Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, levelling up is at the heart of the Government’s agenda to boost economic growth and build back better after the pandemic. It was at the centre of the manifesto on which the Government promised to deliver for the people of the United Kingdom. The levelling-up White Paper was published in February 2022. The United Kingdom is one of the greatest countries in the world but not everyone shares its success. As the levelling-up White Paper set out, we know that where people live unfairly affects their chances of getting on in life. Only through improving social and economic opportunities across the country can we rebalance the economy and achieve maximum growth. Safer streets, pride in place and more empowered communities can help drive local growth, investment and a more innovative economy. The Government are committed to reversing this unfairness and levelling up the UK by boosting growth and spreading opportunity more equally across the country.

The levelling-up White Paper set 12 levelling-up missions to anchor ambition and provide clarity over the objectives of public policy for the next decade. Delivering on these missions will improve people’s lives by improving living standards, spreading opportunities, enhancing local economic growth, restoring local pride, spreading opportunity and empowering local leaders across this country. Missions will also serve as an anchor for the expectations and plans of the private sector and civil society. This stability and consistency of policy aims to unleash innovation, investment and collaboration with the private sector and civil society.

Many of the powers in the Bill are enabling measures to help level up and deliver the missions in a way which reflects the characteristics of different areas. Missions are intended to anchor government policy and the decision-making necessary to level up the United Kingdom. However, missions should not be set in stone. As the economy adapts, so too will the missions to reflect the changing environment and lessons learned from past interventions. The Bill sets out that any changes to missions should be fully and transparently explained and justified when they occur.

We begin our first debate in Committee with Amendment 1, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I thank her for making it clear, as I would have made it clear, that this is a complex Bill. Everything she said about levelling up is correct: it will mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and it is about people and places.

I begin by assuring noble Lords that by setting out the missions to level up the United Kingdom the Government are identifying their priorities for reducing significant geographical disparities within the United Kingdom. As I have said, the White Paper explicitly sets out parameters for the agenda through the six capitals, four pillars and 12 missions. There is no denying that levelling up encompasses a broad and ambitious set of objectives. The Government’s focus now is on making levelling up a reality for people and places across the United Kingdom through funding, place-based policy and devolution to local leaders. We recognise that there is much more to do, but we are making progress.

The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, asked whether it is about bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. It is; when you talk about education, skills, good jobs and the provision of those things, that is about addressing the gap. If children live in homes where their carers or parents have good jobs, they will not be as poor as children who live in homes with no jobs. It is about addressing all those gaps.

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Again, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foster, for this debate. It is extremely important, and I hope the Minister has some positive things to say to us.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments addresses issues impacting rural and coastal communities across the United Kingdom. Amendment 3, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, considers the reduction of disparities between predominantly urban and predominantly rural areas. Amendment 5, tabled by my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, puts forward a new mission to a similar effect, reducing the disparities between rural and urban areas in the provision of public services.

The framework set out in this Bill provides ample opportunity to scrutinise the substance of missions against a range of government policies, including levelling up in rural areas and improving people’s access to green and blue spaces. I can reassure noble Lords that the Government are committed to spreading the benefits of levelling up to rural communities and that spending by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs helps to support the levelling-up agenda.

The Government are already committed to delivering an annual report on rural-proofing, led by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and examining how government policy considers rural issues. I hope this reassures noble Lords that such work is going on by this Government. I will say more about rural-proofing in a minute.

I agree with the sentiments of Amendments 11 and 12, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster. More granular spatial data is crucial to ensure that policy fully recognises the different characteristics, opportunities and challenges of different places, including between large cities, small towns, and rural and coastal areas. Many people have talked about data. It is important to have the data, both historically and moving forward, in order for us to make the metrics correct for what we are trying to deliver.

I will give a little more information, which is a bit technical—well, it seems technical to me; it may not to noble Lords—on what is happening within government to better identify these geographical disparities. To tackle these data gaps and harness the potential of new data visualisation and experimentation techniques in support of levelling up, the UK Government are putting in place a transformative data analysis strategy at subnational level. The strategy has four elements: first, producing and disseminating more timely, granular and harmonised subnational statistics through the Government Statistical Service’s subnational data strategy; secondly, making granular data publicly available through a number of tools, including a new ONS interactive subnational data explorer; thirdly, harnessing data visualisation techniques and building capacity within the ONS to help decision-makers better understand and compare outcomes; and, lastly, increasing incentives to evaluate, monitor and experiment in levelling-up policies and programmes. From that, I think noble Lords can see that we agree that data is important in delivering what we want to deliver in this levelling-up legislation.

