Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

All across Europe, the European Commission is fighting to increase the rate of new business formation and to add more small businesses. It is the starting point for the scaling up of businesses. Why are we not doing this in this country and in this mission? Why is there not a higher number of small and medium-sized enterprises in places such as the north-west? We know that the enterprise is there, but the data is telling us that it is not turning into the number of sustained businesses and the opportunity to scale up.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak first to Amendment 31 in my name. It aims to ensure that initiatives and funding to achieve the aims of the levelling-up mission will be measured by a systematic, statistically accepted and agreed set of metrics. It fully supports Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which seeks also to have the missions put into the Bill. These metrics will be used to measure progress. If they are not in the Bill, I do not know how we will get the public to understand what is being achieved—or not.

Amendment 31 is unashamedly lifted from the technical and metrics annexe to the levelling-up White Paper. This seems to have been the will of the Government when it was written and published a year ago this month. Let us put this very acceptable set of measurements into the Bill and use them. This would give it some power and make it known that the Government are determined to put the missions into effect. It would make a difference in narrowing the gap in the spatial disparities.

The amendment sets out the key components of the metrics and references the main drivers of economic and social outcomes for places, which are named “capitals”. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, listed those capitals. We are using such strange terms—“missions” and “capitals”—but let us use them because that is what they are in the White Paper. To remind us all, the six capitals are physical, intangible, human, financial, social and institutional, so they cover a whole gamut of individual and community well-being. The missions are attached to them, and the metrics are then attached to the missions.

The basic assertion in the levelling-up White Paper is that in too many places those capitals are in poor shape. When they are, those places are the ones where spatial inequalities exist. The evidence in the annexe—the Government’s own document—demonstrates that

“economic decline in the former industrial heartlands and coastal towns exacerbated poor health outcomes, which in turn led to lower levels of human capital. The lower levels of human capital then reduced the incentives for business to invest in the region and skilled workers left to seek employment elsewhere, further reducing the incentives to invest. The result was a self-perpetuating loop in which lower human capital fed into lower levels of investment, thereby reducing productivity and earnings growth, depleting social capital and pride in place, and further exacerbating the migration of skilled workers and capital out of the region.”

That says it; let us put pressure on the Government to do it.

That is the argument for the metrics. All these need to be measured and reported to Parliament if spatial gaps are to be considerably narrowed and seen to have been so following independent scrutiny, as we discussed on Monday. For example, pay and productivity are rightly seen as key to improving the life chances of people living in areas where spatial disparities are greatest. Thus, pay levels for those in employment must rise to help break the cycle of decline. As the annexe to the White Paper states:

“This mission is directed at closing the significant and persistent spatial disparities in productivity, wages and employment”.


That might answer the plea from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for a measure of business and investment, because if you get business and investment at the right level, wages, productivity and employment will rise. That is what the White Paper says. Maybe his Government are at fault.

This metric could be readily measured by gross value added and by ONS data on pay. These measures are used by the ONS and can be applied to check progress, so putting this metric in the Bill would ensure that progress on raising incomes in areas of special disparities, as compared with the country as a whole, will of itself be a driver for change.

Improving skills and encouraging inward investment that requires higher skills will lead to higher-paid employment. Currently, there is a tendency for low-skill jobs in warehousing and distribution for online retailers to be created in areas that already have low pay and low skills, thus re-emphasising problems that are already there. Measuring the changes to skill levels, as defined in the metrics for mission 6 in the annexe, will be a driver for change and raising skill levels. In 2012, nearly 2 million adults were in funded FE and skills training—that figure is in the annexe. By 2020, that figure had dropped to below 1 million. The simple requirement of having to report to Parliament on progress on improving skills will be a significant driver to encouraging more adults to train or retrain, and there is no doubt at all that one of the negative pulls on economic growth is the poor skill levels in some parts of the country.

Another of the metrics set out in the annexe to the White Paper is the numbers who travel to work by public transport. In London that is over 50%, according to the data in the annexe—I was not quite sure that I believed it, but that is what it says—and in most other places in the country the figure is around 10%. So, measuring the modal shift that will be needed is important, not just for narrowing gaps but in supporting the net zero aim.

Currently bus services outside of London are in crisis with services being slashed, making it more difficult for those who rely on public transport to get to jobs, take up jobs and go to better paid jobs. The public transport mission is to improve local public transport connectivity in order to be

“significantly closer to the standards of London”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is smiling because she has just one bus per week, so if she had two, that might help.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

We are laughing but in the end, it is no joke. It means that people are isolated and unable to get to employment. It is not just rural areas such as the noble Baroness’s. In one of the villages in my area—an urban area of west Yorkshire—you cannot get a bus after 5 pm. Come on! If we are serious about narrowing these gaps, we have to be serious about public transport. Many of those of us who live outside London will applaud that measure, because once it is part of a regular public reporting process, it will force change both in funding and in governance models.

I will not go through all 12 missions, you will be very pleased to hear, but that gives noble Lords a thread of an idea of what needs to happen if we are serious about helping parts of the country that suffer from not just one area of poverty, but which are deprived in all of these “capitals”, resulting in a serious negative pull on their lives and the lives of their communities.

The question for the Government is: are they serious about levelling up? If they are, the missions will be in the Bill, as in Amendment 7. If they are, the metrics should be included—in headline form, because I take the point that you cannot put in the Bill every way in which you are going to measure. All I have put in the amendment is that we will measure healthy life expectancy —about which we have had a bit of debate—which can be measured in a variety of ways.

If we do not include missions and metrics, we are not being serious about this. I feel very strongly about it, as perhaps you can tell, because unless we do, we are not being serious about helping people who do not have the same advantages and lifestyles as others are able to enjoy. We have to something about it; it is not acceptable.

I know this puts the Minister under pressure, but I want the Government to just say that they are serious about this and want to put this in the Bill, because these spatial disparities scar our nation and affect it negatively, through unfulfilled talent, lost opportunities and the cost to the public purse in subsiding low wages.

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[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

The contributions we have heard in Committee this afternoon get to the heart of the question as to whether the Bill, in practice, will have real-world impact. The discussions we have just been having on healthy life expectancy and homes really illustrate that general question mark. I suggest to your Lordships that two ways in which the Bill potentially could have impact would be, first, if, as amended, it forced a focus on the means by which the stated missions would be achieved; and, secondly, if it forced a more horizontal view across public policy to show how different aims connected in a shared way.

I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on healthy life expectancy. He quoted the position that I think existed in 2000s, when health life expectancy in this country was growing by about five hours a day. That is an extraordinary fact when you think about it. It means that, since the House has been sitting this afternoon, your Lordships would have gained about half an hour extra of life expectancy. Sadly, that no longer obtains, and the slightly draining sensation noble Lords may have had this afternoon more correctly corresponds to our physiological prospects.

The question is: does this Bill, in any way, in setting missions for healthy life expectancy, force a debate within the country and in government about the means by which you would actually do anything about it? My concern is that even having a mission and metrics potentially on the face of the Bill does not get you to the skin of the onion, peeling away the chain of causation by which you would reverse the unfortunate position we now find ourselves in. Looking at the amendments in this group and throughout the Bill, the question for me is: do they drive a focus on what real-world implementation would need to be to get the result we all want?

