Inequalities of Region and Place

Baroness Blake of Leeds Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as laid out in the register. It gives me enormous pleasure to add my congratulations to my noble friend Lord Stansgate. I am thrilled that he is joining us in this House, I congratulate him on his excellent maiden speech, and note that his family has a long-standing history going back decades with the great city of Leeds, of which we are all very proud.

I add my sincere thanks to my noble friend Lord Liddle for initiating this very important and timely debate. I thank everyone for their well-informed and thoughtful contributions. I will not be able to do justice to all of them, but I reassure noble Lords that this agenda has been at the centre of my work as a local government leader for many years.

The backdrop to our discussions is the numerous reports, including from the IFS, that the UK, and in particular England, is the most geographically unequal country in the developed world. Our country is divided by several fault-lines. How can it be acceptable that the opportunities presented to young people depend almost entirely on where they grow up, and that the healthcare and jobs which they rely on throughout their lives are then determined by where they live? It is a colossal failure of government—and not one which can be resolved by a slogan. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that any of this is new. Report after report, especially over the past decade, has highlighted what this means: reduced life chances and opportunities and an increase in poverty—especially the scandal of in-work poverty— affecting families and many thousands of children and young people. It is estimated, for example, that almost a quarter of children living in Leeds are living in poverty and that, of those, 75% are living in a household where at least one adult works. I welcome the call from the right reverend Prelate for a child poverty reduction strategy.

Inequalities in health, as we have heard, have a disproportionate and devastating impact on women, with poor housing leading to the poor health outcomes so cruelly exposed by Covid. As we have heard, there is an enormous cost to the economy as well as huge personal cost. Take Blackpool, the archetypal seaside resort with an incredible history. In spite of its proud tradition and the ingenuity of local businesses, which drive the town to this day, around one in 10 of its people are unemployed and one in three children grow up in poverty. The fact is that the Government have failed Blackpool. They have done nothing to resolve or respond to these issues and through a decade of cuts have devastated the ability of local authorities to respond. The tragic consequence is that in Blackpool life expectancy is eight years less than the life expectancy of those born in the borough of Westminster, and the town has one of the highest rates of depression in England.

In part, this can be explained by the north-south divide across health conditions, incomes, political influence and the well-documented chasm of investment, whether investment in skills and education or much-needed and long-overdue investment in infrastructure. My noble friend Lord Stansgate highlighted the need for investment in research and development and my noble friend Lord Liddle emphasised the need for investment in FE. Given that northern cities have suffered spending cuts of 20% over the past decade, compared to 9% for cities in the east, south-east and south-west, excluding London, there is good reason to think that this Government’s policies have exacerbated this.

However, it is not always as simple as a straight north-south divide. In West Yorkshire, Bradford and Leeds are only eight miles apart, but as the Centre for Cities points out, there are enormous inequalities between the two. People in Leeds earn on average £561 a week, compared to £538 in Bradford. Double the proportion of people in Bradford have no qualifications in comparison to Leeds and when it comes to productivity, GDP per worker in Leeds is 13% higher than in Bradford. Regional inequalities, as we have heard, are complex and the root causes—lack of opportunities, public services and much more—are not exclusive to the north of England. West Wales is the poorest region in northern Europe. There are areas of intense deprivation across Cornwall and towns in Essex, such as Jaywick, have long been ignored by this Government. In short, the fault lines of regional inequality do not divide Britain evenly.

As my noble friend Lord Liddle points out in the title of this debate, what these communities all need is a strategy from this Government that is coherent, cost-effective and, above all, long-term. We need a whole-government approach, working across departments, locally driven, to look at the towns, villages and communities that need support. There can be no one-size-fits-all approach—that support must be tailored to address the obstacles and opportunities which each of these places face. It must also recognise that the people who know what these places need are the people who live and work in them. That means that the support given by this Government must be designed with those it is intended to help, led by strong local leadership, as identified by the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine.

It also means that support must be given, along with the devolution of powers and funding, to allow these towns, villages and cities to control their own future—and I mean real devolution, not the half-hearted, diluted model that we currently have. We need to see an end to the often obscene bidding rounds subjected on local areas for funding, as identified by my noble friend Lady Drake: we need devolution of funding as well as powers.

The truth, however, is that the so-called levelling up funding schemes do not come close to making up for a decade of government cuts. Investment in physical schemes is welcome, but we need investment in people and especially in preventive models to correct the current abject failure of social policy in this country. We need to look at the “invest to save” model and change the narrative from always talking about additional costs.

Over the past decade, councils have been cut by £15 billion. That is 773 libraries, 750 youth centres, 1,300 children’s centres and 700 council football pitches that have all been lost. In addition, as described so eloquently and passionately by my noble friend Lord Adonis, the Government have pushed back decisions, such as on the eastern leg of HS2. We are also extremely concerned about the rumours coming out about Northern Powerhouse Rail, particularly on the risk of Bradford not getting its deserved station. Throwing these decisions into the long grass can be just as damaging as a negative decision. The Government need to take account of the voices from across the north and the Midlands on the importance of these schemes.

Since 2017, schools in the most advantaged areas have had a funding increase, while those in the poorest communities have seen their funding fall further behind. With the Government’s decision to cut £20 a week from universal credit, more than 500,000 additional people, including 200,000 children, will be pushed into poverty. Surely one of the most damning pieces of evidence is that progress on increasing life expectancy for both men and women has now gone into reverse.

In summary, we have to ask: will we see action to address these matters in the long-awaited CSR? When will we have answers to what is meant by levelling up, and the White Paper to support it? I look forward to the Minister’s contribution following this to help us shed light on this crucial issue. I must say, I have a gift of a book for him—some essential reading from the author about the importance of the region of Yorkshire. I know that he will get enormous pleasure from looking into that in great detail.

This is an important agenda. Our towns, cities and villages need more than a slogan. They need real levelling up. Most importantly, I support my noble friend Lord Liddle’s call for a plan to support it.