To complement the strategy I have just explained, we are establishing a new spatial data unit to drive forward the data transformation required in central government. The spatial data unit will support the delivery of levelling up by transforming the way the UK Government gather, store and manipulate subnational data so that it underpins transparent and open policy-making and delivery decisions. This will include improving how we collate and report on the UK Government’s spend and outcomes, including building strong capabilities on data visualisation and insights. To me, it is really important that, first, we always know what is being delivered and what we want to deliver and that we have all the metrics to do that.

The spatial data unit will also consider the differences between geographical areas, such as regions, counties, councils, and even down to council wards, according to the needs and objectives of specific missions or policy areas. This will be extremely important, particularly when we are talking about small rural areas.

There was a lot of discussion about transport, an area in which it is important to have the data before decisions are made. As a council leader, I had to make some very difficult decisions about bus services. Some of them were never used, so why keep them? You need the data in order to make sound decisions.

The LURB introduces a series of powers to enable the introduction of the infrastructure levy, which will be able to account for the needs of those living in rural as well as urban areas, helping to support the provision of infrastructure that the areas need most. The Bill also requires local authorities to prepare infrastructure delivery strategies. These will set out a strategy for delivering local infrastructure through the spending of levy proceeds. They will create a more transparent process, so that local people know how the funds will be spent and what infrastructure will be delivered to support development. The Government have also just announced £3 billion for local bus and cycle links, because we understand that local transport is important to people. We will work with local leaders to ensure that they can use their powers to improve the services in their area, set the fares and make transport far more accessible for their local communities.

Amendment 33, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, would require that annual reporting on the levelling-up missions include an assessment of how each mission has met the principles of the rural-proofing policy. Amendment 36, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, states that reporting on missions must include the Minister’s assessment in relation to rural areas. Amendment 53, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, asks for a report assessing whether new legislation should be produced to establish new metrics for rural and coastal communities. Finally, Amendment 488, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, suggests the publication of the assessment of infrastructure levels in coastal and rural communities.

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[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests as a serving councillor on Stevenage Borough Council and Hertfordshire County Council, and as a vice-president of the District Councils’ Network.

At Second Reading, I said that to some extent the Bill fails to meet the aspirations of the White Paper, but even the White Paper has significant omissions in that some of the key challenges which impact on opportunity and aspiration in this country are missing. This cannot be a levelling-up Bill without them, and this group of amendments seeks to address that.

In his contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said that the missions were not in the Conservative manifesto, so we cannot absolve the Government from parliamentary scrutiny of those missions. However, neither can that proscribe Parliament from consideration of missions that were not there at all, or prevent those missions being added.

I thank my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett for her fantastic speech and amendment on child poverty, along with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, and I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester for delivering another powerful speech on that issue. I also thank the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Stroud, for supporting the amendment.

My noble friend Lady Lister referred to an issue raised at Second Reading—that it was the Government’s stated intent that the Bill address child poverty, and yet it is not explicit in the missions. The powerful intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, addressed, among other things, the contribution that social housing can make to tackling poverty. I completely agree, having grown up in a council house myself and seen how good-quality social housing benefited the people around me. That is very powerful. There is also no excuse for not including child poverty in the missions.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Gloucester spoke about the difficulties in education when you are facing poverty. When I was growing up, providing things as straightforward as school uniform, ingredients for cooking lessons and sports equipment were all great worries for children growing up in poverty.

The statistics are startling, and my noble friend Lady Lister quoted some of them. Some 27% of children—that is, eight in every classroom of 30—live in poverty, and of course the figure is far worse in some areas. In part of the county council division I represent in Hertfordshire—one of the wealthier areas of the UK, let us remember—one in three children lives in poverty. I have seen at first hand the impact on those children’s life opportunities in terms of educational attainment, health, mental health, economic capacity and every aspect of well-being: cultural, physical, social and academic. To imagine that levelling up can happen at all without a real focus on child poverty dooms the whole endeavour to failure.