In relation to this, I was with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, on her point about 250,000 homes and the need to deal with the supply side. I thought “My goodness, this is a speech from the noble Baroness I can actually agree with”—until she spoiled it at the end with gratuitous remarks about how we do not need green planning for housing, when of course that is precisely what we need. That is not the impediment to housebuilding in this country. We would be committing a historic error if we embarked on the necessary scale of housing construction without designing in congenial neighbourhoods and healthy lifestyles. The fact is that, in many developments that have been built, we are designing in, for example, car dependency. Your Lordships may be astonished to be reminded that, according to one estimate a few years ago, on average in this country we spend more time each week on the toilet than we do exercising. We are not going to change that fact just by the recitation of that rather startling insight; we are going to change it by doing precisely the opposite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, suggested.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I want to know who measured that.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

My Lords, as I have set out in earlier debates, it has always been the Government’s intention that the first statement of levelling-up missions would contain the missions from the levelling-up paper. I want to repeat what I said yesterday about why we are not putting the missions on the face of the Bill. The missions will be published in a policy document laid before, and debated in, Parliament. The first example of this document will be based on the levelling-up White Paper and future iterations will include the headline and supporting metrics used to define the missions and measure progress towards them.

If we put them in the Bill, it would make this part of what we want to do—and what we think it is right to do—very inflexible. This way, Parliament and the public will have the opportunity to scrutinise progress towards the missions, including annually when the report is published. This is comparable to other key government objectives documents such as the Charter for Budget Responsibility, which is laid before Parliament for scrutiny. That is why we are doing it this way, and I thank my noble friend Lord Lansley for supporting that way forward for the second day running.

I now move to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which inserts the Government’s levelling-up missions into the Bill. As I have said, that is not what we are going to do, because we do not feel that there would be flexibility if anything changes—for example, economics, data, pressures and issues in particular areas of the country. We would not have the flexibility to change the missions and scrutinise them, as I have said.

The 12 levelling-up missions are the product of extensive analysis and engagement. They cover the areas that require improvement to achieve an increase in the six capitals in the White Paper—human, physical, intangible, institutional, social and financial—and are needed to reduce the geographic disparities that we discussed today and that are identified in the White Paper. They are designed to be ambitious but achievable. They are necessarily spatial in their nature and definition, and they are neither national nor aggregate.

The missions are supported by a range of clear metrics, used to measure them at an appropriate level of geography. These metrics take account of a wider range of inputs, outputs and outcomes needed to drive progress in the overall mission. The metrics cover a wide range of policy issues but are all clearly linked to the drivers of spatial disparities.

I reiterate that the Bill is designed to establish the framework for missions, not the content of the missions themselves. The framework provides ample opportunity to scrutinise the substance of the missions against a range of government policies.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, brought up the allocation of levelling-up funds being made according to government priorities, rather than local need. Places are invited to submit bids—under the themes of the regeneration of town centres, local transport and culture —that they feel best meet the levelling-up needs of their area. Part of our strategic fit assessment test is on how far a place’s bid locks into its wider levelling-up plans and how well it is supported by relevant local stakeholders and community groups.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond is not here and will therefore not move Amendment 13, but a number of noble Lords brought it up and I felt I ought to respond to it quickly. The levelling-up White Paper highlights the importance of the educational attainment of primary schoolchildren and sets out a clear mission to significantly increase the number of primary school- children achieving the expected standards in reading, writing and mathematics. In England, this will mean that 90% of children will achieve the expected standard, and the percentage of children meeting the expected standard in the worst-performing areas will have increased by over a third. As we know, reaching the expected standards in these subjects is absolutely crucial for children to succeed at secondary school, which paves the way for success in later life. Ensuring that as many children as possible have these skills, regardless of their location or the current quality of their school, is an ambitious target, particularly as we work to recover lost learning from the pandemic.

We are already starting on that. The Education Endowment Foundation, which gives guidance and support to schools, has a £130 million grant. Importantly, we are supporting 55 education investment areas, including starting interventions in schools with successive “requires improvement” Ofsted ratings. We are also delivering a levelling-up premium—a tax-free additional payment to eligible teachers in priority subjects—which is very much weighted to those education investment areas. We have started already, with over 2 million tutoring courses, particularly for young people who were affected by the lack of education during the pandemic.

From Second Reading, I know that many noble Lords are interested in health inequalities in this country—we heard that again today. I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London is not here, but her Amendment 15 was nobly spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Best. It puts forward that the missions must include reducing health disparities. I note Amendment 59 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and Amendment 30, tabled my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, who is not here, although it was mentioned by noble Lords. All of these would mean that geographical disparities include health outcomes.

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[Lord Scriven (LD)]

My Lords, as this is my first time speaking in Committee, I lay out my interests as in the register as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Shipley and have listened carefully to this debate. Technically, it does not matter how small and granular the information is; it is how it is evaluated and reported against the aims of the mission that is important. That is why I want to speak in particular to Amendment 48 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock.

If you look at the Bill, you see that the only person who will evaluate the homework of whether the geographical disparities are actually narrowing against the missions in the Bill is the Minister. The Minister will not only set the way in which the task is set but will then be the person who marks his or her homework on that. That is why it is particularly important that Amendment 48, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is accepted by the Government, as it proposes an independent review of whether the geographical disparities are narrowing.

I ask the Minister a very simple question: why would you object to an independent body assessing whether the Government are meeting the requirements in the Bill which they say they are so eager to meet? That is why, as Amendment 48 proposes, regardless of how data is collected, at what level and what criteria are used, it has to be independently measured to ensure that the Government’s desired requirements and policies are working to achieve the levelling-up issue in a geographical area.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, three issues have been raised by this small group: defining geographies—we talked a lot about geographies and spatial disparities— and granularity; independent scrutiny, which is really important; and then funding allocation and how that happens. I am beginning to think that the Government and the Minister may regret the publication of the levelling-up White Paper because it is a fountain of really good information.

On geographies, we need to understand what we mean by “geographies”. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, talked about very small pockets of multiple deprivation, and largely we have been speaking in the previous debates, yesterday and today, about big, regional or county-wide differences across the country. We need to understand at what level—or is it at all levels?—levelling up will take place. The levelling-up White Paper is quite handy in that regard—the Minister is nodding, so that is a good start. It has not taken IMD—the index of multiple deprivation—but it has a great map; I love maps which are mapped out according to datasets of this sort. It is figure 1.13 in the book, if noble Lords want to know. It has mapped, across local authority areas, gross value added, weekly pay, healthy life expectancy and level 3+ equivalent skills in the adult population. It is very revealing.

The map shows where there are all four of those indices in the lowest quartile of the measures. Where are they? According to this map, it is not always where you suspect. One of the areas is north Norfolk— I would never have thought that. Another area is where we would expect: the north-east, shown as a great, dark blob where that is a problem. Then there is the area down the Yorkshire coast and then obviously on the Lancashire coast, where you would expect—and then central Devon. So this is a very important sort of dataset to use. That is on a big scale. However, when my noble friend Lord Shipley introduced this, he talked about being able to go below that level of dataset to understand where the highest levels of multiple indices are occurring on a regular basis and how that can be tackled.

So that is the first point: it is not defined in the Bill, and we need a definition of what we are tackling in terms of geographies. So I totally agree with my noble friend Lord Foster about the granularity and importance of the data, and I agree with my noble friend Lord Scriven on supporting the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hullock—I am so sorry, I always do that; I meant the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock—on the importance of independent scrutiny.

