Inter Faith Network

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I cannot say. Reviews like that are carried out by the Home Office. I will certainly take that back and ask the question but, as far as I know, there are no plans to look at it again.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Does the Minister think that the Government’s action in this case is proportionate, given the huge importance in our society of interfaith dialogue and the fact that one person seems to be spoiling the show? Surely the Secretary of State would have a broader vision than that.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

The Secretary of State carefully considered the implications of this and of ceasing the funding, including the potential impact on the Inter Faith Network itself and interfaith relations in the United Kingdom. The noble Lord is absolutely right: interfaith work is valuable, but there are very many more positive examples of thriving initiatives across the country that bring people together. That does not require us to use taxpayers’ money in a way that legitimises the influence of organisations such as the MCB.

Levelling Up

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The noble Lord has pointed to one of the solutions in his question. In some circumstances, it might be appropriate for government to provide support to those councils or areas that struggle the most with the process to give them the capacity to engage with it in the first place. However, there are also things that we can do to try to simplify the processes that local authorities go through, while still ensuring that quality is maintained. We can simplify them—or, for example, in our approach to monitoring and evaluation of a lot of these projects, we have taken the decision to remove the local obligation to undertake that and will provide a central function to do it. So we can provide central support for local government and we can provide direct funding to local government to be able to engage and participate, but we can also simplify the process to try to remove the costs and drive value for money.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I am so glad to see the noble Baroness in her new place. Do the Government agree with the analysis of Andrew Haldane, the former chief economist of the Bank of England and now director-general of the Royal Society of Arts, that one reason why Britain’s growth and productivity performance is not as good as it should be is the widening regional differentials in England between London and the south-east and the city regions of the north? If the Minister does agree, what conclusions does she draw about what kinds of policies are likely to be most effective in closing that gap?

To speak personally, when I look at quite a lot of the projects that have been approved, they are smallish-scale projects worth £10 million to £20 million, a lot of which are designed to improve town centres. I am in favour of repurposing town centres, but I do not think that we can ever take them back to where they were. Should we not be looking for big, transformative projects? Of course, that is why the cancellation of HS2 was such a big blow.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I agree with that central point: that is what is driving the whole mission behind our work to level up. We need to do both of the things that the noble Lord talked about. We need to fund projects that restore pride of place to towns where people live and give a strong sense of local community, but we also need to fund those larger-scale transformative projects. The amount of funding, for example, that has gone into transport projects in mayoral combined authorities and other areas over recent years is very significant. We also have projects to develop investment zones and freeports, for example. So we should not see the levelling-up fund, and the projects that take place through that, as the only way in which we are delivering our agenda.

On the point about funding, whether it is for large or small projects, I will just add that it is also about devolving power—something that the noble Baroness mentioned at the very outset. Today, in the Autumn Statement, we have confirmed four new devolution deals for Greater Lincolnshire, Hull and East Yorkshire, Cornwall and Lancashire. We are also deepening the settlements for our existing institutions, because we need both power and money to flow down to local areas so that they can level up.

Levelling Up: Funding Allocation

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Liddle]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what progress they have made with the allocation of Levelling Up funding.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and I declare my interest as a member of Cumbria County Council.

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

My Lords, levelling up is one of the driving missions of this Government. We are delighted to announce the outcome of the second round of the levelling up fund, which has seen £2.1 billion award to 111 bids that we know will stimulate growth and benefit communities across the United Kingdom. This builds on the success of the first round, which saw £1.7 billion award to 105 successful projects across the UK, to drive regeneration and growth in areas that have been overlooked and unappreciated for too long,

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for her reply. I think many of us on this side of the House were delighted that the Government were making levelling up a priority to deal with the growing regional inequalities in our country. However, the Prime Minister made no reference to levelling up as one of his priorities in his new year speech. The announcement last week was slipped out without any Statement in the House of Commons, as though it was slipped out in shame. The grants awarded appear to have no coherence or consistency and owe much to political jobbery. Do the Government still believe in levelling up? If they do, what on earth do they mean by it?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, we absolutely still agree with the whole project of levelling up. I just need to say that, of all the bids, the north-west—this will please the noble Lord opposite—had the highest number of successful projects and was second in funding per capita; Wales was top and the north-east was third. I suggest that that is putting the money where it is required.

International Holocaust Memorial Day

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Pickles, on obtaining this debate. As a rather humble gentile, and like my noble friend Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, I feel a bit nervous about trying to contribute to this discussion.

My dad fought in the Second World War. As a result, I was brought up on war stories and everything that had happened then. As a student, I was obsessed with the question of how a sophisticated nation such as Germany could end up being run, with a large measure of electoral support, by a bunch of vile criminals. That question still worries me today whenever I see the emergence of what I regard as awful populism in our politics.

