Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Alex Norris Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to close this debate on behalf of the Opposition. When it comes to levelling up, we have had a few rounds of departmental questions, the White Paper, the Bill and, today, nearly six hours of very good debate. There is only one question left in front of us: when it comes to levelling up and the Government’s approach to levelling up, is this it? With our huge regional inequalities, is what is in the first third of this Bill really it? When it comes to the wasted potential of the nations and regions in our country, is this it? When it comes to the over-centralisation of this country, is this really it? The Minister for Housing seems to think that maybe it is, but I say gently to him: if this really was a comprehensive Bill aimed at tackling the regional inequalities that are holding us back, it would not have been necessary to bulk it out with a planning Bill as well. That is the reality: the first third of the Bill is levelling up, and two thirds are about planning. The reality, too, is that there are no answers in here either to the immediate cost of living challenges we face, or to the long-term structural questions that we as a country must address—more evidence that this Government are out of touch and out of ideas.

Hon. Members should not take my word for it: the Office for National Statistics report clearly shows that, far from levelling up, things are getting worse, and the excoriating report from the Public Accounts Committee shows that the approach so far has been a very poor one indeed. Is this really it?

This debate has been a good one. I know the Minister is a listener and will reflect on the contributions that have been made, but he will certainly have heard a lot that would improve the Bill. The Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), should have been drafted in to help to write it because his speech was about two fundamental things: first, more money, ending the beauty parades of small pots of funding, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) said, and properly funding our communities so they can build their futures; and secondly, new powers for existing Mayors and access to those powers for communities that do not currently have them. That was a really good starter for where we could go with the Bill.

Some reality was injected into the debate by my hon. Friends the Members for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), who talked movingly about just how hard things are for people right now and the struggle people are facing just to make the bills work, finding that there is too much week or too much month left at the end for their paycheques to cover. There is not enough in the Bill to address that. Again we see the promise of jam tomorrow, but there is no value in jam tomorrow when there is not bread today.

My hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) and for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) also injected some reality around cuts to local authorities. We talk about this on the Labour Benches a lot, but we used to see Government Back Benchers standing up to say how much they had been winning out of levelling up so far. The reality, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) said in her opening speech, is that even those winners, through the levelling up fund, the towns fund or the future high streets fund, are losers because of the cuts to their local authorities. She made those points very well.

My hon. Friends the Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) also made moving points about decent housing. I hope that we can feature that in Committee, because it is impossible for people to build a life and to build communities, to have that solid foundation to reach their potential and to help their family to reach theirs, if they are worried about their housing, or if their housing is of poor quality or a detriment to their health. We must aspire to much better for our fellow citizens.

Finally on the Labour Benches, I must refer to the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova), and the points she made about London. Hon. Members on the Government Benches also said this, but it is important to understand that across every community there are pockets of deprivation. Levelling up fails if it becomes a conversation of north versus south or the rest of the country versus London. That does not serve anybody, and my commitment to her is that she will never see us do that.

There were an awful lot of very good contributions from those on the Government Benches, particularly those that majored on planning—I counted 27, and I think I got them all—but there were also good contributions in interventions on the Secretary of State and the shadow Secretary of State. For the moment, I think there was contentment that, broadly, the Secretary of State largely seemed to think that he could accommodate all those significant and strongly felt views about local decision making. We want to see that too. I think it will get harder. I say to the Minister, and I know this is his instinct, that he will have to bring people with him on this. There is inevitably a trade-off at some point between reaching the volumes we need to address our housing crisis and having respect for communities and local decision making. Nobody thinks that is easy, and that ought to be dealt with. We will have plenty of time in Committee to do that. If we are not going to do levelling up, we might as well do that in its stead.

To make a few points of my own, four months ago, the Secretary of State presented the levelling up White Paper to this House. After all the big promises and slogans, before elections and after, it offered little other than the usual: governing by press release, with the reality never quite matching up. The one thing in there was that levelling up, which, as the Prime Minister has reiterated, was defined as the core mission of this Government, would have 12 missions. The hon. Member for Burnley (Antony Higginbotham) made an excellent case for them, although I would gently say to him that they also served to highlight the failings of this Government over the past 12 years on education, housing and crime— 12 admissions of failure to cover 12 years of wasted time in Government.