Finally, on the allocation of levelling-up funding to date, if this is a symptom of how it is going to occur in the future, we may as well abandon levelling up. The House of Commons Library has a report on the funding to date and where it has gone. The Government have put local authority areas into priorities 1, 2 and 3, with 1 being the most needy. I would expect that, unless there were exceptional circumstances, the money would go to priority 1. But no: 59%, only just above half the money, has gone so far, in the first two rounds of funding, to priority 1 areas. Some has even gone to priority 3 areas, which, by the Government’s own definition, are doing okay. So what is this about levelling up?

In response to the question about the cost of bids, I know, because I spoke to the chief executive of Leeds City Council, that it spent a third of a million pounds on drawing up bids for level 2 and got not a penny piece in return. When local government across the country, or certainly where I am, is cutting its budgets—£43 million has to be found in my own budget in Kirklees because of rising energy prices, inflation and all the rest of it—local government cannot afford to spend a third of a million pounds on making bids that then get turned down because the Government decide to hand the money to local authorities in priority 3 areas. It is not right, it is not levelling up and it needs to change.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments addresses the assessment of levelling up. Amendment 10 was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, with whom I am more than happy to have a teach-in on data for anybody who would like to come and learn more about the technicalities—please just let me know. The amendment would define criteria that could be used to evaluate levelling-up policies that aim to address geographical disparities.

As I set out in detail to noble Lords in our first day of Committee, the missions contained in the levelling-up White Paper are a product of extensive analysis and engagement. The missions are supported by a range of clear metrics, used to measure them at the appropriate level of geography, and these metrics take account of a wider range of inputs, outputs and outcomes needed to drive progress in the overall mission. These metrics cover a wide range of policy issues but all are clearly linked to the drivers of spatial disparities. This has been set out in the White Paper.

I turn to Amendment 48, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. This amendment would require an assessment by the independent evaluating body to be included in any review of statements of levelling-up missions. We have accepted in this Chamber that scrutiny and seeking expert advice will be important in ensuring that we deliver on our missions and level up the country. That is why we have established the Levelling Up Advisory Council to provide government with expert advice to inform the design and delivery of the missions. The council includes voices from different parts of the UK.

I know that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, might not have been here for the debate on a previous group but I should say that the advisory council is chaired by Andy Haldane and its membership was published in the White Paper. The council members are not tied to government views and the council is made up of renowned independent experts in their field, such as Sir Tim Besley, professor of economics and political science at the London School of Economics; Cathy Gormley-Heenan, a former deputy vice-chancellor of research and impact at Ulster University; Sacha Romanovitch, the CEO of Fair4All Finance; and Sir Nigel Wilson, chief executive at L&G. All are independent experts in their field. We welcome the challenge and expert advice that the council provides and have been clear that we want it to provide us with candid views and challenging recommendations for how the Government are delivering levelling-up policy.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I am assuming, optimistically, that local government will be a key partner in levelling up; I hope that is the case. It is therefore a bit disappointing that we had so little knowledge among us about the Spatial Data Unit, the deep dive team and the Levelling Up Advisory Council. I hope that we can put that right as we go through the Bill.

In speaking to these amendments, I hope that the wording of Amendment 39 has not caused consternation among my local government colleagues. If it has, they can blame my inexperience in your Lordships’ House for that. It was certainly not intended to represent a burdensome, bureaucratic reporting process; I have had plenty of those in my time as a council leader.

My point in tabling the amendment was to reflect our overall concern that it is currently difficult to determine from the Bill what mechanisms will be introduced to enable the effective monitoring and management of levelling up, either between government departments or by consolidating the actions of local government with what happens in government departments. I have suggested that guidance be published for the exact opposite reason than burdensome bureaucracy: to give local government clarity about how we would contribute to that monitoring mechanism. That is Amendment 39.

My second amendment in this group refers to the perceived gap between the planning framework and the levelling-up missions. If the two do not correlate, we will once again be in a position where what happens in the day-to-day business of local government is in danger of being disconnected from the overall aim of levelling up. For example, the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, referred earlier to the critical role that housing delivery can play in levelling up and my noble friend Lady Young spoke about the importance of the environment. Planning can certainly help tackle poverty of environment. The last example refers to the earlier comments from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the ability of planning to provide the framework to drive local economies. These are vital issues for levelling up. My second amendment is a probing one designed to determine both how that will be done and how the link will be made between the National Planning Policy Framework and the levelling-up missions.

Amendment 55 reflects my experience in local government, where there are always additions—they are generally helpful but sometimes are not quite so helpful—at the end of reports on legal, financial and equalities issues, climate change et cetera. The wide-ranging nature of levelling up means that it stretches right across government, and the business of local government is not necessarily an easy fit with government departments. It has been interesting for me since I came to your Lordships’ House to see that adult social care, for example, which is very much part of everyday local government life, does not sit in the local government department in central government but sits with health and social care. I have a big domestic abuse unit in my council in Hertfordshire; that sits very much with the Home Office in central government. There is not always an easy link so part of the mechanism to ensure that the Bill is considered properly as legislation goes through should be that those impact assessments refer specifically to how legislation reflects the aims of the Bill. Of course, in this case, I am thinking specifically of local government legislation as it comes forward.

I beg to move.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, has raised some significant points in her amendments in this group. The first is to include in the Bill the engagement of local authorities in reporting on levelling up in their areas. My noble friend Lord Shipley said in our debate on the previous group how there has been an obsession in government, from Governments across the decades, with ruling England from Westminster and Whitehall down to minute areas of decision-making. Certainly on this side of the House, we believe that local people and their locally and democratically elected representatives are best placed in this context to determine what areas within their council boundaries would best benefit from the levelling-up missions and funding. They would also be able to report on them because they have a depth of understanding and data that would help to make clear what progress has or has not been made.

That is a point well made, as is the point that the National Planning Policy Framework, which is currently in review, will relate to many of the missions in the Bill. Are we going to build new homes that are car-reliant or will we ensure that they can access public transport? Are we going to make them safe places in a safe environment for housing? Is there going to be in the framework allocation of land so that businesses are in appropriate places and are accessible for people who want jobs? All of that means that that is a very important point well made. No doubt it will be pursued at later stages of the Bill.

[Earl Howe (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, looks at the role of local government and the National Planning Policy Framework in delivering levelling up.

First, Amendment 39 would mean that county councils, unitary authorities and combined county authorities would publish annual reports on the delivery of levelling-up missions. I hardly need to re-emphasise that local authorities and local leaders have a crucial role to play in levelling up places across the UK. Empowering local leaders, including through agreeing devolution deals and simplifying the funding landscape, is a cornerstone of the levelling-up agenda.

This principle of empowerment is absolutely critical. Noble Lords have tended to criticise the Government for any suggestion of the centre telling local authorities what to do; writing this amendment into the Bill might appear to do just that. Having said that, many organisations outside central government, including All-Party Parliamentary Groups, academics, business bodies, think tanks and local organisations, have been debating and scrutinising the levelling-up agenda and how it could be taken forward in particular areas of the country; I have no doubt that they will continue to do so. The provisions on reporting in the Bill will further enable such independent assessment and thinking but requiring local authorities to report in this way, as I think the noble Baroness herself recognised, would surely be disproportionate and unnecessary.