There was no Jewish community in Carlisle, where I grew up. My first friend who was a Jew was when I went to work for Bill Rodgers as Minister of Transport in 1976. His wife, Silvia, had come from Berlin, having got out after Kristallnacht with her mother, who was a Communist Party activist and secular Jew. I learned a lot from her. She used to show me pictures of her class and explain that there were only two survivors from it.

The most moving thing was when I paid my first trip to Israel in my 30s and went to Yad Vashem. I will never forget it; to be quite honest, I could barely cope with it. It is one reason why I just cannot come to terms with the anti-Semitism that still exists in our society. Having visited Yad Vashem, I will defend the State of Israel and its right to exist all my life, even though I object to some of the policies of the present Government and some of the people in that Government. Israel has that right to exist. I reject anti-Semitism in my own party; that was one of the things that brought me almost to resignation from the Labour Party, as a result of what was happening prior to 2019. I greatly respect what Keir Starmer has done to root that out.

I will be optimistic for one moment. I remember walking around the reasonably new Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The fact that Germany has tried to come to terms with its past and repent for its collective sins is a cause for optimism about the future of the world. I end with my hope that, if other genocides are threatened in the world, we will not just stand back and do nothing, as a lot of our politicians did in the 1930s.

Cumbria (Structural Changes) Order 2022

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office and Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con)]

My Lords, I beg to move the Motions standing in my name on the Order Paper en bloc.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain the House long on this matter. I should declare my interest as a member of Cumbria County Council. I would like to put on record a couple of points. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for the care and attention he paid in the debate we had in Grand Committee on these issues last week. I think that he listened.

Secondly, I put on record my view that the decision we are implementing today, which was taken last summer by Robert Jenrick—late lamented in his role as Secretary of State—to split Cumbria into two unitary authorities is unsustainable, possibly in the short term and certainly in the medium term. In the short term, it involves splitting services that are vital yet fragile, such as social care and child protection, in the space of 12 months. I fear the consequences for the most vulnerable in our society as a result. On longer-term sustainability, the Government are imposing unnatural communities on Cumbria. I cannot believe that these new authorities will sustain public support in the longer term.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, we debated this at some length in Grand Committee. The noble Lord made those points very eloquently. Since then, I have agreed to meet with him and the current county council leader. In fact, I also disclosed and put on record that I have never been to Cumbria and I hope to put that right.

Cumbria (Structural Changes) Order 2022

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Grand Committee

My simple question is: why this process? How did it come about? What consultations took place beyond those with the individual local authorities of Eden, South Lakeland and Barrow? Why was a similar process not followed to that used for the western half, which will be Cumberland? Will Cumberland itself now have too few councillors, as it is being reduced to 42, which is the number of the existing county council seats? I see the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, nodding. There has been a degree of confusion about this process and I would like further elucidation from my noble friend, if he can give me that in due course.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in this matter. I was born in Carlisle and attended Carlisle Grammar School. I live in Cumbria now and have an interest on the present county council, as the councillor for Wigton.

I have three things to say at the start. First, I am delighted by what the Minister said about maintaining Carlisle’s city status. It means a lot to me. I remember, as a little boy in 1958, attending the 800th anniversary of the foundation of the city.

Secondly, I am glad to know that the lord-lieutenancy for Cumbria is being maintained; my wife, as deputy lord-lieutenant, will be very pleased by that. Thirdly, it is very good to have as a Minister someone with the great experience and success in local government of the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, dealing with these questions. I hope he might listen carefully to what I have to say about the proposal, which I would oppose as it stands, but I know that is not the way the House proceeds and I shall obviously not do that. But I will make the case for why the Government should take the remaining opportunity to pause and think a bit about what they are doing in the case of Cumbria.

My starting point is simple. I am a passionate supporter of unitary authorities, and have been for a long time, but the proposal for Cumbria, splitting it in two, does two things. First, it removes the strategic role that the county council presently plays; secondly, it divides in two the services that the county council currently provides. These services are vast by comparison with what the districts provide. The county council’s net revenue budget, excluding the schools grant, is of the order of £400 million a year. The six district councils all together are little tiddlers: their spending together is less than £100 million. The order is, in effect, cutting in two the most effective bit of local government in Cumbria.

The justification that this makes for more local government does not stand up to serious examination. The new unitary authority of Westmorland and Furness embraces both the Barrow shipyard and the remote Pennine communities 60 or 70 miles to the north of it. They are as different as heaven and hell. I shall not say which I think is which, but they are totally different. As for the new county of Cumberland, Penrith, to which the noble Lord, Lord Henley, referred, is torn out of the historic county of Cumberland. I always remember Willie Whitelaw affectionately describing his constituency of Penrith as being a place of slumbering calm—we probably need more of that in our lives. That is removed, and for Cumberland, there is my home city of Carlisle, together with what is largely post-industrial west Cumbria. My forecast is that that will be a rather uneasy partnership. Cumbria is a county of great diversity: great beauty mixed with shocking deprivation; a very proud history, with all the problems of modernity.