[Antony Higginbotham]

One of those missions relates to healthcare. It was the Labour Government before 2010 who closed Burnley’s A&E. It was the same Labour Government who forced our schools to have new PFI buildings, which has seen money taken away from educating children and instead paying for expensive contracts. So the hon. Gentleman might just want to think about whether a Labour Government have all the answers.

[Alex Norris]

I will always think carefully about the contributions the hon. Gentleman makes, but I am afraid that he will struggle to win an argument with Labour on NHS investment. [Interruption.] Conservative Members are all back then—nice to see you. I will take you all on if you want. [Interruption.] Even the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) —but I shall save him for Committee.

On the 12 new levelling-up missions, which are the centrepiece of the White Paper, and so important to the Government that they want to place a statutory duty on Ministers to report on their progress—what a big and bold claim that is—we now see that they come with a rather crucial addendum, which is that, if the Government decide that they do not like them any more, or perhaps think that they will not meet them, they can just do away with them altogether: when they fail, they can move the goalposts. Measured by actions, I am afraid that that is how important those missions actually are to the Government, who cannot even commit themselves to them. In that sense, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan said, they are not worth the paper they are written on.

We are told today that those missions are a core part of, and a key moment in, levelling up this country. I find that hard to believe, for the reasons that I have stated. But if they are going to be so impactful that they will create the change on which there is, I think, a universally held view across those on all Benches, why is there no impact assessment? Why is there no impact assessment on regions either? I hope that the Minister will give a commitment that before we enter Committee we will have the chance to see that so that we can debate the facts of the matter.

Levelling up was supposed to be about getting all parts of the country firing on all cylinders, but yet again we do not see that. Another key example: where is the community power in this? If the levelling-up portion of the Bill is really about saying to people, “We want you to have greater control over the state of your community and its future”, why does that stop at a sub-regional level? That is still a very long distance away from communities. We will certainly seek to add to that in Committee, and I hope Ministers will be in listening mode on it, because there is a great deal of expectation beyond this place that we are going to see more devolution to communities. We want to see powers and funds devolved from Whitehall to town hall, and beyond, so that communities are empowered to make these decisions for themselves.

One of the things in the levelling-up section of the Bill that we are pleased to see is further devolution of power and all communities having the chance to access those highest levels of power. However, I cannot quite understand why that comes with the caveat that they must accept the Government’s preferred model, which is a Mayor. The message from the Government seems to be that they are willing to devolve power but only on their own terms. That does not feel like proper devolution. The hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) and I frequently talk about devolution of power to Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. I agreed with much of what he said but, in our access to tier 3 powers, which we both want and is wanted universally across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, I do not see why we should have to take a Mayor as well. I do not see how those two propositions are linked, and I have not heard anything in the debate that has moved me further on that.

The Minister will also, whether in closing or in Committee, need to address the important points made by the hon. Members for Gloucester (Richard Graham) and for Sevenoaks (Laura Trott) about provisions in the Bill that allow powers currently held by district councils to be drawn up from them to combined authority level without their consent. That is a really challenging provision that will not hold for much longer.

As I say, this Bill is not enough, but it is what is now in front of us, and we will seek in Committee to make it better. We will also, I warn the Minister in advance, help the Government by adding back into the Bill some previous Government commitments that are missing from it. I hope greatly that they will want to take them on.