Amendment 55 would mean that a Minister must publish a report on the impacts of this legislation on local government and a strategy to consider how this part of the Bill will impact local authorities through future legislation. The new burdens doctrine, established and maintained by successive Governments, requires all Whitehall departments to justify why new duties, powers, targets and other bureaucratic burdens should be placed on local authorities, as well as how much such policies and initiatives will cost and where the money will come from to pay for them. It is very clear that anything which issues a new expectation on the sector should be assessed for new burdens. As the Government develop new policies to deliver against their levelling-up missions, they will fully assess the impact on local authorities and properly fund the net additional cost of all new burdens placed on them. Therefore, this provision already ensures that the Government must properly consider the impact of their policies, legislation and programmes on local government and fully fund any new burdens arising.

Amendment 54 would mean that a Minister must publish draft legislation for ensuring that the National Planning Policy Framework has regard to the levelling-up missions. Although it would not be appropriate to legislate to embed the levelling-up missions in planning policy, the levelling-up missions are nevertheless government policy. Planning policy to achieve these will be a relevant consideration when developing local plans and determining planning applications.

The department is currently consulting on updating the National Planning Policy Framework. The consultation document was published in December 2022 and the consultation is due to close in March 2023. It sets out a number of areas where changes to national planning policy might be made to reflect the ambitious agenda set out in the levelling up White Paper, and invites ideas for planning policies which respondents think could be included in a new framework to help achieve the 12 levelling-up missions in the levelling up White Paper. The department will respond to this consultation by the spring of 2023 so that policy changes can take effect as soon as possible.

In summary, I suggest that these amendments, though well intended, are unnecessary. I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her Amendment 39 and not move Amendments 54 and 55.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I accept entirely that when the noble Lord was a Minister, we got that first stage of ground rents through, and that was very good to do. The problem of course was that I could not persuade him on the next stage, but hopefully it is coming soon. But the noble Lord certainly got the first thing through, and I am very grateful for that.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, good debate. I agree.

[Lord Thurlow (CB)]

My Lords, I was concerned that, after quite a sky-level discussion of missions and strategy and things, Amendment 42 was going to be very specific and granular. We have had some outstandingly worthwhile speeches in the last few minutes, and I congratulate all those who sponsored the Bill and who have spoken so far.

I was going to speak in a granular sense as well about insurance, proposed new subsection 3(e) in the nine small but specific letters of this amendment that we are forcing the Government to address, if it is adopted, in the event that a report says that this should be done in the interests of levelling up. We have had such a good exposition on insurance scams from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, that I am not going to say what I was going to, which would only repeat much of what the noble Baroness said—but I do hope that we can get into the granular level of these injustices for leaseholders as the Bill progresses.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

I urge the Minister, who I regret to say probably will not agree to adopt Amendment 57, to at least acknowledge that there is a problem and say that the Government will work on it. If the Government are committed to a further round of levelling-up funding—I believe they have already announced that there will be another round—will she give the most careful thought to how she can respond to this debate and influence her colleagues as to they can return some functionality and trust in this broken system as they set out on the third round?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, one of the reasons why I and my colleagues have been so determined that we define geographies, missions and metrics as clearly as we can is that those three criteria should define where the levelling-up funding goes. I totally support Amendment 57 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, for that very reason. Unless those criteria are clearly defined, the Government have the ability to move the money around to those areas they want to have some funding. Unfortunately, that has been the experience to date.

I have raised before and will repeat again, because it is very important, the fact that the House of Commons Library carried out an analysis of the round 1 and round 2 funds for levelling-up bids. It found that, in the first round, the following criteria were set out: economic recovery and growth, improved transport connectivity and the need for regeneration. The majority of that funding, though not all of it, did indeed go to priority 1 local authority areas, which were categorised by the Government.

When it came to round 2, the Government changed the rules, as reported in the House of Commons Library, so that they would move some authorities into priority 1. One of those authorities that moved into priority 1 was Richmondshire in North Yorkshire, which then got another round of funding from these levelling-up bids.

I have to say exactly what my noble friend has just said. When that happens, you lose trust that this is going to be a fair system, and there is a loss of credibility in the claim that what the Government are intending to do is to focus their energy with a laser-like focus on those areas of the country that, by their own statistics, are in desperate need of considerable amounts of government funding. I do not mean just one-off funding, such as in Richmondshire in north Yorkshire to build a pavilion in a park; that does very little for people who are in need of skills, better-paid jobs and the ability to travel to jobs, whose health is poor and who cannot get to national health services easily—it does nothing for them.

So one of the reasons why I was so pleased to see this amendment was that it talks about having long-term and strategic distribution of levelling-up funds. What the Government seem to be doing at the minute is spreading the funding jam across the country to suit their particular needs, rather than putting a significant amount of funding into certain areas to give them a real long-term boost to achieve the missions that we have debated long and hard today and on Monday.

I will again repeat that a town in my area has had City Challenge money, single regeneration round 1, neighbourhood renewal funding, communities funding—and it has now got some levelling-up funding. I have to tell noble Lords that the folk who live there are still living in desperate circumstances, with low-paid jobs, poor housing, poor health and low skills. All that funding has not shifted the dial much at all—we have lovely road signs declaring what town people are in, we have a nice sculpture and a nice market square—but the folk are still living in poor-quality housing with low skills and no particularly great job prospects.

That is what we need to be doing, and that is what we are not doing, so I am hoping that the Minister is going to stand up and say, “This is a really good idea and we’re going to accept the amendment”.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that and for the work she is doing in encouraging the private sector to get involved.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

We have had a bit of a discussion about priority areas 1, 2 and 3. I would be grateful if the Minister could write and let us know what criteria the Government use to categorise areas and how, between the first and second round, some moved into category 1. I do not know whether any moved down. It would be useful to have that information.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will be very happy to provide that information.

Capital Projects: Spending Decisions

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Baroness Scott of Bybrook) (Con)]

No, we do not expect local authorities to fill the funding gap. There has been an issue—that of inflation—across many of the programmes. There is no additional funding, but we are working with local authorities to ensure that local priorities can still be delivered. Where requests for rescoping are submitted, we are looking to deal with those flexibly, provided that the changes are still likely to represent good value for money. We are also providing £6.5 million of support for local authorities. We will be evaluating, and those evaluations will be made public.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my relevant interests. The highly respected and independent Institute for Government wrote last month that the levelling-up fund

“is another ineffective competitive funding pot that is neither large enough nor targeted enough to make a dent in regional inequalities.”

Does the Minister agree? If not, what is wrong with that statement?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

No, I do not agree. I think that a £9.9 billion investment into levelling up shows a Government who are putting their money where their mouth is. They are delivering levelling up across the country and will do so in future. They have already done so with the future high streets fund, the towns fund, the UK shared prosperity fund—which is about to come out—and even small funds such as the community renewal fund. These are all delivering things for people in this country.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Pinnock]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, leave out “levelling-up”
Member's explanatory statement
This is a probing amendment to explore the meaning of the phrase “levelling-up” and whether this part is sufficient to support the aims of “levelling-up”.

[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?

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Through the Bill we are placing an obligation on future Governments to state publicly and before Parliament whether they will proceed with existing missions or establish revised missions, and to report annually on their progress in delivering against those missions. As I said, Parliament will do the scrutiny and agree to the changes in any missions. That is the important place for it to be—not on the face of the Bill where, because it is in legislation, it cannot be changed very easily. I hope that I have given enough reassurances to the Committee, and I ask the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her response to the question I posed, which was to try to establish greater clarity on what we mean by levelling up before we start debating the 500-plus amendments to this Bill. Unfortunately, I do not think any of us are much the wiser.