What I and the majority of my colleagues on the county council think the Government should have done was to go for a single, strategic authority but then allow for maximum devolution to towns, with their rural hinterlands, for local access to services and the capacity for genuinely local decision-making over genuinely local matters. My town council in Wigton should certainly have been expanded and given a greater role.

Given the decision taken, the county council—rightly, in my view—sought to challenge the Government’s plan through a judicial review. After a very detailed consideration in a judgment that took Mr Justice Fordham, who is very eminent in this field, an hour and three-quarters to deliver, he refused leave for a judicial review. It is important to emphasise, however, that this is not an endorsement of the Government’s plan; it is only a legal judgment that the Minister had not overstepped his powers in ignoring his own criteria in deciding on the current plan.

We are now put in a very difficult position in Cumbria as a result of this split. The Minister referred to savings estimated by Allerdale and Copeland— goodness how they could calculate them, because they know nothing about the main services—of between £19 million and £30 million a year. We were expecting much bigger savings from having a unitary authority—as much as £40 million or £50 million a year. The truth is that we need those savings to reinvest in what are badly overstretched services, and we now will not be able to do that. That overstretch is apparent in all the main services one looks at. Our children’s services are under great pressure. For the last few years, they have overspent their budget every year. For social care, we were forced to put in an extra £10 million last autumn simply to keep a creaking system going so that the hospitals in Cumbria would not be completely clogged up with people who could not be given care in the community. Of course, the consequence of that would have been even longer waiting lists for patients.

People complain about highway maintenance in Cumbria—potholes are a big issue; I am always lobbied about them—but we have no extra money to spend on that. Indeed, the Government have this year cut the highway maintenance grant by some £10 million.

The situation is serious. At the same time, whereas the creation of a single unitary authority would have been a relatively simple matter, splitting the services in two is highly complex. The existing councils, and I hope that the people who support this scheme are prepared to defend this, have already had to put aside some £18 million to spend on management consultants to work out how the new authority will work. I suggest that the Minister inquires about this; a lot of money is being spent on trying to work out how to divide the services we have.

Supporters of the plan argue that we are being ridiculously pessimistic. They say that the two new authorities can form a mayoral combined authority that will deal with strategic planning, can negotiate a growth deal with the Government and could run county-wide services that it does not make sense to split—that is the argument. However, the truth is that the Government currently do not, as I understand it, have any power to force a mayoral combined authority on Cumbria. It all depends on the decision of the new authorities as to whether they want one. From what I know and from what I gather, particularly from my Liberal Democrat friends in Westmorland and Furness, there is no enthusiasm for establishing such a combined authority. Therefore, I think this is a bit of a fantasy.

However, in the House of Commons, when John Stevenson, the Conservative MP for Carlisle, whom I like a lot, asked Secretary of State Gove what the position was, the Secretary of State implied that the Government could force a mayoral combined authority on the new councils. Can the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, clarify that very important point for us? I can send him chapter and verse on what was said in the House of Commons, and I would like to know what he thinks about what his boss said on that occasion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

No, you are landing them—keep going.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Okay. I am trying to explain that there are serious risks in what is now planned. A pause could well be necessary. I do not see any problem with the Government revising their plans. What will happen if it becomes clear that the current timetable is not workable? The Government need to form a judgment on this quite quickly. I am not advocating this for any personal reason, but they could keep the county council going for longer than another year so that there would be more time to plan for the division of services, which would then have some prospect of stability.

In the light of their Levelling Up White Paper, which came after this proposal was made, the Government could think about keeping a single unitary authority in Cumbria but doing a deal with that council that it will have an elected mayor. I am not against elected mayors in principle; I am actually rather in favour of them. I think they have worked quite well in metropolitan areas. In the Levelling Up White Paper, if you are going to get maximum devolution of power, you have to have an elected mayor to achieve that. Why not put that proposal to Cumberland, to a united Cumbria, and see whether it would be acceptable?

I am very worried about what is happening, not from a party-political point of view, but simply from the point of view of how all this is going to work in practice. I hope that the Minister might take away what I have said and have a think about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I am ashamed to say that in my time on this earth, I have not set foot in glorious Cumbria, so I have learned an awful lot. One thing that I will take away is that I must visit the place. I understand that it is very rural. It is quite interesting to note how the geography is such that there are natural divisions too. That was set out incredibly helpfully by my noble friend Lord Jopling.

I always enjoy the experiences that noble Lords bring to bear. I listened very carefully to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. However, I am calculating, at 59 minutes and 38 seconds, and having had quite a late night the night before, when we are likely to finish these three statutory instruments. However, I will do my best to respond.