Let me turn to the planning side of the Bill. We welcome planning reform. We want to see the building of genuinely affordable housing. We want communities with good services and thriving town centres. We are glad to see the back of some of the worst excesses of previous policy. This is a much better version than what was publicly announced a year-plus ago. But the reforms could go further to change the system to provide greater support for planning authorities, and to deliver more say and power back to communities. Again, we will seek to do that in Committee. I hope that in his closing remarks, the Minister for Housing might do slightly better than the Secretary of State did on the infrastructure levy. It is an area of significant interest that has come up in a number of colleagues’ contributions, and when the Secretary of State was pressed on it, he was unable to say at what level he thought the levy would be set. That will not do. I understand that that is a complex calculation, but the Opposition ought at least to have heard an assurance that it would not be less than current section 106 moneys, because I do not think that anyone has argued for less money for infrastructure. This “We will tell you later” approach does not work. We do not want to have to get through the whole Bill process only to be told that the level will be set in regulation later.

[Mr Betts]

I want to raise with my hon. Friend an issue about local democracy and local plans, which the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) mentioned. A local plan must be consistent with national planning policies, and correctly so. However, if there is a conflict between a local plan and national development management policy, national policy holds sway and is given priority in any determination. How can it be that a local plan can be drawn up in full consultation with the local community, but if the Secretary of State later decides to change the national policy, it will override the consulted-upon local plan?

[Alex Norris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. There are 200 clauses in this Bill, so if there are 20 words in each, that is 4,000 words, give or take. On the planning side, however, only three words really matter: “to any extent”. They mean that the national plan overrides the local plan under any circumstances if that is what the Secretary of State wishes. I hope the Minister will say in summing up that he does not think that that is the right thing to do, that it is not the Government’s intention and that it will be changed in the Bill. I do not think that that can hold.

We will not seek to stand in the way of the Bill at this stage, but significant changes and additions will be necessary if it is to deliver the change that communities up and down the country are waiting for. After the long wait, it is no great surprise that the Bill is so symptomatic of the Government’s whole approach to levelling up—high on rhetoric, low on delivery. The Government just cannot seem to follow through and deliver properly on levelling up. Perhaps that is because deep down, they are not sure whether everyone on their side really believes in it. They are hamstrung by the Treasury—that is a matter of record—riven by division and drifting towards no defined point. But the Opposition feel this in our bones. It is why we are here, and we will fight tooth and nail to make sure that the Government do not waste this opportunity to deliver power back to the people and communities that we all represent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We come to the shadow Minister.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

A new study by the Centre for Business Research shows that by the end of next year, more than half the UK’s slowest-growing economies will be in the north of England. So much for the Government’s commitment to levelling up the country! If we want true levelling up, we need proper regional investment. Instead, we have a rolling series of beauty parades: the levelling-up fund, the towns fund, the high streets fund, the buses fund, the brownfield fund and all the others. Do Ministers really believe that levelling up is best served by making communities come cap in hand to Whitehall, where only some can win, and most must lose?

[Kemi Badenoch]

Competitive funding has its place, and we think that it has been an effective tool for protecting value for taxpayers’ money. The hon. Gentleman knows that, as I said in answer to his colleague the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders), that is not the only funding that we are providing. We have increased funding for local government by £3.7 billion.

[Alex Norris]

The hon. Lady knows that the story for local government over the past decade has been a devastating one. Even if an area is successful in the bids that I have talked about, it will still be worse off overall as a result of Government cuts. With this Government, the reality never matches the press release, and we see that once again with the shared prosperity fund: the Tory party promised, in its 2019 manifesto, that the amount in the fund would match the what used to be received, but now we can see that the fund is worth hundreds of millions less. So I ask the Minister what I asked the Secretary of State last month, when I received only a grammar lesson in response: levelling up is a sham, is it not?

[Kemi Badenoch]

I completely reject the hon. Member’s assertion. It is not true that the shared prosperity fund is less; it is more. The Opposition are looking at different sources of funding to arrive at their inaccurate figures. If he would like us to explain how it works, I would be very happy to provide him with a letter.

Local Enterprise Partnerships

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 16th March 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Rees. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) on securing this important debate and on the case she made, particularly for the value of LEPs. Many of her points about the role of LEPs in skills, business development and attracting inward investment were well made, but I particularly liked her point about their power in terms of convening. That is one value that has been harder to quantify, but it is absolutely important, and when the Minister closes, I hope he will talk about the need for greater certainty —I will make some points about that myself—because that is a clear message that is coming back to all of us. LEPs have shown the value of bringing business together and giving it the chance to help shape a place and the future of local economies. That has been a real success of the model.

