Homelessness: Vagrancy Act 1824

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 10th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I am sure the House realises that I cannot possibly confirm that as I cannot pre-empt anything that might be in the King’s Speech.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister has mentioned a number of times that she will bring this forward in suitable legislation. She must have some legislation in mind. What is it?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, I never said that I would bring it forward—I said that the Government would. It is now in the hands of the Home Office, which is dealing with this.

Women and Men: Pay Gap

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right. That is why we are working with schools and encouraging young people to take up STEM subjects in particular. Since 2010, there has been a 31% increase in girls’ entry into STEM A-levels. That is a great success, but there has also been a 34% increase in women being accepted on to full-time STEM undergraduate courses in the UK. I look forward to this increasing, because we need more women in these areas.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

Thank you. There is widespread agreement that an effective parental leave scheme that encourages fathers to shoulder more of the work of caring for young children is one of the keys to gender equality at work. There is also wide agreement that the current parental leave scheme is utterly ineffective. It is now five years since the Government began their review of the scheme. What has happened to it?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Interestingly enough, we have launched an online tool, hosted by GOV.UK, to make it easier for parents to check if they are eligible for shared parental leave, plan their leave, and give the required notice and information to their employer. The number of couples taking up shared parental leave and pay is increasing year on year; last year it was at 13,000. We are also looking at what more we can do to make it easier for fathers to take paternity leave, to challenge the entrenched assumption that caring is the sole responsibility of the mother.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, we have a lot of scrutiny of this Bill before us. Before we start, I want to explore what is meant by levelling up, and whether there is a broad agreement as to its definition and purpose. My amendment proposes to remove the words “levelling up”, as the content of the Bill fails to live up to the aspiration as described in the levelling-up White Paper.

Here is one definition. The purpose of levelling up is,

“to break that link between geography and destiny so that it makes good business sense for the private sector to invest in areas that have, for too long, felt left behind ... A vision for the future that will see public spending on R&D increased in every part of the country; transport connectivity reaching London-like levels within and between all our towns and cities; faster broadband in every community; life expectancies rising; violent crime falling; schools improving; and private sector investment unleashed.”

That is the former Prime Minister’s explanation, set out in the foreword to the levelling-up White Paper.

Does levelling up refer to this? The White Paper says:

“There are stark geographical inequalities between and within our cities, towns and villages … It is about unleashing opportunity, prosperity and pride in places where, for too long, it has been held back.”


These words were those of the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, and Andy Haldane, formerly of the Bank of England, in a further foreword to the White Paper.

The executive summary of the White Paper spells out the purpose very clearly:

“This requires us to end the geographical inequality which is such a striking feature of the UK … This programme has to be broad, deep and long-term. It has to be rooted in evidence demonstrating that a mix of factors is needed to transform places and boost local growth: strong innovation and a climate conducive to private sector investment, better skills, improved transport systems, greater access to culture, stronger pride in place, deeper trust, greater safety and more resilient institutions.”


Therefore, throughout the White Paper, on which presumably the Bill is based, there is a clear focus on geographical disparities and inequalities. These inequalities, it is argued, harm the whole of the country, not only for the lost opportunities of lower incomes and skills but because the consequence is lower growth, which has a negative pull on the country as a whole.

The levelling-up fund is, I assume, a precursor to a wider strategy. If so, it is instructive to analyse which areas have been granted funds in the first two rounds. If levelling up was to be laser-like in addressing the worst of the geographic inequalities, levelling-up grants would be targeted at those parts of the country deemed to be suffering the greatest inequalities as defined by the White Paper. Yet, as the House of Commons Library has shown, those areas categorised by the Government as priority 1 for grant funding had just 59% of the total funding available. Over £1 billion from the levelling-up fund was allocated to areas not deemed in greatest need; those were in priority 2 and even priority 3 areas.

That is not levelling up as defined by the White Paper; it is spreading the government funding jam way too thinly. Of course there will be, within every area, pockets of deprivation. Empowering and enabling local councils to tackle smaller areas of deprivation is probably the most effective way to do so. The levelling-up White Paper, however, is setting out a strategy, not for tackling individual poverty or small areas of deprivation but for finding solutions to economically underperforming places. Will the Minister clarify whether levelling up is to tackle individual poverty or to narrow the gaps as proposed by the metrics in the annexe to the White Paper?

The White Paper—it is a good read—also states:

“The UK has larger geographical differences than many other developed countries on multiple measures, including productivity, pay, educational attainment and health … While London and much of the South East have benefited economically, former industrial centres and many coastal communities have suffered. This has left deep and lasting scars in many of these places, damaging skills, jobs, innovation, pride in place, health and wellbeing.”


In chapter 1 of the White Paper the analysis is most clearly stated:

“The UK’s spatial disparities are also among the largest across advanced economies on a number of measures, including productivity and income per head … When assessed across 28 different measures—using different spatial units of analysis, different measures of prosperity and different indices of inequality—the UK has been found to be one of the most spatially unequal countries among the OECD.”