On the one hand, the Minister was quite rightly able to agree what is in her Government’s White Paper, but equally she then talked about spreading the benefits or investment of levelling up away from those areas which the White Paper defined as spatial disparities or geographical inequalities. We ought to have a laser-like focus on dealing with those places, be they coastal towns, rural areas, or areas where old industries have gone and new industries have not replaced them. That is what I wanted to achieve from this short debate. Unfortunately, I really do not think that we are any nearer to knowing what the Government’s intentions are.

What I do know, from long experience and involvement in local government—I should mention, and apologise for not having done so, my interests in the register as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a councillor in Kirklees in West Yorkshire—is that, if we just have relatively short-term funding and investment packages, that will not work. The City Challenge; Single Regeneration Budget 1; Single Regeneration Budget 2; the Neighbourhood Renewal Fund; the whole panoply of those investment packages came and went and some of those places are still identified by the Government’s own White Paper as being priority one, in need of—in their terms—levelling up. The Government say in the levelling up White Paper that levelling up should be “broad, deep and long-term.” The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill in front of us does none of those things, and although I beg to withdraw the amendment, I will be pursuing the aspirations and intentions of the Government in this levelling-up Bill throughout its proceeding.

Amendment 1 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Valentine (CB)]

I have added my name to Amendments 32 and 38, both of which deal with the independent evaluation of progress against the levelling-up missions. I begin by apologising that I was unable to be present for Second Reading. Levelling up is a subject I care deeply about and, with Business in the Community, I spend much of my time working in or for the sorts of places the Bill seeks to address. Before commenting on the amendments, I congratulate the Government on their levelling-up missions. While one can argue about whether these are exactly the right ones, I personally value the clarity and long-term commitment that these missions convey.

It is in this vein that I support the independent evaluation of progress. The missions need to work across government departments, across political parties and across Parliaments. I would value a statutory board being created to provide independent insight in exactly the way we have the Independent Commission on Climate. It seems to me that the long-term and challenging aspiration to level up socially has a strong parallel to tackling our environmental challenges and is at least as important.

I will finish by quoting two lessons from the LSE’s report on the effectiveness of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, where the parallels are, I think, obvious. The first is this:

“An independent expert body can strengthen climate governance by introducing a long-term perspective, enhancing the credibility of climate targets and ensuring more evidence-based policymaking.”


Secondly:

“To be effective, independent advisory bodies must have an appropriate status. This means having a clear statutory mandate, strong leadership, adequate resources, and sufficient powers to hold Government to account.”

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this is an important group of amendments to tease out the Government’s intentions as to the scrutiny of the success or otherwise of their actions in levelling up. While I speak to Amendments 24, 26, 32 and 49, to which I have added my name, I also wish to speak to the other amendments in this group.

The key question is how Parliament will know that progress has genuinely been made in reducing geographical disparities. That, after all, is the question at the heart of the White Paper. The only way to judge whether progress has genuinely been made is by using evidence and independence. All the amendments in this group refer to producing independent accountability of the statement that the Government will be making towards the end of a period of time—what that period is is still to be debated.

What is really positive about the White Paper is that it is absolutely full of evidence. There are around 80 different graphs and datasets to establish the evidence base for the purpose of the White Paper: how it is going to change different parts of the country and narrow the gaps. This set of amendments attempts to say that not only do we need the evidence but we need it to be independently assessed. I agree, obviously, with my noble friend and with the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, in talking about an independent commission or board—as we have done with climate change—to assess what is going on, and whether change has been made and, if so, how much and in what areas.

I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the missions not being in the Bill, because otherwise, the levelling-up Bill is whatever the Executive define it to be. The Government have set out in a lengthy White Paper what the Bill attempts to do: narrow the gaps, reduce geographical inequalities and disparities, and make a big difference not only to the people who live in certain areas but to the country as a whole. If we do not change the country as it is at the moment, the people who live in those areas will be the ones who are low paid, have poor health and low skills—as a generality, of course. If we can change that, we will change their lives and change the country as well; there would not be such a call on the health service and the benefits system if we had people with better paid jobs, higher skills and better health outcomes. It is in the interests of us all, not just those of some areas of the country.

I fundamentally disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about research and development. I draw his attention to what the White Paper says—and it is a government White Paper, not mine. It says that the Government need to ensure that there is government investment of a significant degree in these geographical areas of disparity—the spatial disparities it talks about—in order to attract matching private sector investment and create better paid jobs, and deal with all the concomitant issues related to low pay, poor health, poor skills and all the rest of it. That is what it says in the White Paper.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Devon, and to echo his concern about the lack of environmental ambitions expressed in the Bill, which I think we will also discuss in the next group. In my first contribution in Committee, I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, to cover my other contributions in Committee.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for his powerful and expert introduction to this group. I will speak briefly to offer Green group support for the general direction of all these amendments. I will focus in particular on Amendment 5, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, which was ably introduced by the noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, and talks about looking at

“the disparities between rural and urban areas”.

The noble Lord, Lord Foster, talked about the different needs of different areas, but it is really important that, when we think about levelling up, we actually see ambitions for equal services for people all across these islands.

I will reflect on some of the experiences I have had in some small communities. Clun is a tiny, picture-perfect postcard village in south-west Shropshire near the Wales border. When I visited a decade ago, the locals believed that it was the smallest place in the UK with a food bank, which was operating out of the church. One of the volunteers working at that food bank told me that, until he got involved in that food bank, he never believed that anyone would need a food bank in Clun. He was absolutely and deeply shocked by the level of need and the experiences he encountered. There is a desperate need for essential support services. While I do not think that we should rest until the last food bank closes because of a lack of demand, we need to put other services in place to help the people who are now reliant on those food banks.

Another issue for so many of these areas is the fact that policies designed for cities and urban areas get imposed on rural areas. This makes me think about the time I visited a school in north Norfolk. The schools in that area had had imposed on them the idea of specialist schools: “Isn’t it great if pupils can choose to go to a sports academy or a language-specialising school?” However, as each village only had one bus service, pupils had no choice about which school they went to; they went only to the school that the bus went to. If you were really good at and fancied sports, but you ended up in the language school, that was just tough luck. That was because of policies imposed on rural areas which are just inappropriate.

I return to the issue of buses, because it is very close to the heart of the Green Party, having announced this week our policy for a fare that would be available to everyone in the country on local buses, “A One Pound Fare to Take You There”. When I talk about local buses in rural areas, I often get reactions such as, “Well, you can’t expect a bus in a rural area; it just won’t work.” However, I have been to Finland, where I caught a bus that went right into the middle of a national park. I went for a walk, I came back and stood at the bus stop, and I waited for the next bus service, which came every half an hour, all day, in the middle of that national park. So, when thinking about levelling up in an absolute and real sense, we should not be saying, “Oh, it’s a rural area; they can’t expect this or that.” In particular, we should not say that they cannot expect the foundation of a bus service so that people can get around. For that reason, I think that Amendment 3, about reducing disparities, is crucial.