I tried to keep pace with the hon. Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith). In the end, I wrote down “sheer volume” for the wonderful achievements in the Bucks LEP. I was struck by 55% of new starts being in the enterprise zones, which really shows the impact in that community. That relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) about getting things done, which is what our constituents want and what we all want for our communities. We talk about long-term projects, but we want to get things done, get the economy moving, get people in work and get them the right skills. Those points were well made.

The hon. Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) sold himself short. My LEP is Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire—D2N2—and the hon. Gentleman was a founder director. It is widely accepted across the patch that it has done a very good job. Those things were very difficult at that time; looking back, it seems a lot easier. He made some points about geography, which was a contested issue in our part of the world at the time, as was the structure. The transition from regional development agencies to the LEP model was quite painful. The hon. Gentleman is widely considered to have done a very good job. That shows that, as well as the value of business in these bodies, there is still, and always will be, an important place for local politicians in shaping a place, whether that is leaders of councils or economic development leads on councils. We should always want them to be part of the work, because the value is in the rich partnership between the public and private sector. There is real opportunity in that.

I do not want to go past the point about geography and overlaps and underlaps, because we are going to go through that now—on steroids—as we move now into the next phase of the levelling-up White Paper and the different plans around devolution. There was some interest when it was about local economic partnerships, but in reality we knew that most of our constituents would not particularly connect with the issue. But they are going to when it starts being about mayoralties and combined authorities, and we are really going to have those conversations, so some of that insight and experience will be very welcome.

Local economic partnerships have been an important forum. In my own community, D2N2 covers 2 million people with an output of £45 billion, and it aims to add another £9 billion. That is the scale of the ambition. The LEP has brought real expertise, and a co-ordinating role, as the hon. Member for Stroud said. That has been particularly clear during the pandemic, where it has pulled the partners together to assist people back into work, to steer local investment and to support businesses to grow. We have been very lucky to have it.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the predecessor bodies. For us, that was the East Midlands Development Agency. In general, regional development agencies were good bodies. I know that the hon. Member for Northampton South does not like the ROI stats, but the evidence for RDAs was very good in that regard, and I feel that the changes were a false economy—a cost-cutting measure. I am not advocating a return to that system, but the governance model we have today, with a partnership between local politicians and local business, plus the heft of the support that RDAs had, might be a better way forward. I would be interested to hear what the Minister foresees.

We face significant challenges in our economy. We have had anaemic growth for a decade. We can have a big argument about why that is, but it is still the reality. When we look at wage growth, I do not even think it would qualify even as anaemic. The Bank of England is predicting economic growth to be as low as 1% by 2024. Whatever our economic plans, LEPs have to be there to jump-start our economy. There are elements of the levelling-up White Paper that start to address the situation, in concept and rhetoric, and there is lots that we would all agree with, but we now need to hear from Ministers about more than the concept, and about how we are going to tackle the failed model of over-centralisation and genuinely shift power from the centre—from Whitehall to town hall, and then from those town halls to communities themselves. We know that that is what communities want and that when people are treated well and are given the opportunity, they do well. I fear that, in the long journey between now and 2030, if we go on another trip around the deal-making process and the piecemeal model of devolution, it will be very slow and will frustrate progress. I think we can go faster and I hope the Minister might reflect on that.

The White Paper says that the Government are

“encouraging the integration of LEPs and their business boards into MCAs, the GLA and County Deals”.

Many LEPs have welcomed that but, very much in the spirit of the comments of the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye in opening the debate, they want to know more about that transition. The White Paper said that further detail would be provided in writing to LEPs, Will the Minister say when that happened or will happen?