My understanding of the point around preserving the city status of Carlisle is that Cumbria simply did not ask for it, whereas North Yorkshire did. It is just a process of responding to the customer, rather than an intention not to do it. Therefore, the assurance is very sincere. We will produce whatever orders that we must. It has been written out, so we have that assurance that the process will go ahead irrespective of what we have set out in the order. It does not have to be done in the same way to get to the same end point. Noble Lords have had my assurance at the Dispatch Box. It is clear that the councils want that, so it is not a problem.

I have some experience in delivering council services, so I will respond directly to the central point made by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. Philosophically I agree with him that where possible you build bridges rather than walls, and that with services such as adult social care, which is typically about a third of a council’s budget, you had better not split the overhead of commissioning the service, but it is very possible. For instance, when I was the leader of the council in Hammersmith and Fulham we had a voluntary arrangement with neighbouring councils to bring together the commissioning of adult social care across three London boroughs, but we had very different entry criteria into the social care system. You could save on the overhead by collaborating with other councils but have very different criteria. I am very proud that my council had the best entry criteria into the social care system, extending right through to people in greater moderate need, which is very rare in local government these days, particularly with the increasingly ageing population. Therefore, you can do both if you want to. That requires local leadership, above all, but there is nothing in this structure, east/west, that would stop that sort of arrangement taking place as a possible outcome, where you can create two different entry points but share the overhead of the delivery of the service.

I really appreciated the point made by my noble friend Lord Jopling. The reality is that the units of local government, if we think strategically, become awfully large. A stat that is not in my speaking notes but which really interests me is that the average unit of local government in Switzerland is 3,733. In the United States it is 8,333. In Germany, it is 7,454. In the United Kingdom, it is 155,000. Therefore, I have great sympathy with the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, that we must ensure that we do not forget the tiers, the town and parish councils, and their contributions to their local areas, particularly more rural areas as opposed to cities. There is no intention of changing that structure from this order. I give that reassurance. It is about ensuring that the funding flows down through local government to the lowest tier. Sometimes it does, sometimes it does not, but we are not changing that structure in this order. I note the important contribution that parish and town councillors make to their local area.

I will respond directly to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, who speaks with great experience of Cumbria—I have admitted my own failings in that regard. I understand that the criterion is not about a majority: it is whether there is a good level of support. In this case, two proposals had a good level of support. It is not a referendum, where you win if you get more votes. That is essentially the answer to that question. In the round, there are three criteria and then you form a judgment. I tried to set that out as best I could in my speech. Any Government will take those three points and form a view. There are pluses and minuses for different routes, and the Secretary of State took a decision in the round on the three criteria that I set out in my speech.

I was worried by some of the comments about elections, but I assure noble Lords—and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, in particular—that elections to the new unitary authorities will take place as scheduled in May 2022. The councils will be in shadow form until they take on their new, full powers on 1 April 2023, and they will serve until May 2027. We are on track to deliver that. In response to my noble friend Lord Henley and the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, the order provides for the returning officers for the May 2022 elections, so we can be confident about the administration of those elections. The May elections will go ahead; we are on track for that. That is very important, given that, presumably, candidates are out there pounding the streets already.

My noble friend Lord Henley asked why 65 and why the wards are as they are. The warding arrangements are a local choice, and councils in both areas made their choices. It has been very much a bottom-up process. These arrangements are for the 2022 elections only. As I know from my experience in local authorities, the Electoral Commission will review ward boundaries and so forth, and then there will be representations, but this has been very much a bottom-up process.

I now have a series of attempts to respond to the very many points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle. Candidly, I am unlikely to succeed in answering every question. If he wants to approach me afterwards, I will do my best to get a full response.

I have addressed the central issue, which is that you can split into two councils but not necessarily split services. It is also fair to say that many of the services are area-based and they may be a smaller part of the budget. Sometimes it is better to recognise that fact. Universal services are often organised on area lines, and so forth; it depends on the service areas of the council.

The noble Lord, Lord Liddle, invited me to comment on something said in the other place by my current boss, rather than my previous one. We do not have that interpretation when he said the word “yes”, which has been interpreted as there being great support for a particular person, as opposed to imposing mayors on a particular place. It is all down to interpretation. Of course, you cannot impose a mayor on a particular area, but yes, there is support for a particular candidate—if there were a mayor.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Since this has caused quite a lot of local confusion, I ask that the Minister writes a letter to that effect explaining what Secretary of State Gove meant.

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

I think I have my “get out of jail free” card. I will write a very careful note responding to the point raised on the debate in the other place and ensure that I lay a copy in the Library.

I move on to a topic that I know a little bit better. I have spent just up to two years as Fire Minister now, which is actually quite a long time to survive as a Fire Minister for England, which includes Cumbria. We are about to launch a White Paper looking at reforming fire and rescue services. I assure people that we have thought very carefully about governance models that enable a move from the scrutiny-based arrangements we have typically seen to a more executive-based arrangement. That provides a county council model, as well as a PCC and mayoral model where appropriate. You can get single-person leadership and accountability through different governance models.