My final point is about the little bit of discussion we have had on the Government’s vision for rural areas. Over the decades, the direction of travel in rural areas has been that landholdings and farms will have to get bigger and bigger, with fewer and fewer people working on them. However, I suggest that levelling up for rural areas means restoring small businesses and small farms which employ quite a lot of people. That then means that there are children to go to the local school, that there are people to get on the bus, and that the bus is there for the older people who need it, perhaps because they cannot drive any more. Restoring communities is about a lot more than asking, “Oh, what’s there and what can we support?”; it is about a vision.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath for raising this very important issue and for providing an evidence base and powerful argument in support of rural communities in particular. This short but important debate has cast a focus on the confusion at the heart of levelling up, which the debate on Amendment 1 was trying to resolve: what do we mean by levelling up and spatial disparities? What do we mean by improving the lives of people who live in different parts of the country, where for some there is low pay, low skills and poor health and for others there is a lack of connectivity or a lack of opportunities? Because we have not resolved that confusion, we will, throughout the passage of the Bill, get arguments of different natures in support of communities which need levelling up, whatever we mean by it. I hope that levelling up will not mean, or be defined by the Government as, either “rural levelling up” or “urban levelling up”, or that we will level up coastal, rural or urban areas separately. The levelling-up agenda must have a clear definition—which is in the White Paper, as I keep pointing out, but is not in the Bill—about the geographical disparities across this country, be they rural, coastal or urban, that result in people’s lives and the country being poorer. The levelling-up Bill ought to address that, but it unfortunately fails to do so.

I was struck by a really good phrase used by the noble Earl, Lord Devon, about levelling up: we do not want levelling-up ambitions to “blow in the political wind”. That is one of the reasons why I support having both the broad mission statements and the broad metrics for those mission statements in the Bill, so that we can say to whatever Government we have, “This is what we have agreed to, and this is what we are going to demand that you address.” Otherwise, we will come back again to the debate about the difficulties for people who live in rural areas. While noble Lords might think that West Yorkshire, where I live, is a big urban area, surprisingly, the upper Colne Valley could not be more rural; there are scattered farm settlements across the hillsides going up to the top of the Pennines. Its residents understand what it means to not have access to public transport, mobile networks or broadband connectivity.

Let us not go down the route of it being one or the other. I hope the Government will, even if I have to encourage them again, eventually closely define what they mean by “geographical disparities” and then address them through the missions and metrics that I hope we will put on the face of the Bill.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, for introducing his amendment—this is a really important amendment going forward. I also thank him for mentioning the work of the Rural Services Network; its report is incredibly important in informing the approach that the Government need to take and the work they need to do to reduce the disparities faced by rural areas. The Government would do well to take notice and account of what the Rural Service Network does as they continue to move forward with their levelling-up missions.

I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 488, and my noble friend Lady Taylor of Stevenage has Amendment 53 in this group. I thank the noble Earl, Lord Devon, for his support for my noble friend’s amendment. I very much agree with him that the environmental emissions targets need to be included in this, if we are to have any chance of meeting what is laid out in the Environment Act.

The noble Earl also very clearly laid out many of the concerns that face both our rural and coastal communities, including that they constantly feel missed out and left behind. They will be concerned that this is what will happen to them again. It is really important that we consider this properly. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, said, rural poverty is so often missed and underestimated; often it is not as in your face as urban poverty, and we need to ensure we take full account of it.

My noble friend’s Amendment 53

“is to probe whether the metrics are suitable for rural and coastal communities, and whether alternative metrics should be considered.”

Here is an example from the document that was published on the mission and metrics—the technical annexe. I remind noble Lords of the metric that accompanies mission 3:

“By 2030, local public transport connectivity across the country will be significantly closer to the standards of London, with improved services, simpler fares and integrated ticketing.”


The metrics that will be used to assess progress in achieving that mission are

“method of travel to work by region of workplace … The other headline metric is the average journey time to centres of employment, with the data broken down by modes of transport and at lower tier local authority level in England.”

What they do not do is tell us how much public transport exists in the first place.

I live in an area where we have one bus a week—that is not one bus that comes and goes during that day, but one bus that goes to one place on one day of the week—and it gives us a couple of hours in the place it arrives before we have to come home again. I genuinely do not understand how, in the area where I live, these metrics will deliver transport connectivity that is “significantly closer” to the standards of London. I genuinely have no concept of how these metrics will achieve that.

My other concern is that the principal objective is “growing the private sector”. Again, I cannot see how growing the private sector in the area I live, or in the areas that surround it, will suddenly bring me a really good bus service. The one thing that might help is if the Government reintroduced the rural bus grant fund that they took away. That led to dozens and dozens in my area losing their services—I know this because I was a county councillor at the time—because they were simply no longer profitable. Looking at the metrics from a rural perspective is incredibly important, if we are genuinely going to drive change in this area.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. I share the disappointment of the noble Lord, Lord Young, that we will not hear from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. As someone who also knows that problem of running between the Chamber and the Moses Room all too well, I sympathise.

I do not feel that I need to add anything to the child poverty point made in the three powerful initial speeches. All one can say is that we hope that the Government in both Chambers were listening to those three speeches or will at least read them, because, really, how could they not act on the basis of them?

I want to focus on three amendments: Amendment 8, adding climate emergency as a mission, Amendment 18 on net zero, and Amendment 19, on the Environment Act. I broadly support what the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said, but I slightly disagree with him because he said that he could not imagine a Government who did not have a net-zero-by-2050 target. I can imagine it: I know that we need a Government who have a target for net zero long before 2050, and indeed, who need to explore very closely that phrase “net zero” and what exactly it means. Perhaps I should add that that is a friendly disagreement,.

I am not quite sure that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, that net zero should not be sitting there as a target on its own. As he was speaking, I could not help but think about the often-repeated phrase that what is not measured is not prioritised. If it is across all the targets—I very much agree that it applies across all the targets—is there a risk that it just disappears into the “Yes, we’ll put a few nice words in without really putting the counting in there”? We are seeing from local councils, so many of which have declared a climate emergency or, indeed, a nature crisis, that they are desperate to do that—to be able to show their own contribution.

A lot of our discussion about the climate emergency has focused on mitigation and the possibilities of mitigation. It is important to put that in the current global context, where we see both the United States and the European Union—particularly the US leading, with the EU trying to follow—putting massive sums of investment into what is loosely called the green economy. If we think about the Government and their often-expressed desire to be world-leading, there has been a real change in the global context just in the last few months. In that light, I want to pick up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter. Most of the talk has been on climate mitigation. When we are particularly talking about what are commonly described as “left-behind communities”, such as the rural and coastal communities which we were talking about in the last group, the issues of adaptation and resilience to the climate emergency really need to be highlighted.

Here, we speak in the week when the UN Security Council had its first ever debate on the impacts of sea-level rise, and in just the last day or so we have seen some truly terrifying research coming out about the weakness of ice sheets that have the potential to cause a massive sea-level rise. As I was sitting here thinking about this, I thought about a visit I made to a small rural village called Hemsby in 2014 after it had been hit by a storm and a number of homes had been swept away. I just looked up Hemsby and realised that this year, Hemsby has been hit by serious storms three times again, and the lifeboat has lost its ramp again and again. If we think about places that desperately need support in the climate emergency, communities such as Hemsby have to be at the forefront. We have not really heard much discussion about that in this debate. I am not sure whether this needs to be a separate mission. The issue of resilience needs to be across all of the missions, making sure that everything we are aiming to invest in and build can stand up to climate and other shocks when we live in this age of shocks.