I will finish with a couple of quick questions. We are moving into an age of more individual, personalised government. I have to say, that is not to my taste. I think the superman model of leadership is a dated and failed one—and they are virtually always men. I like a Cabinet Government; I think more heads are better together. The value in the LEPs was that they brought together a rich mix of partners. They are very busy people with very important day jobs, and they are going to need to know that their work is valued. If they are downgraded to a business sounding board for a Mayor, then that will be a challenging process. Otherwise, if we are putting all accountability on an individual personage, where will LEPs fit in to that? I am keen to hear what the Minister has to say about that.

The White Paper announced three new innovation accelerators. Can the Minister provide some detail on how LEPs and local government are expected to interact with those? Will they have genuine power and a say in them? Similarly, how will LEPs engage with the new levelling-up directors and the Levelling Up Advisory Council, and how will they provide feedback? We have seen a general sense of enthusiasm for sub-regional business and political leadership on important matters of developing the economy. Saying that sounds almost facile, but that is what we are all saying. We are now moving into a new context through the levelling-up programme. There are many questions that need to be answered, so I hope that we might start to hear answers from the Minister today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

The reality is that the rhetoric is just not matching up to what the Government say they want it to deliver, but those analysts at Oxford Economics are not fooled. They say the levelling-up White Paper contains

little that is new or significant.

They say that there is nothing to cause them to revise their national and regional growth forecast, and they call its targets and missions either “pre-existing or “vague”. That is a damning indictment. What we needed was a plan to bring good jobs back to all communities to breathe life into our high streets and to transfer power from Whitehall to local communities. This White Paper is not going to address regional inequalities, is it?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman said that the rhetoric is not matching up to the delivery, which suggests, actually, that we are underselling what we are doing. I think what he meant to say, if he had written out his question more clearly, is that the delivery is not matching up to the rhetoric. I have to disagree with him on that, because a plethora of organisations from Onward to the Institute for Public Policy Research have pointed out that everything in the levelling-up White Paper is what Labour should have been doing when it was in power.

Draft European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 (Repeal of EU Restrictions in Devolution Legislation, etc.) Regulations 2022

Alex Norris Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq.

I am grateful for the Minister’s explanation. I do not intend either to divide or to detain the Committee today—[Interruption.] Well, I can do a longer version if colleagues want. I could not tell whether that was agreement or murmurings of massive disappointment; I shall err on the side of caution, because I would wish never to displease colleagues.

We talk a lot about what ought to be on the statute book, but it is right that as custodians of it we should seek to remove redundant powers. Clearly, these were seen as valuable safeguards at the time to ensure orderly transition, but the moment for that has certainly passed. Although we are debating their removal, it is worth reflecting that it is significantly undesirable to put a freeze on the devolution settlement. That was done in pursuit of what was a significant goal at the time, but any such action weakens the settlement, and at a time when we need to build and strengthen our Union, that does not help. As the Minister said, the powers were never needed; instead, we have seen that the operation of the different Parliaments with good faith, good relationships and shared goals is a better way to do it than via regulation. I hope to hear from the Minister that there are no plans for similar powers in other legislation, whether related to transition issues or anything else.

I will stop there because I am not sure that I enjoyed the debates on this matter the first time. I look around the room and see many Members who were not here for those; I envy them greatly. I do not think rehashing those points would serve much of a purpose because, as the Minister and I have said, the provisions have not been used, they will not now be needed and, in any event, they have not been usable since the end of January. On that basis, the Labour party is happy to repeal them.

Draft Representation of the People (Proxy Vote Applications) (Coronavirus) (Amendment) Regulations 2022

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 General Committees

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Huq. As with the 2021 iteration, we support these draft regulations, so I will keep my contribution brief and not divide the Committee. Before we start, I want to pass on the best wishes of Labour Members to the Minister for Levelling Up Communities, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), who we would normally expect to field this instrument. As she is going through something really awful, our thoughts and prayers are with her. I hope the Minister will pass that on to her.

Allowing for late urgent applications to vote by proxy when an individual is required to self-isolate or in response to other coronavirus-related medical advice, or if things change for a proxy who goes through the same thing, is an important part of maintaining our democracy during uncertain times. The reality is that we will be dealing with the pandemic for some time as we learn to live with it, but we might still need sensible adjustments to ensure that we can, and this instrument is one of those.

