Is the £500million Cambridge Biomedical Campus investment ‘new’ or ‘re-announced’ investment?

Posted byCambridge Town OwlPosted inUncategorized

Re-announced spending is governments are routinely accused of. Media organisations need to be careful – as to politicians, on what is ‘New’ funding vs what has already been announced so sums are not double-counted

Some of you may have spotted the Chancellor in Cambridge on 01 November 2024. She was talking about the investment from the firm Prologis which unfortunately from my perspective are responsible for these two architectural monstrosities. But that’s not what this post is about.

Above – Ugly things coming to Cambridge Biomedical Campus (which I covered here)

On re-announcing

One of the few things former Tory leader William Hague’s supporters said he was good at was picking holes in Labour’s policies in the late 1990s. It made no difference in the big picture because Hague still lost the 2001 general election by a similar margin – just on a much lower turnout. 60% – in a campaign that was even more miserable than the last one.

I’ve no idea why I remember William Hague pulling up Labour on re-announcing stuff but I do.

“As usual, the Budget included one or two reannouncements, such as the 1p reduction in the rate of income tax. The Chancellor enjoyed reannouncing that.”

William Hague MP, 21 March 2000, Hansard Col. 875

Those of you reading that speech may see some historical parallels between today and a quarter of a century ago – a Labour Government facing the devastation left by the very long years of previous Conservative rule, and questions on how long the latter can get away with blaming the former for bad things. As others have alluded to, Labour will need to be able to demonstrate visible (to the public) progress and improvement in services and the built environment before the next general election.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves visits Cambridge Biomedical Campus

We’ve been getting a lot of prominent people visiting our bit of Cambridge of late. Recall in the olden days that the ‘New Addenbrooke’s’ site was described for its countryside setting on the edge of the city (compared to its original premises opposite the Fitzwilliam Museum)

Above – ‘Hospital in a park’ was how the then New Addenbrooke’s was described in the Cambridge Evening News 05 Sept 1963 (p6) via Mike Petty/Cambs Collection

It was only in the late 1990s that the site was identified as a site for a regional hospital and biotech centre – later confirmed in the Cambridge Local Plan 2006.

Above – Cambridge Local Plan (2006) p23

Personally I think it’s reasonable to ask the ministers, politicians, planners, and built environment professionals past and present why the ‘high quality public transport’ infrastructure still is not in place nearly 20 years later. (Noting the HQPT ended up meaning ‘buses on segregated routes’ – and in my experience transport engineers and consultant treating with contempt in the tone of their voices any members of the public who called them out on this – something that in my view helped poison the relationship between local communities and local politicians as the latter did not rein in the transport officers over an extended period of time)

Cross-party interest

Addenbrooke’s and the Cambridge Biomedical Campus now sit within the revamped South Cambridgeshire seat held by Pippa Heylings MP for the Liberal Demcrats, but a decade ago Heidi Allen won the contest to represent the Tories in this otherwise safe-as-military-fortresses blue seat that covered the western half of southern Cambridgeshire. Around the same time, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander visited to promote the Coalition Government’s decision to fund Royal Papworth.

Above – centre pair of LibDem MPs Danny Alexander (then Chief Secretary to the Treasury) and Dr Julian Huppert (MP for Cambridge ) on 16 March 2015. Photo: Antony Carpen (me!)

I had no idea that five years later I’d be inside that yet-to-be-built hospital having heart surgery myself!

Fast forward to 01 November 2024 and Chancellor Rachel Reeves MP rocks up to Cambridge

“East Anglia will continue to be at the forefront of developing life-saving drugs and advance healthcare tests thanks to a £500m boost” announced ITV Anglia

As former BBC Cambridgeshire reporter Mark Williamson wrote, most of this is *not new money*

Above – from ITV Anglia here

You can also watch the pooled video footage and interview here. Part of the problem for Rachel Reeves is the question put by the reporter saying: “…and you’re announcing £500m of private investment…” – with the Chancellor then mirroring that point about ‘Prologis announcing…’

A simple online search tells us that…

“In 2021 Prologis UK committed £450 million of investment to the delivery of expansion plans at the campus”

Paul Norman, CoStar News, 22 Jan 2024.

