Editing Michael Heseltine (section)

====Inner city development====
Heseltine faced initial suspicion from Labour-led Merseyside Council, but got on well with [[Trevor Jones (British politician)|Sir Trevor Jones]], Liberal leader of [[Liverpool City Council]]. Jones, also a self-made businessman, got on well with Heseltine, and Jones claimed that Heseltine admitted to him late one night that he was a Liberal at heart, but could not bear the thought of having no realistic chance to win power.<ref name=crick231-233>Crick 1997, pp. 231–3.</ref>

Inspired by the [[Bundesgartenschau]]en which had helped to regenerate German cities after the war, Heseltine arranged for the first of five biennial [[National garden festival]]s to be held in Liverpool in 1984 (Jones arranged for the council to delegate the bid to the [[Merseyside Development Corporation]], of which he was a director). More than 3 million people eventually attended.<ref name=crick231-233/><ref name=duffy76-96>Michael Parkinson and James Duffy, "Government's Response to Inner-City Riots: The Minister for Merseyside and the Task Force," ''Parliamentary Affairs'' (1984) 37#1, pp. 76–96.</ref>

Heseltine arranged for Liverpool to receive unused government grants for other cities (from the Urban Programme), although the money was less than had been clawed back from Liverpool through council spending cuts. He also played an important role in the redevelopment of [[Royal Albert Dock, Liverpool|Albert Dock]], the development of Wavertree Technology Park (the land purchased by £10 million of public money) and the development of Cantril Farm estate into Stockbridge Village, arranging for [[Barratt Developments]] to build many new houses for owner occupiers.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 233–5.</ref>

Heseltine also played an important role in the development of [[Development Corporation|Urban Development Corporations]], directly appointed by the minister and overriding local authority planning controls to spend government money on infrastructure. This was a controversial measure in Labour strongholds such as East London, Merseyside and North East England.<ref name=duffy76-96/><ref name=crick238>Crick 1997, p. 238.</ref> He obtained a Treasury grant of £77 million to build the [[Docklands Light Railway]], although transport links to Docklands remained inadequate.<ref name=crick238/> He opened Britain's first [[Enterprise Zone]] at [[Corby]] in Northamptonshire.<ref name=duffy76-96/>

Some criticism was made of his time in Liverpool that he spent a lot of money but generated little in the way of new employment ("I would not blame him for that: Liverpool had defeated better men than Michael Heseltine" commented Lady Thatcher acidly in her memoirs in 1993). Local Labour politicians tended to feel that he had accomplished little, although they acknowledged his good intentions. However a more positive assessment was offered by Michael Parkinson, Professor of Urban Affairs at [[John Moores University]]: although he had been sceptical in the 1980s, by 1997 he had come to favour the policies championed by Heseltine: assignment of ministers to regions, development of housing associations and cooperatives, and the channelling of government money through business-led agencies rather than through local government.<ref>Crick 1997, pp. 241–2.</ref>