The Bill offers an opportunity to fulfil the aspirations set out in the White Paper. Currently, it fails to do so. The missions and capitals described in the White Paper must be part of this Bill. The Bill should then establish the legislation to enable those missions to be enacted. It fails to do so.

This is a complex Bill addressing, in part, one element of the White Paper missions, that of wider local devolution. It also has a detailed section on planning reform which may—or may not—add to a mission to narrow spatial gaps. Yet measures to enable the big strategy of levelling up are simply not there. Levelling up is a slogan seeking some substance. For the sake of millions of people, the substance and the financial commitment are desperately needed. I beg to move.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for tabling this amendment because it gives us the opportunity to pinpoint the tension at the heart of the levelling-up agenda. As the impact assessment reminds us, the problem it claims to address concerns unequal shares and opportunities, and levelling up

“is a mission to challenge, and change, that unfairness.”

It means

“giving everyone the opportunity to flourish”

and to have

“longer and more fulfilling lives”,

together with

“sustained rises in living standards and well-being”

for people everywhere. In fact, this is a statement about people, not places, as reflected in some of the missions. Yet the impact assessment states that achieving the aims of levelling up

“requires us to end the geographical inequality which is such a striking feature of the UK.”

The Minister’s levelling-up letter explains that the missions are necessarily spatial—but why are they purely spatial and geographical when inequalities of income and wealth between individuals are also striking features of the UK? A report published by the Social Market Foundation, called Beyond Levelling Up and written by a former senior adviser to recent Conservative Chancellors, argues that this approach to levelling up

“avoids the question of whether we think the gap between rich and poor is acceptable, and whether we are comfortable with the current levels of income and wealth accruing to the richest in society.”

I will leave those in poverty until a later amendment. To make matters worse, ONS data shows that inequality has worsened since he wrote the report, and it is worse still if we use alternative measures on inequality.

I ask the Minister if she thinks the gap between rich and poor is acceptable. How does she think that the levelling-up agenda’s ambitions can be achieved without addressing that gap between rich and poor?

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I declare, for Committee stage as a whole, that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a vice-president of the National Energy Action advisory board.

I thank my noble friend Lady Pinnock for raising this issue; it is very important that we have a shared understanding of what we mean by levelling up. For me, I think it is the second option she gave, which is narrowing the gap. If we were to compare ourselves with Germany, we would find that there is a constitutional requirement in Germany for the 16 Länder to support each other, and the outcomes are assessed in terms of how well off the Länder are and using the many criteria we will be debating later today—there are so many criteria you can use. However, it is important that we understand the Government’s precise objectives with the Bill.

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Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

4: Clause 1, page 1, line 14, at end insert—
“(2A) The levelling-up missions must include a mission to reduce the numbers and proportion of children in absolute poverty, relative poverty and deep poverty in each local authority and across the United Kingdom.”Member's explanatory statement
This would ensure that the levelling-up missions included a mission to reduce child poverty.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 4 in my name and those of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Stroud, whose support I am grateful for, although they could not speak today. The purpose is to ensure there is a levelling-up mission to reduce levels of absolute, relative and deep child poverty in each local authority and across the UK.

On Second Reading, I quoted the response of the Levelling-up Secretary to a Conservative Back-Bencher who had argued that levelling up applies to need, not geography. “Yes, absolutely,” said Mr Gove:

“It is critically important that we … address poverty wherever we find it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/2/22; col. 339.


The former Prime Minister Mr Johnson was asked by the Liaison Committee:

“Can you level up the country without reducing the number of children living in poverty?”


He replied, “No.” When he was told that child poverty was not mentioned once in the levelling-up White Paper, he assured the committee that this was a “purely formal accident”. So, while I appreciate the detailed letters sent by the Minister following Second Reading, it was disappointing that nowhere could I find an answer to the question I had posed—

“could the Minister please explain why a mission to reduce the level of child poverty has not been added to the list of missions in the White Paper?”—[Official Report, 17/1/23; col.1766.]

given that its omission was apparently an accident. Indeed, I could not find any mention of child poverty at all in her levelling-up letter. Is that another accident?

Part of my argument on Second Reading was that levelling up has to be about people as well as places if it is to meet its objectives, including giving everyone the opportunity to flourish. Indeed, although the existing missions are framed in terms of inequalities between areas, ultimately, many of them concern people rather than the places in which they live, and earlier, the Minister acknowledged that levelling up is about people and places.

However, apart from the education mission, children are conspicuous by their absence. Yet, to quote Action for Children,

“Levelling up can only succeed if this includes levelling up for children.”


Levelling up for children has to address the child poverty that blights our society, with nearly 4 million children in poverty, or getting on for three in 10, projected by the Resolution Foundation to rise to its highest rate since 1998-99 by 2027-28. Moreover, half of children in families with three or more children are projected to be in poverty by that year. A glimpse of what this means is provided in an open letter from participants in the participatory Changing Realities project:

“Our children are hungry. Schools report ‘short concentration’ and ‘unmanageable moods’. They have lost their childhood ... we are sick with anxiety, drowning in financial doom.”