For those of us who witnessed the huge impact of Sure Start and the comprehensive strategy of investment in children between 1998 and 2010, as a result of which, the number of children living in poverty fell by 600,000, it was dreadfully disappointing to see that project abandoned and the figures start to rise again. This situation has been exacerbated by the further inequalities that Covid inflicted on deprived communities. The Bill has the potential to start the serious work of tackling child poverty again. Let us not miss the opportunity, simply by not including child poverty as a serious and specific mission. My noble friend Lady Lister rightly asked why it was not in the White Paper or the Bill, and the noble Lord, Lord Young, proposed a solution. There may be other ways of doing it, and I hope that the Minister has taken account of what she has heard in the Chamber this afternoon.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, for his advocacy for our disability community—I am sorry he could not be in his place this afternoon. As he says, this should be considered through every policy aspect of the Bill. Despite successive Acts of Parliament attempting to drive equalities forward in this respect, one has to spend only a very short period in the company of anyone with a disability to see just how far we still have to go. Access to transport, public buildings, education and the workplace, and the ability to participate in the political process, simply must get better if we are to see real levelling up. These are spatial issues, planning issues, and I hope we will see some progress as a result of the Bill.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayman for tabling the amendment on increasing cultural infrastructure across the UK. Unfortunately, due to the vicious cuts in local government funding in recent years, we have seen local cultural assets closed or mothballed across the country just at a time when creativity, innovation and celebration of local heritage could be creating jobs, developing skills, supporting mental well-being, giving educational opportunities and underpinning social cohesion and collaboration. In an excellent report from the Local Government Association, Cornerstones of Culture, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey, chair of the Commission on Culture and Local Government, sets out the incredible opportunities that supporting the development of cultural infrastructure can deliver in terms of levelling up. As a resident of Hertfordshire, which is rapidly becoming the Hollywood of Europe, with film, TV and creative studios driving our economy—there is always a commercial in my speeches—and creating huge opportunities for our county, in particular its young people, I can say that the benefits this cultural intervention could bring across the UK are clear to see.

We have amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, on meeting net zero, which are very welcome. There was a huge discussion on this on Second Reading, and it was notable just how many noble Lords said that without a specific mission to drive the target of reaching net zero across our nations and regions and across all policy areas, the Bill would be significantly deficient and miss a valuable opportunity. It is difficult to understand why amendments tabled the other place that attempted to strengthen the Bill in this respect were not adopted. As far as I am concerned, the situation is quite simple: either the Government mean what they say on net zero and climate change mitigation, in which case, make it the subject of a specific mission, or they do not. The consequences of the latter are enormous and unthinkable. It absolutely must be a target of devolution that every place in the UK fulfil its role in delivering net zero, and that progress be monitored.

The noble Lord, Lord Stunell, pointed out that achieving net zero is most challenging in the areas most in need of levelling up. The south-east is improving in this regard while the north-east is continuing to decline. At COP 27 the Prime Minister made a commitment to honouring promises on climate finance. That must apply equally across our nations and regions, as it does to external funding support. Yet, at the moment we do not even have a commitment to financing, for example, the decarbonisation of public housing. I urge the Minister to take seriously the strongly held concerns of noble Lords across this House about leaving out net zero as a specific mission of this levelling-up Bill. I will be particularly interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts on how green jobs, new biodiversity targets and environmental planning challenges each relate to the levelling-up agenda, and how the Bill can be improved by incorporating these.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, for her powerful speech on a healthy environment and for pointing out that access to green space is definitely an equalities and levelling-up issue. The link to health and mental health outcomes is clear from all the evidence the noble Baroness cited and that we see elsewhere. Can the Minister say why this cannot be dealt with in the planning frameworks? I was lucky enough to grow up in a new town, where green space such as parks was planned from the very start. It comes under increasing pressure as the cramming of urban areas is seen as a way of solving the housing crisis. That cannot be right, and we need to have a careful look at this from a planning point of view.

We have a group of amendments here that are intended to address serious omissions from the Bill and include missions that will make a significant and important contribution to the levelling-up agenda. I hope that the powerful words of the noble Lords who have contributed to this debate will receive a receptive hearing from both the Minister and the Secretary of State.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments includes those related to new missions and metrics. The missions contained in the levelling-up White Paper are the products of extensive analysis and engagement; this analysis is set out in the White Paper. As I have made clear already, the Bill is designed to establish the framework for missions, not the content of missions themselves. The framework provides ample opportunity to scrutinise the substance of those missions against a range of government policies.

