Alison: Right. That’s why, you’re like building a city for real.
Peter:
Which is really engaging and I think that’s one aspect of it. The other aspect is that outside of Milton Keynes people think it’s like a concrete jungle and it isn’t. It’s the greenest city in the UK. We’ve got, I think it’s 250 million bushes and trees that we have to take care of. So in terms of the public realm budget it is quite challenging. I think the centre people, first and second generation that moved here, but also the generation that is now being brought up here, are very defensive about it. People that come here sort of joke about the roundabouts, but if you know Milton Keynes, how many cities can you get 10 miles from the top to the bottom in about eight minutes?
It’s part of urban design processes all over the world and yet in this country you have to persuade ministers to give us a couple million quid for an extra grid-row so we can build 20,000 houses because they think it’s easy to do. Aspiration is a state of mind in one sense, but it sort of feeds its way through. So it is an aspirational city because people come here and they want to do better … that was the reason they came here. No one came here to be unemployed, they came here to get a job.
Alison: I’m listening to you talk about people coming here because they wanted a job, there was a job in Milton Keynes, so they came to Milton Keynes so they’re here with a bit of fight and spirit. The centre, you talk about that, it makes me think about the immigration debate that we sometimes have. Putting aside for one minute problems of integration, or those sorts of issues. Do you think there’s a lesson for kind of British politics in what you’re saying which is that it’s almost like they’re celebrating the pioneer spirit of people who have come to Milton Keynes. We seem to have lost that somehow in politics nationally. We seem to be a bit down on ourselves.
Peter:
I think, for the Labour party in particular, it’s a huge challenge. In my ward, which is around about 20 per cent BAME, particularly Pakistani Muslim, they vote Labour. Their children moved to the western expansion area and vote Conservative. That’s a huge challenge because you don’t come to this country or you don’t come anywhere, you don’t move halfway around the world unless you’re aspirational for yourself and other people. I think we’ve taken a group of voters for granted for too long and we’ve just always expected them to vote Labour. Actually they’re now not going to vote Labour; we have to persuade them to vote Labour again. So I think that’s a challenge particularly with the BME communities where in general I think there’s a real lesson in Milton Keynes is that, it’s similar to London in that sense, is that when lots of people are immigrants themselves, like you say, irrespective of their race, or whatever, actually you all grow along together and that can be actually quite positive and energetic in many cases.
Alison: Three final questions. You mentioned earlier about being the first no overall control council, and a co-operative council. In terms of the political management of the council, that must be a challenge – what does that mean on a day to day? What’s that like, the political management?
Peter:
Luckily we have a strong leader model so being in a minority on a day-to-day basis isn’t as challenging as you might expect. Because obviously most things other than the planning and the budget is mine to do and then I have a cabinet so the day-to-day management isn’t difficult. I think the closeness of the council, and the fact we have elections every year, means that actually there’s only sort of like a two- or three-month period where you get anything done.
The main aim is to try and be conciliatory, try and work cross-party – and actually, isn’t that the way politics is going? Because if you knock on somebody’s door, they don’t give a damn if you’re Labour, or Tory, they want to know who’s fixing the pothole, or who’s building the school. Actually if you can show them that you’re doing that as a party, and you’re willing to work cross-party, then I think you reap the political rewards for that. Being politically colourblind for 10 months of the year, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think that’s how real people think. Actually only the vast majority of people only think about politics for two months every five years. Not for a solid 12 months a year, every year so I think it’s about working cross-party, also in partnership externally.
Alison: If you had a measure of success, if in five years’ time you had a measure of success that you set yourself for Milton Keynes, what would it be? The kind of one thing that you would say, ‘I will know I will have succeeded because we will …’?
Peter:
I think that’s something that we haven’t touched on is that we have some significant challenges regarding some of the older estates, those that were built in the early 70s. Where there’s a life expectancy of a child born there today is 14 years less than a child born in another part of the city and all that separates the two parts of the city is 60 metres of grid row.
In a city that was built since 1967, that’s not acceptable.
Alison: This is not generations, this is quite recent.