The report in which this is reproduced, prepared by the APPG Child of the North just last month, noted:

“We know that poverty is the central driver of inequalities between children, leading to worse physical and mental health, poorer educational attainment and life chances and alarming … gaps in life expectancy”.


This underlines the importance of tackling child poverty through existing missions on education, health and well-being. Gaps in healthy life expectancy cannot be closed without tackling child poverty. As the BMA has warned, “poverty kills”. In a recent BMJ interview, the President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health observed that social deprivation is a far bigger problem for children’s health than it was five to 10 years ago. She warns that poverty

“essentially eats away at what we believe the kinds of key components of a healthy childhood are”

and that this is going to have a generational impact. She calls for long-term thinking and, in the absence of government action, the college is encouraging paediatricians to lobby politicians on their commitment to reduce child poverty and health inequalities. Indeed, the royal college has briefed in support of this amendment, presenting evidence that child poverty is a key driver of health inequalities.

As a recent open letter to the Prime Minister from leading public health bodies and others—signed by many Peers, including myself—makes clear, the impact of child poverty and food insecurity on health has knock-on effects on education and achievement levels in schools. The educational mission looks to level up the numbers of primary schoolchildren achieving the expected standard in reading, writing and maths. Yet there is no acknowledgement of how poverty prevents many children reaching their potential with, as the public health letter spells out, implications for the provision of free school meals and breakfasts.

While I have stressed the importance of the levelling-up agenda explicitly addressing inequalities between people as well as places, as I argued earlier and the Minister accepted, the case for a child poverty mission stands, even if one accepts the Minister’s assertion, in her levelling-up letter, that the missions are “necessarily spatial”. The amendment is thus deliberately framed so as to include a spatial as well as a national, aggregate dimension. The evidence provided in the APPG Child of the North report, and also by Action for Children, shows clearly the spatial dimension to child poverty. According to Action for Children, 60 out of 152 local authorities have child poverty rates above the average. The APPG report underlines how the risk of child poverty is consistently higher in the north than in the rest of the country. However, it should also be noted that, after taking account of housing costs, research by my university, Loughborough, for End Child Poverty found that some of the highest child poverty rates are to be found in London authorities. So, in order to level up all these areas, wherever they are, we need an explicit child poverty mission that addresses both the extent and depth of child poverty.

The Minister’s letter explains that the levelling-up missions aim

“to anchor ambition and provide clarity over the objectives of public policy for the next decade”

and that they will be varied only

“following careful review of all missions”.

Yet we are constantly told that the Government are committed to reducing child poverty, and earlier the Minister said that levelling up is about bridging the gap between rich and poor. So, I ask again: why is there not a child poverty mission which would underpin and complement the existing missions and help to bridge that gap? Such a mission is important, both because children experience childhood only once and because poverty in childhood can have longer-term effects on their education, health and general well-being and their ability to flourish and realise their potential. Thus, this is urgent. Children cannot wait for a review of existing missions some years hence.

If the Minister cannot accept the amendment, will she at least agree to take it away and consider the addition of a child poverty mission to the existing list? If not, we can only conclude that the Government do not care sufficiently about child poverty or children to include them in their levelling-up strategy. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will read Hansard, then write to her and put a copy in the Library.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate has shown the importance of some of the gaps in the Government’s levelling-up mission. It also shows how social and environmental justice are intertwined in terms of child poverty, the environment and disability, as we have talked about. They gel together well as a set of amendments.

I am very grateful to noble Lords who spoke in support of Amendment 4. Some powerful speeches have enriched the case for adding a child poverty mission to the list of missions. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who looked for a way through without an extra mission but looking at how the current missions could be adapted. It was very disappointing that the Minister rather rejected that olive branch—that way out or way through—and has not even agreed to take it away and consider it as an option.

I thank the Minister for engaging with the issues raised, but, needless to say, I found her response very disappointing. I think she said that the Government accept that child poverty is an issue that we must keep an eye on, manage and act on—but where is the Government’s child poverty strategy? There is none. It is simply not good enough to say that it is all about getting parents into paid work, without even acknowledging the growth of in-work poverty and the number of children in families who have someone in paid work and yet are in real, serious poverty.

The Minister said that she did not want to have targets that would just take people above the poverty line. That is one of the reasons why the amendment talked about deep poverty, not simply getting those just below the line over it. It is a shame that the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, could not be here, because her Social Metrics Commission has done a lot to draw attention to the increasingly serious issue of the depths of poverty. We now have organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation talking about destitution. In our modern-day society, this is really not something to be complacent about.

The Minister said, “we are not complacent”, but she then went on to repeat all the wonderful things that the Government are doing, none of which is reducing child poverty—they may be managing it but are not reducing it. It is irrelevant to this amendment to say that we are doing this and that, because those things are not serving to reduce the level of child poverty. I am afraid that, for me, that smacks of complacency.