The PCC is currently consulting on fire going to the PCC. He needs to consult. Local people will have their say on that. Time will tell where we end up there, but that is the status at this time. We recognise the need to continue investing in our fire and rescue services to ensure that response times are effective and that we continue to see the downward trend in fires, as well as investment in capability, because they do so much more than that as a fire and rescue service, dealing with flooding and other events of considerable concern to the people of Cumbria.

I move on to the ceremonial points raised by my noble friend Lord Jopling. Everyone seems to have a special interest in the lord-lieutenancy, or the deputy lord-lieutenancy, whether current or past. We leave that alone with this order, so the current arrangements remain as they are. It is a matter for the Crown if it wishes to change the arrangements to reflect the new east/west divide. I am delighted that one of the benefits is to reinstate the proud status of Westmorland, as my noble friend raised. That is a matter for the Crown rather than the state, if you like, but it could come to pass. This order does not push that one way or the other.

Just for completeness—this will be my last point—in response to my noble friend Lord Jopling, the Kendal mayor is the mayor of Kendal Town Council. There will be no change to this town council or any other existing town council, as I said in response to the noble Lord, Lord Shipley.

This order seeks to respond to the local area. I say to people of clear Cumbrian heritage, who have served the people of Cumbria, that in essence the order will largely restore a structure that local people will recognise, which will provide much benefit and, I hope, stand the test of time.

Inequalities of Region and Place

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Liddle]

To move that this House takes note of the case for producing a (1) coherent, (2) cost effective, and (3) longer-term, regional strategy to tackle inequalities of region and place.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council and a former chair of Lancaster University. I am greatly looking forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lord Stansgate. It is something of a privilege that he is taking part in this debate. I am also greatly honoured that a mentor from my past is in the Chamber in the shape of the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank.

The Prime Minister made levelling up the centrepiece of his post-Brexit agenda. But, after listening to his conference speech, the Financial Times’ Robert Shrimsley memorably described this ambition as

“all destination and no map.”

This debate is your Lordships’ opportunity to advise the Government on what the plan should be. I agree with the Prime Minister that

“We have one of the most imbalanced societies and lop-sided economies of all the richer countries”.


We have no world-beating status here. We have one of the worst records for regional inequalities—worse than Germany once it incorporated the eastern Länder; worse even than Italy with the Mezzogiorno.

The Prime Minister is, of course, right that this is not simply a regional problem, and we remember the report by my noble friend Lord Bassam on the seaside towns. He was right to ask how, within the relatively deprived north-west, life expectancy is seven years longer in Ribble Valley than down the road in Blackpool. I can cite some numbers from Cumbria: the difference in life expectancy between the post-industrial Moss Bay ward of Workington and the rural Greystoke ward just outside Penrith is an amazing—a shocking— 19 years. On levels of educational attainment, the Prime Minister cited the difference between York and Doncaster, where 50% of adults in one city are graduates but only 25% are in the other—no prizes for guessing which, and on this occasion Ed Miliband cannot be to blame for that. But where is the plan to reverse these inequalities in outcomes?

One lacuna in the Prime Minister’s discourse which needs correcting is the absence of universities and the role they have played in leaning against the mighty winds of regional inequality in the last 30 years. They can do much more. I learned a thing or two when I was chair at Lancaster for seven years. Under the leadership of our pro-vice chancellor for engagement—our new Cross-Bench Member, the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome—we partnered with Cornwall’s remarkably successful Eden Project to devise a plan to bring Eden to the north, to Morecambe. That would be not just a visitor attraction, themed in this case on the wonders of the sky and seabed, but an inspiring educational experience as well as a centre of world-leading environmental research. It would create new jobs, from gatekeepers and cooks to technicians and scientists, which would all command respect. There is a plan there. All that is needed is for the Government to back it.

With support from the regional development fund of blessed memory, Lancaster also invested in a health innovation campus, where we can, for instance, work with health authorities in Blackpool—which has some of the worst health outcomes in Britain—using the university’s expertise in digital analysis of NHS patient records to improve patient and public health outcomes. That is not an investment in a new hospital; it is an investment in ways to keep people out of hospital.

University research generates innovations at the frontier of knowledge that stimulate new enterprise in the ecosystems that form around them. But the stranglehold of R&D funding of the south-east golden triangle must be broken. I congratulate the Government on locating the headquarters of their new National Cyber Force in Lancashire, which will enable it to draw on Lancaster’s excellence in cybersecurity. But the money has to come north from Oxbridge, and that will happen only if the Government deliver on their commitment to expand R&D spending from 1.8% to 2.4% of GDP—I hope they will.

