Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I declare my position as a vice-president of the LGA and the NALC. My noble friend Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb focused on housing and planning-related issues in the Bill. I will look at its overall purpose.

We have had pretty well universal agreement around your Lordships’ House that we want levelling up. There are of course many things where we desperately need to see improvements in areas of the country generally regarded as left behind. Levels of public health is perhaps the most notable area. As the Explanatory Notes report, people living in the most deprived communities in England live up to 18 years less of their life in good general health than those in the least deprived. But the fact is that the level of public health is terrible everywhere in the country, reflecting our obesogenic food system, our long working hours, our commuting times and terrible public transport, our poor quality of housing, and our levels of stress and insecurity. There is no model community that we can aim up towards. We have to change it all.

We are talking about improvements and what would be better. I am sure no one would argue with more education or more educational opportunities, but the notes include discussion of ensuring that 90% of primary school pupils achieve the expected levels of reading, writing and maths. That means more teaching to the test—drilling and drilling and drilling to pass tests. That is not education.

Will we hear about a restoration of adult education—opportunities for people to get a second chance if the system failed them the first time, or just because they want to learn something new? That might be the chance to learn a language or make a pot, which might lead to a new career or small business, or just to a richer life. What about an explosion of forest schools for the youngest pupils, so they can benefit from the physical and mental gains to be had from time in nature?

There is a profound irony attached to the term levelling up. Levelling up is generally assumed to mean “becoming like London”. That is pretty strange when all the talk is of local place-making, local control, local culture and local environments, yet it appears that the basic aim is to be like London. This is not a good aim.

I will cite one piece of evidence, leaning on the work of Andrew Oswald, professor of economics and behavioural science at the University of Warwick. He points to Office for National Statistics figures on the level of reported happiness, recorded on a zero to 10 scale. In Hackney, the figure is 7.21; in Kensington, it is 7.17; and yet in the north-east as a whole, it is 7.37. In the city of Newcastle, it is 7.4; in the north-west, it is 7.43. Equivalent patterns are found for life satisfaction and cited worthwhileness of life across that regional divide. The difference between Newcastle and Kensington —the extent to which Newcastle is better—is 0.3 points. To put that in context, the average loss when people lose a job is 0.4 points. As the professor says, this is a challenge to conventional views of the levelling-up agenda. The goal as set out in the Bill is for the cities in the north and the Midlands to be as productive as London and the south-east, and we are told that UK GDP could be boosted by around £180 billion, but how much more miserable might those places be if they follow in the direction of Kensington and Chelsea?

It is traditional at Second Reading to refer to planned amendments, so I will now switch to gallop speed and cover some of those points. First, on the right to nature, I associate myself with the remarks from the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. My honourable friend Caroline Lucas is championing—as I did during the passage of the Environment Bill—a right to roam in England such as that enjoyed in Scotland. What a potential boost it could be to so many communities to have access to green space.

Secondly, there is the quality of the nature around us, in cities and rural areas. That is good in its own right but it is also crucial for human health. You can walk along the Sheffield and Tinsley Canal and then Regent’s Canal in London and compare the difference.

Thirdly, there is the issue of land contamination and Zane’s law. I have raised previously the issue of contamination from historic landfill sites. The Local Government Association Coastal Special Interest Group has just produced a report stressing how much of a problem this is.

Finally, I mention small business space. I spoke last week to Sue Langley, founder of the pioneering Blue Patch sustainable business directory, about the sheer waste of endless empty shops. Absentee landlords—which is where this Bill crosses with the Financial Services and Markets Bill—mean that empty shops sit there. They need to be opened up to small local businesses, co-operatives and local communities so that they can use that space—their space—to recover our town centres.