I do not want to keep people from their dinner. The Minister said that she hoped that we would be reassured by what we had heard and withdraw the amendment. I will of course withdraw, but do not take that as me being in any way reassured. I am not. We will have to consider whether we want to come back on Report with an amendment on child poverty. But, for now, I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 4 withdrawn.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will focus on levelling up, even though it forms but a fraction of this leviathan of a Bill. If the Bill and the wider levelling-up agenda are to meet their objectives of

“giving everyone the opportunity to flourish … living longer and more fulfilling lives … benefitting from sustained rises in living standards and well-being … and … realising the potential of … every person across the UK”,

to quote the White Paper, they have to be about people as well as places, as my noble friend Lady Anderson said in her inspiring maiden speech. The White Paper acknowledges the point made by my noble friend Lord Whitty that

“disparities are often larger within towns, counties or regions than between them”,

and the former Lords Minister stated:

“It is very clear that the levelling-up mission involves levelling up both within and between communities”.—[Official Report, 19/5/22; col. 558.]


However, they—I do not count my noble friend here—failed to draw the obvious conclusion that a geographical lens is not in itself sufficient. Then when a Conservative Back-Bencher in the Commons argued that

“levelling up applies to need not geography”,

the Secretary of State did respond, “Yes, absolutely”, and that:

“It is critically important that we … address poverty wherever we find it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/2/22; col. 339.]


The fact is that many people in poverty are not to be found in the poorest areas.

Despite Mr Gove’s admission, nowhere does the levelling-up agenda directly address poverty. Last year, the then Prime Minister, who championed levelling up, was asked in the Liaison Committee on 30 March:

“Do you believe it is possible to level up the country without reducing the number of children living in poverty?”


“No,” he replied. He was then asked how many times child poverty was mentioned in the levelling up White Paper. When he was told it was “none”, he responded that it is a “purely formal accident”.

If it was an accident, how come that accident is now being repeated? Specifically, could the Minister please explain why a mission to reduce the level of child poverty has not been added to the list of missions in the White Paper? A Written Answer to a Question from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on whether a reduction in child poverty in every local authority across the UK is

“an intended outcome of the levelling up agenda”

stated that reducing child poverty

“is a central part of this vision”

and referred to the White Paper’s missions. But if it is a central part of the vision, why is it not explicit in the missions?

I hope to argue in Committee that there should be such a mission with regard not just to the number and proportion of children in poverty but to the depth of that poverty, because more and more children are being pushed further and further below the poverty line, in part because of the Government’s own social security policies. Action for Children has argued that tackling child poverty is key to levelling up and that this calls for a new child poverty strategy and review of how the social security system could be best used to lift children out of poverty and give them the opportunity to thrive.

Action for Children also makes the more general point that levelling up can only succeed if this includes levelling up for children. Only one of the missions relates specifically to children, and it does so in a way that frames children purely as future “becomings” through their educational outcomes, while ignoring them as beings whose childhood in the here and now matters—a bias criticised by the British Academy programme on reframing childhood that I chaired. Even from the narrow and, I accept, important perspective of educational results, there is no recognition of how those results can be affected by child poverty and hunger, and of the role that expanding free school lunches and breakfasts could play in supporting this mission.

In arguing for levelling up to focus on people as well as places, I am not suggesting that place does not matter. Indeed, it probably matters most to those who are least mobile geographically and has a significant impact on their well-being. I thus welcomed the Government’s eventual agreement to include community wealth funds in the recent consultation on the use of dormant assets, not least because proposals for such funds place great emphasis on the participation of local communities, including the most marginalised, in deciding their use. Is the Minister in a position to update us on the outcome of that consultation?

In conclusion, in the Commons Second Reading debate, the then Minister for Housing heralded the Bill as

“a major milestone in our journey towards building a stronger, fairer and more united country.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/6/22, col. 914.]

But it cannot represent such a milestone without explicitly committing the Government to pursuing a child poverty strategy.

Voter Identification Regulations 2022

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Strathclyde (Con)]

My Lords, it was very interesting to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, pray in aid the Motion passed by this House in 1994 on the application of fatal Motions in this House. Of course, this House has a power to use fatal Motions, but, as with so many powers of this House, it is not used by convention. I cannot think, off the top of my head, of an occasion when it should be used. I am convinced that the noble Baroness did not really make the case for it, because all the arguments she used—which were perfectly valid arguments—should have been used, and probably were used, during the passage of the Bill earlier this year. That was the time when your Lordships’ House should have stopped that part of the legislation coming into force, rather than dealing with it now. As I understand it, it was a manifesto commitment. Even if it were not, we have been discussing it in both Houses of Parliament for the last seven or eight years, going back to when my noble friend Lord Pickles was Secretary of State; he launched a review and an investigation in 2015 into how local government held elections.

Furthermore, the regulations, while they are only coming into force now, have been discussed for many months, and good local authorities will no doubt have taken steps to organise themselves. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, spoke very reasonably in her speech, and, if it does not embarrass her for me to say this, I agreed with much of it. However, I also felt that my noble friend the Minister had dealt with a lot of the arguments earlier, and perhaps she can go a little further now.

