Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Pinnock

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?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Pinnock

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has said about council tax exemption. The point she made was absolutely right. I would like to add that the report The Wolf at the Door, again by the Children’s Society, showed just how quickly care leavers could get into financial difficulties, and often the trigger is the council tax that they are required to pay. One young person quoted by the Children’s Society said:

“I kept on being charged for council tax”—

I guess we all feel like that—

“I couldn’t pay it. I was just falling further and further behind … I tried telling them that I couldn’t pay that per month, they weren’t having none of it … and then I ended up just leaving it. Even though I didn’t have any money, they weren’t willing to do anything”.

Care leavers need a better package of financial support so that they do not get into the situation where they fail to pay their council tax, and then obviously there are legal consequences from that. The point that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, made was right, but on behalf of myself and my noble friend Lady Bakewell I would like to add that we should not leave this to the discretion of local authorities. Given the circumstances at their end, it is much less likely that that would be implemented. We would like to see a requirement on local authorities to do what a good corporate parent would do, which is to ensure that a young person’s council tax is paid up to the age of 25.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. Amendment 27 seems to underpin the other amendments with regard to protection against poverty and destitution. This is pivotal to the life chances of this particularly vulnerable group of young people. The Government’s own Care Leavers Strategy points out that when you do not have a supportive family to fall back on, particularly when having to meet the challenge of independent living at a much younger age than your peers, having access to timely financial help is crucial. Care leavers have told us that they often find it difficult to navigate services and work out what financial support they are entitled to, and we have heard how sometimes the financial support is not very much. I am not going to restate the case—and anyway the Minister may well have been briefed on this.

Amendment 48, which refers to income support and working tax credit, will be overtaken by events with the introduction of universal credit. For example, with regard to sanctions, the Children’s Society has suggested that under universal credit this group should be made subject to the work preparation requirement under Section 21 of the Welfare Reform Act 2012. That seems very reasonable to me.

The Minister himself referred earlier to one or two local authorities that provide exemption from council tax, when he was giving an example of how local authorities can support care leavers. I can only reiterate what has been said: this is so important that it cannot be left to the vagaries of local authority discretion. It has to be looked at again.

I hope that the Minister will be able to take away these practical suggestions for how local authorities and central government can support local authorities in their corporate parenting responsibilities. I realise that they sit in other government departments, so what would be helpful would be to have a commitment from the Minister today to take away these ideas and discuss them with his colleagues in the relevant departments, so that he can come back on Report. Possibly he could even hold informal discussions before then so that we might be able to make some progress on this set of eminently sensible suggestions.