I start by addressing Amendments 4 and 9, tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister of Burtersett and Lady Hayman of Ullock, which would require the levelling-up missions to include a mission on child poverty. Let me say that everybody in this Government accepts that child poverty is an issue that needs continually to be kept an eye on, managed and acted upon. However, the way we deal with it is perhaps the issue that we need to discuss. We believe that the best and most sustainable way of tackling child poverty is to ensure parents have opportunities to move and progress in the workplace. Setting targets can drive action that focuses primarily on moving the incomes of those just in poverty to above a somewhat arbitrary poverty line, while doing nothing to help those on the very lowest incomes or to improve children’s future prospects. We therefore have no plans to reintroduce an approach to tackling child poverty that focuses primarily on income-based targets. Ministers and officials engage extensively across government to ensure a co-ordinated approach to tackling poverty, and we will continue to do so in the future.

Moving into work is the best way to improve lives. In 2019-2020, children in workless households were over six times more likely to be in absolute poverty than those in households where all adults were in work. Since 2010, there are nearly 1 million fewer workless households; under the Conservatives, 1.7 million more children are living in a home where at least one person is working. However, that is not to be complacent. The issue for me—the noble Lord, Lord Best, brought it up—is good housing, good education, good skills and good jobs. All these things are covered by the missions, and they do not need to be one separate mission.

While I am talking about living standards, my noble friend Lord Young asked about the definition of living standards. The Bill seeks to raise the living standards of people in work and people who are able to work, or whom we can get into work:

“By 2030, pay, employment and productivity will have risen in every area of the UK,”


getting those who are not already in work into work. That is the definition in the White Paper.

The levelling-up White Paper highlights the challenges faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and how these vary between and within places. It takes a systematic approach, through the missions, to address a number of factors which we believe contribute to child poverty. The levelling-up mission on living standards commits to increasing pay and employment in every area of the UK, which would in turn help to reduce child poverty. We are also committed in the White Paper to investing an extra £200 million to expand the Supporting Families programme in England, which will help to improve the life outcomes and resilience of vulnerable children and their families. Additionally, over £300 million in funding for family hubs and Start for Life has been allocated to 55 high-deprivation local authorities, supporting a focus on perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationships, infant feeding and parenting support. These are very important at the beginning of a child’s life, as we heard again from the noble Lord, Lord Bird.

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[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I appreciate what the Minister is saying, and it is not part of my case that investing in green jobs has been a failure. My point was that investing in green jobs has been very successful, but it has been more successful in the more prosperous regions. Consequently, the disparity between the rich region and the poor region is widening. Clearly a major redirection of thinking is needed to ensure that the green investment and the green jobs are channelled in the right way. The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said that he did not want to see Cambridge levelled down. I do not want to see London levelled down. I want to see the north-east levelled up, up, up. The metrics will have to be adjusted to accommodate that.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

That is exactly what I said. We need to look at where these jobs are. An example of that is the £1 billion funding to support new investment in carbon capture, utilisation and storage in four industrial clusters or super-places across the UK. The net-zero strategy announced the first two clusters, one in the north-west and north Wales and the other in Teesside and Humberside. We are working to take that investment across the country and to places that need it.

This Government are committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions across the country to reach net zero by 2050. There is a statutory duty within the Climate Change Act 2008 on the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to set a carbon budget for successive periods of five years and to ensure that the net UK carbon account for the budgetary period does not exceed the carbon budget that has been set. Section 16 of the Climate Change Act 2008 also requires the Government to publish an annual statement of UK emissions, already in statute.

In addition to all this, the Treasury has mandated the consideration of climate and environmental impacts in spending decisions. Through its updated green book, policies must now be developed and assessed against how well they deliver on the Government’s long-term policy aims, such as net zero.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I apologise to the Minister for intervening again, but can I press her? Of course, that is all worth while, but will that analysis be on a regional basis or simply on a whole-country basis? We need to know, or the Minister needs to know, whether year by year that gap is widening or narrowing because of that extra green investment.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I spoke earlier about data and the processes and policies that we are putting in place for data capture and analysis. These are the things that will come out of that. I expect that to be one of the outcomes that we will see in the reviews of the missions.