The point I want to raise with the noble Baroness is on the suggestion in her regret amendment to the Motion that there should be a Select Committee of this House to examine these regulations post legislation. I wanted to confirm my understanding with both the noble Baroness and my noble friend the Minister that there is nothing to stop the House from conducting such an inquiry, but, rather than putting it in a regret amendment to the Motion before the House today, it would be entirely right to make a case to the Liaison Committee, which I have no doubt would be supported by the noble Baroness the Leader of the Opposition and the noble Lord the leader of the Liberal Democrats.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, during the passage of the Bill, I raised the likely impact of the photo identification requirement on people living in poverty. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, that the word “photo” was not in the manifesto.

While I welcome the Government’s focus on those with protected characteristics, the Bill is not sufficient to assess adequately the impact on all marginalised groups, given the Government’s refusal to enact the socioeconomic duty in the Equality Act. I will not repeat the arguments I made previously, but my fears, far from being allayed, are all the greater given how little time there is between the laying of the regulations and the May local elections, the inadequacy of which has been underlined by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, the Electoral Commission, the Local Government Association and others.

I will raise just two main issues, the first of which concerns consultation. The Explanatory Memorandum states:

“Significant consultation has been carried out with … stakeholders”,


including “civil society organisations”. Both in Committee and on Report, I asked specifically about consultation with organisations working with people in poverty and with those who can bring the expertise of their experience of poverty to bear on the matter.

Domestic Abuse Victims: Housing Benefit

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 12th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I have not seen that report, but I will certainly look at it. Under the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, local authorities must commission enough of the right support to meet the needs of all of those victims and their children, and they must monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of that provision. Therefore, if they are not doing that, I will certainly take that back to the department and we will look into it further.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, when freezing the housing allowance yet again, did the Government assess the impact on domestic abuse survivors and their children trying to establish themselves in independent accommodation?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

Yes, the noble Baroness is right that that was a difficult decision in the economic climate as it is, but, as I have said in this Chamber before, we had to make a very balanced decision on rent and social housing rents because of the effect on the provider as well as on the resident.

Renters Reform Bill

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

As we discussed in a lot of detail last week, this was an extremely sad and very disturbing case. On whether we will look at the healthy homes standard again, I think we will now wait to see if it is going to be in the renters reform Bill. In the meantime, the Secretary of State wrote to all local authorities this week to insist that they look at their stock, so that we as a department and a Government know exactly what is happening in our social housing stock as far as mould and damp are concerned.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, one reason why low-income tenants are struggling with their rents is that the local housing allowance has been frozen. Can the Minister explain why?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

We have to understand that this country is in an economically difficult time, and very difficult decisions have to be made. If we look at what was given to very vulnerable groups of people in the Statement last week, I think noble Lords will agree that the Government are doing all they possibly can—

Roma Community: Levelling Up

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I guess I will have to write to my noble friend on the specific point about what happens to funding, but the Government’s focus is on ensuring that we improve provision and keep more GRT children in mainstream schooling.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, the original Statement about the strategy referred to entrenched inequality, and last year we were told that the strategy would be published in due course. Why has it not yet been published? Is there no strategy?

Levelling Up White Paper

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, in July, the Prime Minister set out that we will have made progress in levelling up when we have begun to raise living standards, spread opportunity, improved our public services and restored people’s sense of pride in their community. The forthcoming White Paper will set out the further detail, so that I hope we will be able to tick my noble friend’s three boxes.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, as the official Social Mobility Commission has made clear, levelling up is about people as well as places. Why therefore, to quote the commission, is England the only nation in the UK without a strategy to address child poverty?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My 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.

Inclusive Society

Baroness Lister of Burtersett Excerpts

Wednesday 14th April 2021 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To move that the Grand Committee takes note of the case for building an inclusive society in the post-pandemic world; and the steps that national and local government will need to take to achieve an inclusive society in the United Kingdom.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to introduce this debate. At a time when talk is of a gradual return to some semblance of normality, there is a danger that what is often called the “new normal” simply reverts to an old normal. In the old normal, thanks to austerity, our threadbare public services left our society, and in particular its most marginalised members, acutely vulnerable to Covid’s impact. The pandemic has caused so much suffering; we have to learn lessons from it. It is therefore time to start a national conversation about what this new normal should look like and how we build a more inclusive society.

As shown by a comprehensive evidence review conducted for the Government Office for Science by the British Academy—I declare an interest as a Fellow—the pandemic has, like a barium meal,

“exposed, exacerbated and solidified existing inequalities in society.”

That is what Sir Michael Marmot called a “slow burning injustice”, fuelled by socioeconomic inequality and intersecting structural inequalities, notably of race, ethnicity, gender, disability, class and age.

These intersecting inequalities are reflected in shocking poverty statistics, as the work of the Social Metrics Commission and others has demonstrated. The latest pre-pandemic figures, published conveniently just before Recess, reveal not just a further increase in the number of children in poverty to nearly a third but also, as CPAG points out—I declare an interest as honorary president—that two-thirds of those children are living in deep poverty. Recent analysis from Leeds University shows how children from black, Asian and other minority ethnic communities have been hit hardest as poverty has deepened in recent years.