This morning a member of my staff tested positive for coronavirus for the first time in this pandemic. If this was polling day and these regulations were not in place, he would not be able to vote. That would not be right, so it is right that there is capacity to get a proxy up until quite late on polling day, as these provisions allow.

I want to be doubly reassured about a point that I think I heard in the Minister’s contribution. The wording has been updated to ensure that the regulations align with current medical guidance, which does not ask the clinically extremely vulnerable to self-isolate, but the assurance in the explanatory notes—and, I think, what the Minister said—was that those individuals will still have access to a proxy in the way that they did, provided that that is in line with what their medical practitioner advises. I think that is what the Minister said, but I am keen to have clarification.

To build on the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham, I say to the Minister and his colleagues that this is how legislation relating to elections ought to be: working to ensure the maximum legitimate participation. This is a practical instrument in the pursuit of tackling a real-world problem. It is incongruous with the Government’s Elections Bill, which creates new hurdles to participation in pursuit of tackling a problem for which evidence is flimsy at best, but that might be a matter for another day.

It is right that this instrument is carried over, but can the Minister give us clarity on why this covid-related one has been extended and others have not—for example, the instrument allowing councils to choose how they meet, including, perhaps, virtually? The hon. Member for Mansfield is a member of Nottinghamshire County Council, my neighbouring authority. Indeed, he is the leader. I have counselled him against it, but he never listens to me. He will correct me if I am wrong, but Nottinghamshire is probably one of the longest north-to-south counties, if not the longest; it is very long. There is a great distance between County Hall in the south and Bassetlaw in the north, so there could be an argument—this would be for the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues, not me, to say—that it would be better for certain committees to meet virtually. I cannot understand why we in this place would want to take that option away from them. They had that chance during the pandemic, and it worked effectively. I am surprised that the Government have not at least given that another year in order to evaluate its use. I hope the Minister might talk about why these covid-related regulations have been extended and others have not. I will stop there.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Norris Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend, like me, abjures the whole idea of pork barrels. What we both believe in is allocating funding on the basis of merit and need. I can assure him that he has been in the same Division Lobby as me more often, I believe—although I stand to be corrected by the Whips—than the deputy leader of the Labour party, the shadow Defence Secretary, the shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, the shadow Culture Secretary or the shadow Social Care Secretary, all of whom have benefited from levelling-up funds. If a requirement for Government funding were voting with the Government, I fear that the deputy leader of the Labour party, my dear friend, would have lost out. However, I am delighted that her constituents in Ashton-under-Lyne have benefited from our funding, because we are committed to levelling up and uniting the country, irrespective of political colour.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Analysis of levelling-up funding published recently by NPC—New Philanthropy Capital—found that, despite strong public support, homelessness is not being properly addressed. It found that communities with the highest concentrations of black, African and Caribbean communities fared poorly, and that four of the most deprived communities missed out entirely. Both the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) have sought to make a supposed joke of this, but I do not think it is laughing matter that while poorer communities have missed out, the constituencies of at least three Cabinet Ministers, which are considerably more affluent, were successful in their bids. Beyond the jokes and the spin, does the Secretary of State honestly expect the House to believe that the Government have acted equitably rather than defaulting to the usual approach of pursuing narrow self-interest?

[Michael Gove]

I cannot see how it would be in the narrow self-interest of the Government, if operating on partisan lines, to have given the hon. Gentleman’s constituency £18 million for transport improvements from the levelling-up fund. These are not jokes; these are serious matters. We work with people across this House, including and especially in the Labour party, to ensure that funding goes where it is required. Lying behind the allegations made by him and others is a suggestion that somehow civil servants would conspire with Ministers deliberately to favour constituencies on the basis of political colouration.

My new opposite number, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy)—I offer her my congratulations on her elevation—recently wrote to me to ask whether we would make transparent the basis on which we allocate that funding. We have: it is published on a website called gov.uk. Google can sometimes be helpful to all of us.