“Is it new funding?”

“Paul Weston, regional head at Prologis UK, said the project was “a continuation of the investment we have put in this location for over 20 years now”.”

BBC Cambridgeshire 03 Nov 2024

So…this is not new funding, but rather something that the mainstream media might have missed out upon? Or perhaps one of several case studies that ministers can use as and when they need to?

Note *this is normal* re having a series of familiar real life case studies being used repeatedly to illustrate the impact of government policies in a world of short attention spans. However, things get messy when all concerned are not clear about what is new, and what is existing spending.

  • Reporters need to ask press officers if the sums involved are *new and additional amounts* of money/resources, or
    • A re-announced sum of money from a previous announcement
    • A portion of a large sum announced. eg. ‘We said last year we’d spend £XBillion on Y new hospitals, and today we are announcing that here in City Z we are committing £(X/Y)Billion for the new hospital here” (See the difference?)
  • Press officers (covered by the Civil Service Code) need to have immediate and factually accurate responses to the above
  • Party political advisers/spin doctors especially need to ensure they have the same as press officers – and ensure anyone they are talking to is clear on what is new, and what isn’t. Otherwise the cumulative figure ends up being larger than it actually is – and could have consequences later down the line.
  • Ministers need to ask civil servants routinely to make it absolutely crystal clear which is the new stuff and which is the re-announced stuff or the portion of earlier larger announcements.

I wouldn’t have expected any Chancellor of whichever political party to have gone into this level of detail. They have to be able to trust their civil servants and party political advisers *to have done this thinking for them* so that all the minister needs to do is (as in this case with Chancellor Rachel Reeves MP) simply read out the ‘lines to take’ for soundbites in the TV news. Which is why there is around 10mins of pooled video footage for broadcasters to decide which sections to use. Personally I think ITV Anglia should have provided a short version and the full version in their reports rather than just a ‘still and some written quotations. Not least because later on in the full report you see the Chancellor in conversation with early career researchers and with the cameras pulling back. Politicians in conversation and in listening mode come across differently compared with giving soundbites to the press.

“Which political party takes the credit?”

Success has many midwives, failure is an orphan – or so the saying goes.

  • LibDems controlled Cambridge City Council when the Cambridge Local Plan 2006 was created and submitted;
  • Labour were the party in government that signed off the Cambridge Local Plan 2006;
  • Tories held the offices of Chancellor and Health Secretary when Royal Papworth was signed off;
  • LibDems were in Coalition and could not have signed off Royal Papworth without support from their Coalition Partners – hence Danny Alexander (Libdems Chief Secretary in the Coalition visiting Cambridge in March 2015, with his MP-colleague Dr Julian Huppert);
  • Labour on returning to Government have already confirmed they want to continue the expansion of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus – only working in a different way to their predecessors the Conservatives (not least because the Combined authority and Cambridge City Council are Labour-controlled locally, and Labour are a joint-administration partner on Cambridgeshire County Council: it’s in their party-political interests for their ministers to support their local parties, an arrangement that also indirectly helps the Liberal Democrats).

So…take your pick

Transport and Infrastructure decision-making: why have one meeting when you can have four?

I’ve been asking about these every-so-often, (eg CUH NHS annual public meeting 2022 here) trying to keep track of who is responsible for what. Over the next week we have four meetings on transport issues – *five* if you extend it to a fortnight and cover any transport issues raised at the NHS trust that covers Addenbrooke’s.

While the agendas are slightly different – especially the last one, they call cover transport things that affect the biomedical campus’s future.

I’ve got public questions lined up for the first two, and am pondering whether to throw one at the last one too re the 2050 vision and also on the A&E Crisis. Feel free to email your own Qs to the CUH NHS Trust that covers Addenbrooke’s.

If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:

Below: Opening this month: The Cambridge Room. Let’s talk about the future of our city – design and built environment included