When it comes to education in schools, the north and SNP Scotland have badly slipped behind London’s soaring standards. London now gets something like 60% of kids at 18 into university; in many northern towns, the figure struggles to get over 30%. We badly need a regionally tailored version of the Blair Government’s London Challenge, in which my noble friend Lord Adonis played such a transformative part.

In transforming young people’s expectations and opportunities, good-quality apprenticeships are as crucial as A-level grades. There is a national crisis in the declining availability of good apprenticeships, so why not create a 30% target for level 3 apprenticeships to stand alongside the 50% target for university entry? The levelling-up plan should ensure that every significant town in deprived regions has a further education college that is not a poor relation but an anchor institution that commands respect, has organic links to local business and offers clearly marked steps up a visible ladder of opportunity to foundation degrees and beyond.

The decline of the north has been with us for a century or more, following the horrors of the great depression of the 1930s. There was some success after the war, with the policies that Hugh Dalton introduced in wartime. But, since the 1980s, the regions—which now include large parts of the Midlands as well as the north—have had their economic heart torn out. In part, they were victims of inevitable technological change and the shift to a knowledge and service economy that goes right across Europe. The Germans managed to upskill their manufacturing, rather than destroy it as we did.

The social consequences of this have been profound. Take Barrow in Cumbria, for instance: it lost thousands of jobs in the shipyard in the 1980s, but the shipyard now enjoys a brilliant high-tech recovery, with many fewer jobs but much higher levels of skill. Yet too many families who suffered job losses in the 1980s have got stuck in the cycle of generational deprivation and worklessness, where a culture of low expectations makes a mockery of educational opportunity and where health and life expectancy are shockingly poor.

After 10 years of austerity, our public services are badly stretched in addressing these problems. They are too thin on the ground, too siloed, too focused on crisis, sticking too much to the rule book, too defensive and too resistant to change. To speak the language of new Labour: we need investment and reform at one and the same time.

In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher argued that there was no alternative. Deindustrialisation was accompanied by radical change in UK labour markets, a shift to flexibility and a loss of trade union power, and this went along with a reassertion of short-termist shareholder capitalism, which discouraged long-term investment in technology and skills. Now the Prime Minister asserted, again, in his speech that

“no government has had the guts to tackle … the long-term structural weaknesses in the … economy”.

He has to recognise, however, that these weaknesses have been apparent since the 1980s, well before—in the Prime Minister’s rewriting of history—uncontrolled immigration became the sole structural problem. The truth is that immigration is not the cause of our structural weaknesses, and controlling immigration—whatever its merits—will not provide any kind of permanent solution to them

Mrs Thatcher did have a plan for the regions; it was called Europe’s single market, and it was very good at attracting inward investment—for instance, in the north-east, to get Nissan to come to Sunderland, which was crucial in the future. It also strengthened our position in financial services, and lots of jobs across Britain in places such as Leeds benefited from that. For the future, however, we shall have to address these structural problems with Brexit, as it were, tying one hand behind our back. That makes the need for a plan more urgent, not less.

The Labour Governments of 1997 to 2010 had many proud achievements to their credit and I am overjoyed that, at long last, my party is prepared to acknowledge them. Huge fiscal transfers were made to the regions, improving public services and raising children and pensioners out of poverty, but this did not prove a lasting change. After 2010, it was put into reverse by an austerity that bore more harshly on the poorest parts of the country. The fact is that the £20 cut in universal credit takes more spending power out of the regions than the levelling-up agenda is putting in.

Labour could have done better, however. We revived the northern cities through the regional development agencies—excellent—but there was weakness in the towns. It is not easy to put this right. The revival of a dynamic private sector when the heart of its local economy has been ripped out is a huge challenge. It requires powerful incentives for business relocation from the overcrowded south-east and possibly even stricter planning controls, as well as sustained support for indigenous new enterprise. It also requires an active national industrial policy, which I was privileged to help my noble friend Lord Mandelson with in 2008. At its heart today should be a green new deal that prioritises the transformation of our old industrial towns into exemplars of zero-carbon living, with the state offering the incentives and regulating the market, but the private sector doing the work and creating the skilled jobs.

But where now is the Government’s plan? We have lots of funds: the high streets fund, the towns fund, the levelling-up fund, the shared prosperity fund, the environment fund and even a bus improvement fund—the list goes on—for all of which local authorities have to make bids to Whitehall departments. It is London-based civil servants who recommend what should happen. Ministers consult their MPs—especially red wall Conservative MPs—about which splashes of new paint are likely to buy them the most votes. This puts the regions in the position of Oliver Twist, standing in the workhouse queue begging for whatever doles our London masters are prepared to spare us.

This top-down but fragmented approach is not a coherent regional policy. We need a coherent plan that, place by place, builds on existing economic strengths. We need a fresh start and I hope that Michael Gove, a man who prides himself on his radical thinking and intellectual strengths, will give us this. Key to that is, first, stronger local government structures, based on credible unitary authorities with elected mayors to offer accountable metropolitan and sub-regional leadership.