It is surely troubling that research conducted for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation found that even before the pandemic, 2.4 million people were living in destitution, unable to afford the essentials needed to eat without recourse to food banks and to keep warm, dry and clean. Together with Crisis and the Trussell Trust, it has written to the Prime Minister, saying:

“The time is right for a new national and political vision for a country without poverty and homelessness”.


This speaks to a growing sense that we are at a fork in the nation’s road—a “critical juncture”, as the Public Services Committee put it. As the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury warned in his Easter sermon

“we have a choice … We can go on as before Covid, where the most powerful and the richest gain and so many fall behind … Or we can … choose a better future for all.”

In thinking of a better future, there is much talk of a need for a new Beveridge. It is worth remembering Beveridge’s advice:

“A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolution, not for patching”.


It felt almost like a revolutionary moment when the Financial Times editorial board, referencing Beveridge, observed:

“Radical reforms—reversing the prevailing policy direction of the last four decades—will need to be put on the table … Policies until recently considered eccentric, such as basic income and wealth taxes, will have to be in the mix.”


As the latest Marmot review makes clear, this has to mean tackling the multiple inequalities and injustices exposed and exacerbated by Covid through looking upstream at their social structural determinants, together with an emphasis on the prevention of social ills, to echo the Public Services Committee. Moreover, if the Government’s flagship policy of levelling up is to contribute to building a more inclusive society—and so far, it is little more than a slogan—it has to be about levelling up people and not just a few politically significant places.

As a social policy analyst, I have been critical of how successive Governments have looked to the US for their social policy inspiration—well, now it truly is an inspiration. President Biden has reasserted the importance of government at all levels. He understands that building back better from a society riven by inequalities and insecurity is not just about building the physical infrastructure. It must also mean investing in the social infrastructure of caring services and what his Administration have called the “human infrastructure” of financial support for children and people in poverty.

For the UK this means, as a start, both short and long-term reform of our social security system, the importance of which has been demonstrated over the past year. I pay tribute to the staff who coped so well in the face of the unprecedented increase in universal credit claimants. Nevertheless, the Covid Realities project, in which academics have worked alongside low-income families and CPAG to understand the impact of the pandemic, has shown the struggle faced by those reliant on UC even after the welcome £20 uplift. Its findings support those calling for the uplift to be made permanent, for its introduction was a tacit recognition that benefits are too low for a decent life, especially after a decade of cuts and freezes. Just how low is reflected in government data showing that, even before the pandemic, more than two-fifths of UC households experienced high or very high levels of food insecurity in the previous 30 days.

Other necessary short-term reforms include the extension of the uplift to legacy and related benefits, including carer’s allowance; ending the benefit cap and two-child limit, with an increase in financial support for children; addressing the five-week wait, either through non-repayable advance payments or rethinking monthly assessment; reform of statutory sick pay; recalibration of local housing allowances; and ring-fencing funds for local welfare assistance schemes, which local authorities should be required to provide and which should no longer count as public funds for those subject to the “no recourse to public funds” rule.

In the longer term, as insecurity has marked the lives of a growing number of our fellow citizens, we need to put the security back into social security. This requires a review of benefit levels to ensure that they are sufficient to allow “life in dignity”, as recommended by the ILO, and structural reform aimed at ensuring an income that people can rely on. As the Economist noted recently, in an article on universal basic income, the experience of the pandemic has

“changed the tone of discussions about radical reforms to welfare states.”

The inability of existing schemes to provide comprehensive protection in the face of income shocks means that a basic income scheme is, for many organisations, very much “in the mix”, as the Financial Times put it. This does not necessarily entail a big bang reform that throws everything up in the air, but it could herald some kind of universal, unconditional income floor that provides a modicum of security for each individual.

Of course, this all costs money. The Government may have dropped the word austerity, but the indications are of further cuts ahead, with local government still particularly vulnerable, and there is no sign of a willingness to invest in the human infrastructure, following Biden’s lead. This serves as a reminder that taxation has an important role to play in an inclusive society. It is time that we stopped talking about taxation as a burden and instead see a progressive tax system as the price that we pay for a civilised society. Even the IMF has called for increased spending and higher taxation of the wealthy, to

“enable all individuals to reach their potential”,

and a group called Patriotic Millionaires is proposing higher taxation of the rich to fund benefits and public services, and to tackle inequality.

One group that has been ignored regarding social security support during the pandemic is children. The universal credit uplift was the same regardless of family size, and the benefit cap has meant that many families did not even benefit from the uplift, as the numbers capped have risen dramatically over the past year. Not surprisingly, the evidence suggests that families with children have found the struggle particularly difficult. We badly need the restoration of a comprehensive child poverty strategy.