I am very sorry that my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond was not here, but I know what he would say because he is a huge voice for disabled people in this country. I thank him for that and for his Amendment 14. If the House agrees, I will respond to it. The objective of improving the lives of disabled people has been considered throughout the levelling-up White Paper. People with disabilities are less likely to be employed, and face additional challenges in workplace progression. The White Paper highlights the in-work progression offered to support better employment opportunities. We need to continue this. The disability employment gap is widest for those who have no qualifications, hence why we will continue to work closely with local authorities to improve their special educational needs and disability services where they are underperforming.

The Government are delivering for disabled people. We have seen 1.3 million more disabled people in work than there were in 2017, delivering a government commitment five years early. We have supported the passage of two landmark pieces of legislation—the British Sign Language Act and the Down Syndrome Act. We have also delivered an additional £1 billion in 2022-23 for the education of children and young people with more complex needs.

Amendment 16 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, would require this Government and future Governments to include a mission to increase cultural infrastructure across the UK within mission statements. I agree with her that people’s lives are shaped by the social and physical fabric of their communities. The local mix of social and physical capital, from universities to good-quality green spaces and from libraries to local football clubs, gives areas their unique character and vibrancy and makes residents proud to live in that place. Recognising that in the levelling-up White Paper, the Government set a “pride in place” mission. The Government’s ambition is that, by 2030, people’s satisfaction in their town centre and engagement in local culture and community will have risen in every area in the United Kingdom, with the gap between top-performing and other areas closing. Increasing cultural infrastructure will be key to achieving this mission.

The Government have taken practical steps to support, protect and expand cultural infrastructure. The £1.5 billion cultural recovery fund rescue packages helped thousands of cultural organisations across a range of sectors to stay afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic, while the community renewal fund, the community ownership fund, the levelling-up fund and the UK prosperity fund have provided opportunities to enhance cultural arts, heritage and sporting infrastructure in places across the country. The mutual importance of cultural and place identity is recognised in the Government’s work with places, such as through the devolution deal and the pilot destination management organisation initiative in the north-east of England.

I hope that the extent of the Government’s action on these priorities, set out elsewhere in the policy, and the approach that has been set out—a clear, uncluttered and long-lasting framework for levelling-up missions—provides Peers with sufficient assurance not to press their amendments.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The Minister addressed climate mitigation but not climate adaptation and resilience. Can she write to me about the ways in which the Bill addresses those resilience and climate adaptation issues?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will read Hansard, then write to her and put a copy in the Library.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate has shown the importance of some of the gaps in the Government’s levelling-up mission. It also shows how social and environmental justice are intertwined in terms of child poverty, the environment and disability, as we have talked about. They gel together well as a set of amendments.

I am very grateful to noble Lords who spoke in support of Amendment 4. Some powerful speeches have enriched the case for adding a child poverty mission to the list of missions. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who looked for a way through without an extra mission but looking at how the current missions could be adapted. It was very disappointing that the Minister rather rejected that olive branch—that way out or way through—and has not even agreed to take it away and consider it as an option.

I thank the Minister for engaging with the issues raised, but, needless to say, I found her response very disappointing. I think she said that the Government accept that child poverty is an issue that we must keep an eye on, manage and act on—but where is the Government’s child poverty strategy? There is none. It is simply not good enough to say that it is all about getting parents into paid work, without even acknowledging the growth of in-work poverty and the number of children in families who have someone in paid work and yet are in real, serious poverty.

The Minister said that she did not want to have targets that would just take people above the poverty line. That is one of the reasons why the amendment talked about deep poverty, not simply getting those just below the line over it. It is a shame that the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, could not be here, because her Social Metrics Commission has done a lot to draw attention to the increasingly serious issue of the depths of poverty. We now have organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation talking about destitution. In our modern-day society, this is really not something to be complacent about.

The Minister said, “we are not complacent”, but she then went on to repeat all the wonderful things that the Government are doing, none of which is reducing child poverty—they may be managing it but are not reducing it. It is irrelevant to this amendment to say that we are doing this and that, because those things are not serving to reduce the level of child poverty. I am afraid that, for me, that smacks of complacency.

I do not want to keep people from their dinner. The Minister said that she hoped that we would be reassured by what we had heard and withdraw the amendment. I will of course withdraw, but do not take that as me being in any way reassured. I am not. We will have to consider whether we want to come back on Report with an amendment on child poverty. But, for now, I beg leave to withdraw.