The second thing is a fair funding settlement for local authorities, based on transparent, independent assessment of needs, not the good fortune of a strong revenue base. The third is that local government and mayors must be trusted to draw up their own rolling plans for economic development and put in a single capital bid to central government to determine priorities.

Finally, we now have a unique opportunity to build a national consensus on levelling up—Boris Johnson has given us that. But high aspiration and lofty rhetoric are not good enough: we need a plan, and we need it now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I first congratulate my noble friend Lord Stansgate on his maiden speech, which has been described as “outstanding” and “assured”. I also thought that what he had to say about the importance of science was very real. Some critical decisions for the Government are coming up in the spending round in October, and I very much hope that the enthusiasm that Dominic Cummings, to be fair to him, had for the science budget will continue to be reflected in the Government’s policy.

Secondly, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for his reply. We in the Lords often say, “Oh, it’s been an excellent debate”, but, actually, this has been an excellent debate. I thought that he tried to respond to it, in his own rumbustious style, and I am very grateful to him for that—

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

That is a compliment.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

It is; “rumbustious” is a real compliment. I thought that he tried to answer the points and displayed a certain sympathy with many of them.

For me, the key things that came out of this debate were, first, what my noble friend Lord Adonis said about HS2, which is one of the key decisions that will affect this country for decades to come. Who wants to add to the north/south divide in this country an east/west divide? That is a fundamental point.

Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Young, and others talked about the need to reset central-local relations and think about local sources of revenue. We need to see that kind of thinking opened up again. For the department and Michael Gove, who leads it, these issues will come to the fore in the next few weeks. I hope that he reads what we have had to say in this debate in Hansard. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Northamptonshire (Structural Changes) (Supplementary Provision and Amendment) Order 2021

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Thursday 4th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, with his charming recollections of Northamptonshire and his evident commitment to the area that he represented for 24 years in Parliament and has continued to care about since he joined this House. That was a most impressive speech.

My interest in this subject, which I declare, is as a member of Cumbria County Council. I shall not comment on specific Northamptonshire issues, but I would like to engage the Government, if they are willing, in a debate about the general principles of their approach to local government reorganisation.

This May it will be half a century since I was first elected as a local councillor, in the then Oxford County Borough, which became Oxford District Council. For four years I was a member of Lambeth Council in the 1980s, where I led the SDP opposition to Ted Knight—someone who was as far away from the founding principles of the Labour Party as could possibly be imagined. For the last eight years I have been a Labour councillor in Cumbria.

My earliest political experience was living through local government reorganisation, when the county borough in Oxford became a district. Now I am living through it again, because on 22 February the Government formally announced that they were consulting on proposals to reorganise local government in Cumbria. I know that the Minister will not be able to comment on that in detail, but I would like to make some general points, which I hope he may be able to respond to in a letter.

I am a strong supporter of the unitary model. As I said, I was first elected to a county borough, but the problem with a county borough is that it did not reach beyond its hinterland. I believe that unitaries are the best model. The public do not understand two-tier local government: they talk about “the council” and do not know which council they are talking to. Two tiers also create artificial barriers to efficiency. It is nonsense to have local planning and housing issues decided at one level and highways and traffic at another. It is nonsense to separate housing from social services, where a lot of the preventive efforts relate to the housing service.

In the Covid emergency we have seen a split between public health, which is a county responsibility, and environmental health, which is a district responsibility. None of that makes sense and it involves a lot of duplication. In Cumbria we have far too many councillors —possibly including me. We have 350 of them. When we know—as we do from the Budget yesterday—that there will be no cornucopia of provision for local government in the next few years, it is important to make efficiency savings where we can.

People on the other side of the argument say that big unitary authorities mean a lack of democratic accountability. The answer to that, in my view, is to strengthen town and parish councils at the very local level. In the town I represent, Wigton, there is a very active town council and I would like to see its role extended. That would give very local accountability for very local decisions.

Moving to unitary authorities has my general support. The Government have so far adopted a mixed approach. In some places, such as Cornwall and Buckinghamshire, they have created a single unitary for the county. Why did they not adopt that approach in Northamptonshire? This clearly cannot be simply a question of geography and population size, because Cornwall and Buckinghamshire are very big areas.

There is also an issue about whether government policy and plans for local government reorganisation allow county boundaries to be crossed. Has that happened so far? In Cumbria there is now a proposal to create a Morecambe Bay authority—but the only snag with that is that it would deprive Lancashire County Council of its county town. What is the Government’s view in principle of proposals that cross county boundaries? For instance, in the case of Northampton, was the idea of creating an urban-based authority consisting of Northampton, Bedford and Milton Keynes ever considered? That would be logical if we were prepared to cross old county boundaries. What is the Government’s attitude to that?