Levelling Up: East of England

Alex Norris Excerpts

Tuesday 18th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing the debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.

I will confess that I love fielding debates for the Opposition in this place. No other parliamentary moment offers the chance to hear the hon. Member for Waveney talk in such depth and with such thoughtfulness to make his case. I was glad to be here and learn plenty from it, as I am sure the Minister did, although I have my own reflections. It set the tone for what has been a brilliant debate. He said at the beginning that his purpose was to highlight the possibility of the east of England being ignored by the levelling-up White Paper and to seek to avoid that. I suspect he managed that with aplomb, with the support of colleagues across party. His case was very well made.

As the hon. Member said, it has been two and half years since the Prime Minister spoke of the need to level up Britain. Two and half years later we are still waiting to find out what that means. It appears we may not have to wait too much longer. I hope the Minister will give us a little sneak preview among friends, including a sense of the timing, though I suspect he might wish to keep his powder dry, as might I to an extent. I might disappoint the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) who wants a detailed response and an alternative, but the Government will have to show their hand first. After all, we have waited two and half years. The case made around regional and local authority disparities is important. As the conversations on levelling up evolve, that will become even more important.

I will reflect on contributions from colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the East of England, made an important point about the London effect. We need to have that understanding at a regional, sub-regional and local authority level about how data can be skewed. So that, in trying to ensure that communities are not left behind—not a great phrase but we know what it means—we do not create a new collection of left-behind areas.

I share a lot of the frustrations of my hon. Friends the Members for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) and for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) around how things have been done previously. It is sad, avoidable and reductive, and does not serve an agenda of trying to move the country forward together, that we seem to be constantly pitted against each other in bidding rounds, where some must be winners and others must be losers. The funding is one off, so maybe someone wins today and loses tomorrow, or vice versa. In reality, no community that has been funded through levelling-up programmes so far that is not worse off when losses to the local authority are taken into account. That test must be passed, and it must be a comprehensive settlement that everybody has a stake in.

I will reiterate a point made by colleagues of all persuasions. The Opposition do not accept the framing of levelling up as north versus south. That was a point made by the hon. Members for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker) and for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew). I represent one of the poorest communities in the country, based in the east midlands, and I hate the assumptions that come with that. That cuts both ways and I should not make assumptions about communities that might be better off according to their top lines. I should not assume that that is a place with streets paved with gold, with no social problems, challenges or pockets of deprivation. That is not what the evidence shows.

This is an all-regions approach, and the east of England is a study in that. Taken as a whole, looking at those top lines, the region is a net contributor, with an above average GDP growth rate over the past decade, which is forecast to continue, above average employment, below average unemployment and above average house prices. That would suggest that the east of England is fine and that levelling up should happen elsewhere. As we have heard, the reality is different. There is a different experience for those in the south of the region, which makes up the London commuter belt, while much of East Anglia would not. Even within those communities, there are pockets of deprivation.

We have heard that there are many areas that suffer high levels of deprivation. Those could be coastal communities, such as Lowestoft, referred to by the hon. Member for Waveney, Great Yarmouth just up the coast, and Clacton-on-Sea, as the hon. Member for Clacton (Giles Watling) mentioned, or they could be rural areas with associated challenges, such as Thetford, March and Wisbech, or parts of cities such as Peterborough and Norwich.

When the levelling-up White Paper is finally published, that nuanced understanding of regional variation will be one of the tests by which colleagues will judge it. However, the key point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South made in a couple of different contexts, is not just adopting the same approaches, because they will get the same outcomes. He made an important point about sustainability, saying that levelling up is not just about helping different communities to catch up on the same development model, because we know the impact that will have. That is profoundly true globally, and the question of how we support global development so that we do not just repeat the old models is a thorny question that we must address. However, it is true at home, too.

The East of England Local Government Association’s analysis of the autumn Budget was interesting, showing once again that 40% less—considerably less—was being made available for the east of England than for other areas. Of course, that was repeated in round one of the levelling-up fund bid, with just three of the seven of the region’s priority 1 projects having success. The EELGA is worried and says there is a clear risk that other deprived areas in the east of England will be left out and left behind, presumably on account of the wider region’s overall performance. Again, that creates a profound challenge, which applies across the region.