A number of noble Lords made the point about the interaction of human health and well-being and the environment. I do not know whether the Minister is aware—I point this out to her as a constructive suggestion—of a UN project called the Healthy Urban Microbiome Initiative, known as HUMI. It focuses on how human well-being benefits from a healthy environment even in the most concentrated urban settings. A more biodiverse setting, even on the busiest urban street, is better for human well-being. That has to underpin everything the Government are doing and thinking about here.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an important and interesting debate about new missions to be added to the levelling-up agenda. Quite rightly, the Government have been thrown a challenge in four different ways. First, there was an absolutely vital challenge from the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about reducing child poverty being absolutely at the heart of any levelling-up agenda. As she and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester said, currently 3.9 million children in our own country—nearly 4 million children—are living in poverty. If we do not use the Bill to address that scar on our country and our communities, we will not level up the lives of those communities in those localities.

The fundamentals that we have raised in this debate of child poverty, net zero, access to green spaces and protecting and enhancing our natural environment, are, for the reasons given, at the very heart of what the levelling-up ambitions ought to be achieving. As all the contributions have indicated, if we reduce those inequalities in those areas of spatial disparities, because we are focusing on those we will focus as a country on all child poverty. If we say that in the north-east people need access to green spaces, we focus on everybody’s access to green spaces. If we focus on reducing child poverty in some of the worst parts of our country, we improve the lives of every child because we are putting a spotlight on reducing those dreadful inequalities.

I thank the speakers, particularly my noble friends Lord Stunell and Lady Parminter, who drew the attention of the Minister and the House to the advantages of putting net zero and the environment at the very heart of all that we do. If we do not, we are missing a trick, as someone said. We have to will the means, said my noble friend Lady Parminter, not just express them. That is why on these Benches we will wholeheartedly support the amendment. If the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, wishes to bring this back on Report, she will have our support, as will those who raised the other issues with regard to the environment.

Levelling Up Fund

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I agree with some of my noble friend’s views. If I remember rightly, I answered a similar question yesterday from my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham and said that the Government are committed to reducing the complexities of local government funding, as set out in the levelling up White Paper.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, in response to a question earlier, the Minister said that the assessment was made by excluding those councils that had already received funding. Were those councils told before they spent huge sums of money to make bids that they would be excluded at the first step? Secondly, how many of the Government’s 139 council priority areas have not yet received any money?

Levelling Up: Funding Allocation

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, competitive funding can be a very effective tool for protecting value for taxpayers’ money. Competitions such as the levelling-up fund can also support fair and transparent awards of funds and drive innovation, but I understand my noble friend’s concerns and the Government have committed, within the levelling-up White Paper, to reducing the complexities of local government funding.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

The Minister has just said that competitive funding is an effective way of accessing this funding pot. There were 525 bids in this latest round; only 111 were successful; that means 80% were not successful. Each bid is estimated to cost £30,000 to make; that is £12 million of hard-pressed council funding basically wasted on bids. Can the Minister not find a more effective way, such as devolving the money to local authorities, so that this money is not wasted when it is desperately needed?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this is capital funding. There were 111 successful bids this time; before, there were 105 successful bids; and there will be a third round. If we added all this money and gave it to local authorities, I do not think there would be enough for the large infrastructure projects—projects that people are very happy to be delivering and projects that local authorities have put forward because they are important to their people. I think this is the way to do it.

Local Government (Structural Changes) (Supplementary Provision and Amendment) Order 2023

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Grand Committee

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I start by reminding the Committee of my interests in the register: I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and a serving councillor on Kirklees Council. I thank the Minister for her opening remarks explaining this statutory instrument. As she explained, these are consequential changes from the creation of the new unitary local authorities of Somerset, North Yorkshire, Cumberland, and Westmorland and Furness.

The key issues that I want to ask a few questions about relate to pension funds and housing capital finance. Of course, the changes proposed have to be made to ensure an equitable division of liabilities for pension funds and capital finance debt. My questions relate to the way in which these decisions are being made. Will they be transparent? Are the external auditors of the existing local authorities involved and, if not, why not? External auditors can often make independent assessments, particularly of pension liabilities, and are able to advise councils. I think that their advice would be helpful.

I have a further question on the creation of the two local authorities in Cumbria and the manner in which the transfer of their pension funds will be agreed. The Minister explained that it has been agreed that Westmorland and Furness council will administer pension funds on behalf of the two new councils. According to the Explanatory Memorandum, this council will determine the proportions of transferred pension fund assets and liabilities. My understanding is that Westmorland and Furness must take advice from the other new unitary council, Cumberland, but I would like more information about that, because nothing creates more of an argument between councils than questions of who has to take on liabilities.

The two councils may be able to make an amicable agreement, but what if they are not able to do so? The Explanatory Memorandum says,

“In coming to a fair determination on these matters, the Order provides that Westmorland and Furness must take advice from an actuary”—


that is good—

“and consult Cumberland Council.”

If I were a member of Cumberland council, I would want a bit more than being consulted. I would want to be sure that there was proper agreement between the two councils and not just consultation.

Can the Minister say whether there is an opportunity in this process for, in this instance, Cumberland council to appeal to the Government if there is no agreement on the way in which pension fund liabilities are divided between the two authorities? As the Minister is aware, pension fund values can fluctuate significantly across even a few years, and liabilities can suddenly become very large if there is a new actuarial assessment, so budgetary provision for pension funds can make a significant call on a councils’ funding arrangements. This is why I am raising these points, and I hope the Minister can give me reassurance on them.

There is a similar argument in relation to how the debt finance from housing capital funds is to be passed on from, in this case, the existing district councils to the new unitary council and across all four of these new councils. The Explanatory Memorandum is not clear that debt allocations will be in relation to previous activity, rather than there being a simple pro rata division, which would not be fair on some of the council tax payers. For example, there will be councils—I know of one in Somerset—that no longer have any housing capital finance debt. Will they be asked to pick up a share of other district councils’ debt? If so, is that fair? Those are my questions. I am sure that the civil servants will have looked into this and will be able to give me an answer, but I would like it on record.

With those comments and questions, I look forward to the noble Baroness giving me an answer. If she cannot, I am quite happy to have a written response.

[Lord Khan of Burnley (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a serving councillor in one of the finest counties in the country, Lancashire, contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, might think. I apologise: I have a cough, so bear with me. I blame all of the departmental SIs that they keep bringing out; they affect my throat pretty badly.

The Minister spoke in depth about this technical legislation, which takes minor steps to help to create new councils in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset. The instrument includes provision in relation to ceremonial matters, the transfer of pensions, exit payments, fisheries and conservation—technical and important areas. It is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, who has a wealth of experience. She asked many of the questions that I wanted to ask, but I have a few more. Although we will not oppose this, we on these Benches want to see what happens in the Commons—I am trying to work it out, but I think it has not been there yet. When does the Minister foresee this happening?

This has been debated at some length, as the Minister mentioned, so I will not go through the arguments again, but I will add some probing questions of my own to those of the noble Baroness. Will the Government bring forward any further legislation to enable the establishment of these new councils? Have the Government consulted trade unions on the provisions relating to pensions and exit payments? On the noble Baroness’s point about the independent auditors, what is the specific nature of the consultation that the Minister had with them? Did they speak about any concerns or pitfalls?

Have the Government done further research on previous experience of this anywhere in the country, or is this the first of a set of new councils? These councils are very different, geographically and culturally. Councillors in local district councils will tell you that we all have our own identities, ways of working and cultures, so I want to see the feedback that we received from those councils.

Lastly, what will happen in terms of reviews and monitoring to keep an eye on this? In the current economic climate, the markets are all over the show, given the famous Budget a few months ago. What is the plan B, particularly for pension funds, which were mentioned, if things deteriorate?