Moreover, the needs of children more generally have been largely overlooked during the pandemic. Yes, there has rightly been a focus on their education and the likelihood of a widening of the educational divide, with longer-term implications for unequal life chances, but this has meant a preoccupation with children as “becomings” at the expense of them as “beings”, vulnerable to mental health difficulties and a childhood scarred by Covid. The opportunity for all children to enjoy a flourishing childhood is one test of an inclusive society; 152 organisations have called on the Government to embrace a new vision of childhood and to put children at the heart of the recovery. This is very much the message of the new Children’s Commissioner for England, who wants children to be

“right at the top of the Government agenda”.

To this end, there is growing support in civil society for a Cabinet-level Minister for children. I would be grateful if he Minister could undertake to raise this crucial demand with the Prime Minister.

Because of the continued skewed gendered division of labour, women have had to pick up most of the pieces of inadequate support for children, including, according to the Women and Equalities Committee, the buckling of a childcare system already suffering from underinvestment. As the Committee observes,

“a reliable and affordable childcare system is a prerequisite of a gender-equal economy and a gender-equal recovery from the pandemic.”

This raises wider questions as to what constitutes an inclusive economy; inclusive not just of women but also of racialised minorities—including Gypsies, Travellers and Roma—young people and disabled people. An inclusive economy, again as recognised by Biden, must provide good, secure work at decent wages, accessible to all. It must also be, as the Commission on a Gender Equal Economy argued powerfully, “a caring economy” defined as

“an economy which prioritises care of one another and the environment in which we live.”

In recognition that we all need care at times during our lives, the commission explained:

“A caring economy ensures that everyone has time to care, as well as time free from care.’


It “respects people’s multiple roles” in families and communities

“alongside their roles as paid workers.”

The notion of a caring economy asks us to think not just about the shortcomings of our care services—and we are still waiting for the Government’s social care strategy—but the value we place on care through formal carers’ wages and informal carers’ benefits and support services. It opens up debate about the gendered division of care responsibilities, parental leave policies and working time. All these must be on the agenda for building an inclusive economy. The idea of a caring economy also raises fundamental questions about means and ends because it is saying that the economy must serve social and environmental well-being ends whereas too often these ends are subordinated to narrow GDP-focused economic goals. Important in this context are calls for a green new deal and the Dasgupta Treasury review of the economics of biodiversity, which calls for transformative change in government economic thinking.

By cementing what is sometimes called an “ethic of care” into the foundations of an inclusive economy and society, we open up a number of other important dimensions, which I can only touch on. One, highlighted in the British Academy review, is the enjoyment of culture, in the broadest sense of the term, and of beauty, including in the natural environment. As well as appreciating the arts’ intrinsic value, an inquiry by the APPG on Arts, Health and Wellbeing demonstrated their value for a range of health challenges and their potential importance for marginalised groups. Typically, these groups have less access to the arts and natural beauty. Yet as observed by a low-income parent, with whom ATD Fourth World UK—a human rights anti-poverty organisation—worked, “even though I live in an area which isn’t beautiful, I can still appreciate and create beauty. The right to beauty is part of my right to dignity.” That right, I argue, must be upheld in an inclusive society.

The right to dignity speaks also to fundamental questions about how we treat each other in every dimension of an inclusive society, including politics and public services. Marginalised groups, including people in poverty, often talk about feeling disrespected and humiliated. One woman involved in the Covid Realities project mentioned earlier talked about this when describing the changes she would like to see in the social security system: “We’re asking for a fundamental change in the way we are seen and treated within the system. We want to be respected enough to not have to prove ourselves at every single turn … We want to be met with dignity and respect, as equals … Not scroungers. Not lay-abouts. Not uneducated. But as human beings, just like you, trying to do the best for our families, just like you.”

An important dimension of being treated with genuine dignity and respect is being listened to. One of the first steps the new Children’s Commissioner is taking is to launch The Big Ask, which seeks to listen to children nationwide so as to relay to government what they believe they need to live happier lives. The Public Services Committee report on lessons from Covid notes:

“The pandemic has shown that designing public services without consulting the people who use them embeds fundamental weaknesses such as inequalities of access … and involving user voice in service design increases the resilience of those services.”


Building an inclusive society post pandemic, perhaps through a new Beveridge, cannot be a top-down exercise but must involve a public conversation with those who live in that society and, in particular, its most marginalised members, who have suffered most over the past year. At this fork in the road, can the Minister tell us what steps the Government are taking to ensure that in seeking to build back better they will be listening to those who have fallen behind time and again?

To conclude, I have outlined in broad terms some of the building blocks for an inclusive society but am conscious of many gaping gaps, including the responsibilities of an inclusive global Britain to the wider world, with implications, for example, for policies on immigration and asylum, the climate emergency and the control of pandemics. I hope that colleagues from across the House will fill in some of the gaps and I look forward to hearing their contributions in the hope that this debate might mark the start of a conversation on the kind of society we want to build post pandemic. To that end, will the Minister undertake to relay key messages from the debate to his colleagues in other departments? Building an inclusive society is the responsibility of every government department and every local authority. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank everyone who has spoken, as well as the noble Lord the Minister. I have written a lot of notes but now I cannot read them, so my response may not be as coherent as those of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lady Wilcox, both of whom very skilfully summed up what had been said by noble Lords. I will not try to replicate what they did because they did it so well.