Transport is another key theme. I dare say that the Minister and I will participate in a lot of debates about different regions and different communities, which I very much look forward to, and transport will be a constant theme. It sometimes felt necessary to have an A to Z to follow things in this debate, but the sheer volume of A roads referred to was illustrative, telling us an awful lot about the natural geography and the infrastructure of the east of England, and about the challenges that come with that sort of road. The focus over the last year has been more on city region settlements, particularly around rail, but that focus alone clearly will not pass the overall test, because otherwise this becomes a long-running, self-perpetuating cycle.

The publication of the White Paper really ought to be the moment that that cycle is broken, because many rural and coastal communities—across the country, but particularly in the east of England—have faced significant challenges for a long time. As the hon. Member for Waveney said, over the past 40 years good jobs have left the region and not always been replaced, forcing young people to leave the area and seek opportunities elsewhere, taking their spending power away with them, which causes high streets to struggle, local institutions to decay and transport networks to close down. And so it goes, and so it goes. More of that decline just begets even more and more, until we break the cycle.

I will conclude there, because I know that colleagues will be keen that the long list of issues that have been put to the Minister are all comprehensively addressed, with a commitment today to addressing them. However, I will just say finally that in preparing for this debate, I thought that we were perhaps a couple of weeks—three or four weeks—too early, and timing is everything in politics, because we do not yet know what the Government will say on levelling up, I suspect that they may not quite know themselves yet what they will say. Actually, though, the timing for this debate was perfect, because the east of England offers an illustrative case of what has happened in the past, which we do not want to see repeated, and it is better for the Minister to hear that before the Government make their statement than it would be afterwards. I look forward to hearing his response to the debate.

[Esther McVey (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister to respond, and also mention that Peter Aldous needs a couple of minutes at the end to wind up the debate.

Arcadia and Debenhams: Business Support and Job Retention

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I commend his work in retail before; many others around the House have done such work. Yes, as well as offering them support through universal credit and other benefits, we will work with them through the Jobcentre Plus and its frontline workers to help them with CV writing, creating opportunities for and sharing opportunities with them, and ensuring that transferable skills have a massive role to play in that.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Up and down high streets in Nottingham, businesses big and small are really worried about their viability in the early parts of next year. They look at us talking about Debenhams and Arcadia today, and they think we will be back in January, February and March talking about them unless something changes. I ask the Minister the same question they are asking me: beyond reviews and promises of reform in the future, what support is coming now to keep our high streets viable?

[Paul Scully]

We are keeping our high streets viable by giving people business rates relief and giving businesses a moratorium to make sure they cannot be evicted and cannot be chased for rent debts, but, most importantly, by keeping retail open in all three tiers so that they can actually trade their way out of this. What they want is not handouts, ideally, although they do need the support; they want customers. They want customers for long- term support.

Covid-19: Housing Market

Alex Norris Excerpts

Wednesday 13th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op) [V]]

At the beginning of this crisis, the Secretary of State said “Everyone in”, and that he would fund councils to end homelessness. Since then, it has been suggested that that might not apply to those with no recourse to public funds. That is nonsense: the virus could not care less about someone’s migration status. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to clarify that when he said everybody he meant absolutely everybody, and that he will be providing funding to make sure this happens?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am extremely grateful for the work of local councils and charities in places such as Nottingham: they did an amazing job in bringing at least 90% of those individuals who were sleeping rough at the onset of the crisis into safer accommodation. In some parts of the country, the numbers of rough sleepers have now fallen to as low as one, two or three individuals. We believe that the success rate could even be as much as 98% so far, but the challenge is by no means complete and there is more work to do. We have said that the Government’s policy on no recourse to public funds has not changed, but councils do have flexibility, as they know, to support those individuals when there is a risk to life and serious concern. They should behave humanely and compassionately.