Peter:
I don’t think the council can solve those problems on their own. The days of the council saying to people, ‘this is how it will be and how it gets done’ – those are gone forever. So actually my measure of success I think in five years’ time is actually the CCG, the DWP, Milton Keynes council, Thames Valley police, the Citizens’ Advice Bureau, all these agencies working together to actually tackle some of those problems. Instead of having the council tax pound, and the pound that funds the police, and the pound that funds the DWP, have we got Milton Keynes public sector pound, that actually we all work together. I think there’s a challenge there if we all work together, we can drive down the cost in the public purse which will ultimately drive up people’s wellbeing.
It’s not just about driving down cost, it’s actually about improving people’s lives as well. You don’t just do that by driving down costs, there’s got to be a plan. I think my measure of success will be: in five years’ time, have we integrated our structures and our policies that we’re all working together towards that same aim to make sure that a child born in Milton Keynes in 2025 has the same life chances and the same life expectancy as somebody 60 metres away? That’s a challenge, isn’t it, to the centre-left, to the Labour party. Isn’t that why we exist?
Alison: It certainly is. Final, final, final question. A recent progress meeting, Councillor Claire Kober, who you’ll know is the leader of Harinegey, made the point that in British politics on TV shows that people watch with politics, you rarely hear from leaders of the local government, that the Question Times, what Newsnights of this world don’t hear, is local government leaders speaking on behalf of the Labour party. So, yes or no to this question.
It’s Tuesday afternoon, your phone rings. It’s the Labour party press office in HQ and they say, we need somebody to sit in the Labour slot on Question Time on Thursday night. Yes or no?
Peter:
Yes. I think you make a really good point so I [was] with Jules Pipe and these really bright, brilliant leaders. I said to some of the people around there: what was the big event this week in politics? They were all looking at each other. Albert Bore resigned. Albert Bore, leader of Birmingham city council, leader of a million people, had resigned and it didn’t make the national news. Two days later Michael Meacher died, sadly. Represented 70,000 people – it was top of every major news station or on the front page of the Guardian. Now, how can it be that a leader of a million people, the biggest urban council in Europe resigns and it doesn’t even come across a desk of the political editor of the Mirror or the Sun?
I do think there’s a real need to increase the profile of local government, but I think it’s happening slowly because of the strong leader model. Because of more directly elected mayors, and actually because I think people are starting to understand that central government doesn’t deliver a single service. Actually, the vote they have every four years, be it for London mayor, or be it for leader of Milton Keynes council, or leader of Swindon, actually they’re the people who are delivering the services that they see most. They’re the people delivering children’s services and adult social care services, and emptying the bins. Actually that has more of an effect on their day-to-day lives than the stuff the MPs do. I think the more the strong leader beds in, hopefully, the more people will understand the importance of local government.
Alison: The polls say that you’re more trusted as well.
Peter:
I think we rank just above some journalists, which is great. Interestingly, council officers rank quite low on that chart, so councillors are really well respected. Council officers are seen as some sort of nasty thing under the bed. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
But when people ask if you want to pay more tax, they’ll always say no. But should more power be given to local councils? Yes. Do you want to pay more for it? No. I think in terms of devolution, it’s not just about sort of powers, it’s got to be about full fiscal devolution as well … So that the stealth measures of getting rid of some councils, clumping councils together – [we need to] actually come up with our own Labour narrative about what local government evolution means and should mean.
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Join Alison and Peter at:
Britain and the politics of place: Where next for Labour?
6-7.30pm, Wednesday 20 April 2016
Westminster Suite, Local Government House, Smith Square, London, SW1 3HZ
Speech:
Alison McGovern MP Chair, Progress
Reply:
Claire Kober Leader, London borough of Haringey
John Denham Director, Centre for English Identity and Politics
Peter Lamb Leader, Crawley borough council
Chair:
Theo Blackwell, London borough of Camden
Labour’s civic leaders, cabinet members and scrutineers recognise that the needs of communities are changing, often in ways which might not be apparent to lawmakers in Westminster. With this in mind, Progress’ chair Alison McGovern MP has been touring the country listening to some of our best Labour administrations to hear how they have transformed public services and pioneered progressive plans. Despite the central government-imposed cuts, they are leading the way on the living wage, on childcare and building infrastructure and new homes.
This event, which is kindly being hosted in conjunction with the LGA Labour group, will promote some of these great achievements and launch Progress’ Governing for Britain network so our national lawmakers and the wider public can continue to learn from our local councillors and AMs.
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