I thank the Minister; I feel that he drew the short straw because this is such a difficult debate to respond to, given the breadth of issues covered. However, I could not help but feel that he painted a rather rosy picture of where the Government are at. He did, at the end, acknowledge that there is a lot to do to build an inclusive society. A lot of the time, as is only to be expected, he was there to justify the Government’s position. I will come back to that at the end of my remarks.

Overall, I felt that there was, with one or two exceptions, a shared analysis of the intersecting inequalities and injustices that, as one noble Lord put it, have been “magnified” by the pandemic. Clearly there is a difference in the positions taken on the Sewell report. A number of noble Lords quoted evidence published this week from a couple of sources showing the systemic inequalities faced in particular by black and minority ethnic youth in terms of unemployment. I wonder how that squares with the picture painted in that report and I hope that noble Lords will not dismiss what some colleagues have called the work of zealots—it is hard data.

It was, as I expected, a wide-ranging debate, but a very useful one. A number of the points that I made were enriched by the perspectives that colleagues were able to bring. I was struck by the number of people who drew on the Marmot report and the British Academy review which, together, provide the Government with a compass to help them think about an inclusive society. I do not know whether the Minister has read those reports but, if not, I hope he will and that he will recommend them to his colleagues.

In terms of colleagues strengthening my arguments, a number of people talked about children and made a very strong case for putting children at the heart of building an inclusive society. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will lobby on behalf of the idea of a Cabinet-level Minister for children. This is an idea that is gaining ground—there was once a Minister for Children, but it got relegated to sub-ministerial level. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, warned us that just having a Minister does not make any difference if they are invisible and do not have any resources, which is partly why the demand is for a Minister to be at Cabinet level. If children are to be at the heart of the recovery, there has to be someone at Cabinet level with an understanding of children’s needs across the board. I hope that the Minister will lobby hard on our behalf and perhaps report back at some point to your Lordships’ House as to what the response has been.

I am very pleased that a number of people emphasised the importance of how disabled people have fared during the pandemic and the kinds of policies that we need to make sure that an inclusive society works properly for disabled people.

One of the gaps in my speech—and I am so glad that a number of people addressed those gaps—was housing and homelessness. That relates so closely to poverty, as the noble Lord, Lord Best, pointed out. It also links with themes of sustainability raised by a number of people. We need to build sustainable as well as affordable homes.

I am also very pleased that a number of noble Lords raised digital exclusion. The importance of that has been brought home so clearly during the pandemic, and addressing it has to be part of building an inclusive society.

On international perspectives, a couple of noble Lords spoke about the drastic cuts to international aid, but there was also an international flavour to a number of other points made. We cannot be an inclusive society and shut out the rest of the world; we have to think about what we do and the implications that has for the wider world.

Going from the international to the local, again, I did not address the role of local government adequately in my opening remarks, but a number of noble Lords did so very well. Noble Lords also raised the need to devolve more power and resources to local government, and the relationship of local government and national government to the third sector, community groups and so forth. Of course, although the focus of the debate was on the role of local and national government, we must also remember the role played by such groups.

I was disappointed that the Minister did not address what I said about levelling up. I said, and others echoed, that levelling up is not just about investing in physical infrastructure. We have to level up individuals if we are going to create the more equal society that so many noble Lords talked about. That means investing in what the Biden Administration call the “human infrastructure”, as I said. I hope the Minister will take that message back, because it is a very important one.

A number of noble Lords raised questions about democratic inclusion. That is really important because it links to what I and a number of other noble Lords talked about in terms of listening to what people have to say, and particularly listening to marginalised groups. They talked about democratic inclusion in terms of both politics and industrial democracy, and that links with questions about the meaning of good and dignified work. I would argue—and I am sure that it is argued in Jon Cruddas’s book—that part of the good work agenda is listening to workers so that they have a say in what goes on in their workplace. The Minister did say that the Equality Hub and making money available through local authorities to marginalised groups was about listening. Making money available to local and marginalised groups is of course welcome, but it is not the same as listening to those groups and what they have to say about what needs to change. I am not sure that that message got through, but a number of people echoed it—when it comes to service development or whatever, we really need to listen to what those whose voices are not normally heard have to say.

Overall, I feel that a rich tapestry has been woven in today’s debate. So many important points were made, and I really appreciate my colleagues’ knowledge, experience and wisdom. I hope that the Government are listening. Again, I do not think—forgive me if I missed it—that the Minister picked up on my request that key messages from this debate be relayed to his colleagues in other departments; some other people said that as well. I hope that he will consider that because there is no point in us having this debate for the sake of it; we may be more powerful than some of the people I am speaking about, but we want to be heard as well. Noble Lords have put in a lot of work and thought a lot about what they wanted to say today.

My final plea to the Government is to listen to what has been said today. Virtually every department has some role to play in building an inclusive society. As I said in my opening remarks, I hope that this debate will mark the beginning of a conversation rather than the end.

Motion agreed.