In Northamptonshire the reorganisation has clearly involved breaking up services that were provided on a county basis. We know that that has been avoided for the lord lieutenancy and the pension scheme, but what has been the experience with children’s services? Has the trust model worked? Do the Government think that a children’s services trust can be held accountable when things go wrong? What are the lessons that they have drawn?

What reorganisation should definitely not be based on is political pressure from Members of Parliament who basically just want to hang on to existing structures. A lot of that is because they see district councillors as their grass-roots organisation. I do not think that should be regarded as a principle to prevent sensible reorganisation.

What criteria will the Government use in looking at all these different proposals for reorganisation? In Cumbria we have four proposals—one for a single unitary, which I support, and three different versions with two unitaries. That is a confusing situation and some order must be given to its consideration.

These are difficult questions and I am not expecting a clear answer from the Minister. I apologise for taking up the time of the House on these issues, but the Government have been rather slow and rather reluctant to show a bit of leg—if I might put it that way—in the reasoning behind local government reorganisation, which in principle I support. I believe in local government, as I know the Minister does. I have a passion for it, and I want to see a reorganisation carried out on a sensible basis, which can last for generations.

West Yorkshire Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Functions) Order 2021

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greenhalgh, for his clear explanation of the powers that the authority will have and what it can do. I also declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council. I am a member of that council because I believe in local government, and it is a key part of the levelling-up agenda to have stronger, more effective local government in the north of England.

I should like to put three points to the Minister. First, as my noble friend Lord Blunkett, the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and others have pointed out, there are inconsistencies and deficiencies in the way in which this devolution process has been handled. We need a White Paper, more consistency and to strengthen not weaken devolution. When are those proposals going to come?

Secondly, until now, the focus has been on strengthening the voice of the big metropolitan areas in the north of England but there are, of course, more rural and scattered hinterlands. The Government are considering local government reorganisation proposals for the hinterland in the north-west of my native Cumbria, in the hinterland of West Yorkshire and in North Yorkshire. I strongly support the creation of single strategic authorities in those areas. The district councils are iffy about this, but we can deal with their concerns through effective devolution within a strategic authority to towns and groups of parishes. That would be a better answer.

Thirdly, a stronger voice for Yorkshire is desperately needed as the Government contemplate the decision to put the eastern leg of HS2 on the back burner, which would be catastrophic for the north. It would create gross inequality between the north-west and Yorkshire and Humber and the north-east that would get worse and worse as the decades went on. It cannot be allowed to happen. I know that this is not the Minister’s direct responsibility but that of the Department for Transport, but the Local Government Minister must give attention to this desperately important issue.

Provisional Local Government Finance Settlement

Lord Liddle Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for mentioning the Oxford-Cambridge arc. Unlike the Prime Minister, I err more towards the Cambridge end of it. My noble friend is absolutely right to draw our attention to the importance of getting the infrastructure right to unlock growth and the prosperity of this country. That is why, as part of planning for the future—we discussed this at length in connection with the Planning for the Future White Paper—we are looking at an infrastructure levy, which would be much more transparent and streamlined, as a way of raising the funds that local areas need to ensure that they have the infrastructure to unlock their potential.

[Lord Liddle (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of Cumbria County Council, and I seek the Minister’s advice, because we have a meeting on Monday morning about whether to proceed with the 3% supplement on council tax to fund social care. Does he agree that, in total, a 5% increase in council tax is a very considerable real-terms increase at a time of great economic stress? Secondly, does he agree that council tax is an unfair tax, because it does not make the broadest backs bear the heaviest burden, which should be a fundamental principle of taxation? Thirdly, does he agree that, given the desperate position of social care, made worse by the Covid crisis, local authorities have little real choice in whether to implement the 3%? Finally, will he make a commitment that this will be the last year when this grossly unfair mechanism for funding social care will be applied, and that in 2021 the Government will produce their long-promised plan for putting the funding of social care on a long-term sustainable basis?

[Lord Greenhalgh (Con)]

My Lords, I have never heard so many questions poured in with such economy, but I refuse to give advice to any council, or any councillor, on how they should tax their local communities. I could point to my own record as the leader of Hammersmith and Fulham Council. For six years we cut council tax by 3%, and for one year we froze it. That was because I believed that our council tax level was too high. I did not understand why neighbouring boroughs such as Wandsworth and the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea had substantially lower council tax than Hammersmith and Fulham. I chose the route of being able to tax less and provide better services, through more efficiency and driving greater productivity. So I would say that it is down to local leaders to decide how they set their council tax. My advice would be: what do you think is in the interests of your people? I agree that council tax is a regressive tax—but it is particularly ridiculous to see how some councils have to raise their funds largely through council tax increases, because they receive so little grant as a proportion of their combined budget. I shall give more examples of that later.