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

Follow that.

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate on levelling up. What is good for the Minister is that everyone agrees that we need to be levelled up. Not such good news for her is that we are not all really sure which bits we will level up. We all agree on transport; on housing, definitely; on health, which is absolutely critical; on skills, yes; and on devolution, definitely. There is a huge range of issues that Members of this House feel very passionately about, and they are all under the umbrella of levelling up. I wish the Minister good luck.

Since one book was already shown this afternoon, I will show another: the White Paper, Levelling Up the United Kingdom. There is loads in there that a lot of us will agree with. One of the things it says is that levelling up is

“a mission to challenge, and change … unfairness”,

and that there is a need to

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

It has loads of measurements and metrics in it, including that, if the north of England were able to produce at the same level as the south-east, the country would be better off by £180 billion. So what are we waiting for?

We on these Benches were anticipating a levelling up Bill that attempted to fulfil some of the fine words in the White Paper. Unfortunately, none of the words, especially those on the mission, is in the Bill—we just get mention of “the mission”, whatever that will be. There is a growing sense of disappointment and of an opportunity lost, which I have heard shared to a greater or lesser degree across the House during this debate.

I ought at this point to say that I have registered interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a councillor in Kirklees, in West Yorkshire.

About four hours ago, my noble friend Lord Stunell described the Bill as an “empty box of dreams” Bill, because the White Paper was very ambitious but the Bill does not live up to that ambition. Over the course of this debate four big themes have come out: social housing for rent, which has been mentioned many times across this House; the environment; remembering rural areas; and genuine devolution, as described so ably by the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham. What we are left with is a Bill basically about planning and local government devolution to the counties, which is a long cry from the expectation that a Government were finally going to erase years of inequality and paucity of opportunity.

Part 1 claims to set out the levelling-up missions, but it is a series of clauses entirely devoid of content, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, pointed out. It would be good to hear from the Minister about the content of the levelling-up missions and what metrics are going to be used for their measurement. I have to say that the civil servants are to be congratulated on being able to produce six pages of legislation which are wholly dependent on the whim of the Government as to what is published. Clause 2(4) is a masterpiece of a get-out-of-jail clause. It states that if the Government consider that one of the levelling-up missions they agreed is no longer achievable, the report

“may state that His Majesty’s Government no longer intends to pursue that mission”.

We need a commitment from the Government to fulfil what was said in the White Paper.

Part 2 focuses on local democracy and devolution and, as my noble friends Lord Shipley, Lord Stunell and Lady Thornhill have set out, the headline of this part feels distinctly Orwellian. There is little about local democracy, and devolution is, as they and many other noble Lords have described, the delegation of powers and not genuine devolution. If county councils wish to combine to create new authorities, then all well and good, but the issue for us on these Benches and for many other noble Lords is the leaching away of local democratic accountability in these provisions. I will give just one example: combined county authorities can appoint associate members who are individuals, not representative of any institution or local organisation. It seems to me that being able to appoint associate members is a recipe for challenge around lack of transparency and lack of accountability—or worse.

I agree with many noble Lords, including my noble friend Lady Scott of Needham Market, that parish and town councils are vital elements in providing local involvement and making decisions about improving their areas. So I turn to Part 3, about changes to the planning system, which has inevitably attracted a huge amount of comment and criticism. The best planning system creates a proper balance between developers and existing communities. Fairness and consistency in planning outcomes are important for its credibility.

Unfortunately, the Bill fails to adhere to these principles in some of the changes proposed. For example, Clause 87, which contains the proposal about the national development management policy, gives unspecified and draconian powers to the Secretary of State. Currently, local plans have to

“have regard to the National Planning Policy Framework”,

which is currently being rewritten. Can the Minister in her response set out reasons for significantly changing this approach? What is the purpose of the national development management policy?

Developers loudly condemn the existing planning regime for failing to enable house building, but I remind the Minister that over 1 million homes waiting to be built have planning permission. “Social housing” was the cry from nearly every Member of this House. I could mention many noble Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Bourne, spoke of its importance initially, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick, the noble Lord, Lord Birt, and my noble friend Lord Shipley. I hope the Government are listening.

Somebody had a good idea, which I wrote down, about redefining “affordable”. I hate that word. Affordable housing, as defined by the Government, costs 80% of average rents. That is not affordable to the vast majority of people. Redefining it as social housing could be a way forward; let us think about that.

There are six pages on street votes to enable planning in the streets; all I say on this is that it will be a postcode lottery.

Part 4 is about the infrastructure levy. I totally agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on that. How can it fulfil the three different functions that he laid out? I am very concerned that, when a big development of 500 or more homes is built, a lot of facilities and amenities are needed as well as infrastructure. Perhaps the Minister will be able to spell this out rather more clearly than we can see in the Bill.

My noble friends Lady Parminter, Lord Teverson and Lady Sheehan, as well as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, and others, have spoken eloquently about the need for environmental improvements in the Bill. The environmental outcome reports and other green issues will need to be dealt with in Committee; a levelling up Bill with no reference to climate change seems totally lacking in using that opportunity.

I end on town centres, noting the vague references that have been made to improving their vitality and viability without mention that one of the reasons for the decline of our town centres is online retail. Retail warehouses have a very large tax advantage, especially in business rates. Reform of the business rates could have played a real part in the Bill, making online retailers pay their fair share as compared with town-centre retailers, to redress that imbalance. I hope the Government will look at that; it is certainly one of the things that we will raise in Committee.

To conclude, the levelling up White Paper is sadly to be consigned to the archives. Ambitious levelling up is no more. Those—I am one of them—who live in areas of geographic inequality understand how desperately change is needed. Sadly, the Bill in its current form will not achieve that change but we on these Benches will do our very best to put that right during its passage.

Residential Leaseholders

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

That is an interesting remark that I will take back to officials to discuss further. I will come back to my noble friend.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, I want to pursue what the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, called rip-off charges, which the Government could take urgent action to address. I shall give the Minister an example. Fire doors are now to be inspected—rightly. Leaseholders are unable to make the arrangements for that inspection but freeholders or their agents do. One leaseholder contacted me to say that they are being charged £80 for their front door to be inspected each time—£320 a year. That is a rip-off service charge. What on earth are the Government going to do to address these rip-off service charges?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I cannot comment on the individual case, but the law is already clear that service charges must be reasonable. That is set out in Section 19 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985. If leaseholders feel they are being ripped off, they can apply in First-tier Tribunals for determination on this. However, I agree that there is more to do. The Government are committed to ensuring that charges, particularly service charges and these extra charges, are transparent. There should be a clear route to challenge or redress if things go wrong.

Housing: Cost of Living

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Thursday 15th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My noble friend brings up a very interesting point. I have looked at that in the past from a local authority point of view. I will certainly take that point back and would like to talk to her more about it.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, leaseholders living in blocks that are under 11 metres are also at risk of losing their homes. They were excluded by the Building Safety Act from any grants for remediation for cladding and building safety works. The Minister has received from me a lot of emails from desperate leaseholders looking to the Government for support and help, to ensure that they do not have to fund the developers’ problems that were caused. They are at risk of losing their homes because of the high costs of cladding removal. Can the Minister now tell us what she and the Government intend to do to help these desperate leaseholders?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I am fully aware of the noble Baroness’s concerns about this issue. I have a large group of documents from her and am working my way through those with officials. I will come back to her to discuss it fully, as soon as I possibly can in the new year.