Levelling Up White Paper Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateBaroness Bull
Main Page: Baroness Bull (Crossbench - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Baroness Bull's debates with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government
(2 years, 9 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, levelling up covers all these issues. We have an approach to child poverty and take those issues very seriously indeed. More detail on these and other matters will of course be outlined in the forthcoming White Paper.
My Lords, further to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Young, on criteria, I note that the levelling-up fund, the towns fund and the community renewal fund all prioritise GVA over income deprivation as a metric to rank places according to need. This can lead areas with low economic output but affluent households to rank above places with high-value employment but low local incomes. Will the White Paper clarify whether the priority for levelling up is to help the poorest people wherever they live or to target the least productive localities? How do the Government want to be judged—on how individuals are faring, or on how far left-behind areas improve?
My Lords, we need to understand that different funds have different priorities. The £4.8 billion levelling-up fund seeks to improve infrastructure and productivity, while the UK shared prosperity fund will deal with the issues around skills and replaces much of the funding that we saw through the EU structural funds. We need to see that in the round and, of course, the White Paper will provide further detail.