Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Scott of Bybrook Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

My Lords, this group of amendments is related to the levelling-up fund, which directly supports the mission set out in the White Paper through investment in the infrastructure that improves the everyday lives of local residents across the country, focusing on regenerating town centres and high streets, upgrading local transport and investing in culture and heritage assets. The second round of the levelling-up fund announced by the Government will invest £2.1 billion in 111 local infrastructure projects across the UK, helping to create jobs and spread opportunity right across the country, from the higher education skills campus in Blackpool to the ferry infrastructure in Shetland.

Amendment 50 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, would require government to explain how allocations from the levelling-up fund support the levelling-up missions. I will not speak about Amendment 56 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, as he is not here; we will wait for that to come later. Amendment 57 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Valentine and Lady Hayman of Ullock, and the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, would require government to follow set distribution criteria when allocating levelling-up funding and publish a statement explaining how funding allocations meet these criteria.

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[Baroness Valentine (CB)]

Can I clarify my involvement with the various areas I have been talking about? I work some of the time with Business in the Community to persuade businesses to get involved in levelling up in all sorts of places across the country, including Blackpool, Bradford, Rochdale, Sheffield and many other places.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that and for the work she is doing in encouraging the private sector to get involved.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

We have had a bit of a discussion about priority areas 1, 2 and 3. I would be grateful if the Minister could write and let us know what criteria the Government use to categorise areas and how, between the first and second round, some moved into category 1. I do not know whether any moved down. It would be useful to have that information.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will be very happy to provide that information.

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I thank noble Lords for the debate on the levelling-up fund. It is a key issue to discuss as we go into the Bill because, clearly, none of the levelling-up project will happen without proper funding, and most of us in local government certainly feel that the levelling-up fund has not been the way to do it.

I want to start with the issue of categories 1, 2 and 3. Those categories deterred some authorities from applying because people felt that, if they were in a higher-banded category, they would not have any chance of getting any funding. It was very disappointing when they did not bid because they thought they were not going to get any and then found that others in the same category, and some in higher categories, were allocated funding. So I support the request from the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, for some explanation of how that banding works.

My second point is about how the Treasury is feeling about round 3. I am not clear on what the Treasury has done in terms of the levelling-up fund: whether it has stopped round 3 for the time being, whether it has delayed it or what it is doing with it. It would be interesting to know how that is going to happen going forward.

The Minister mentioned match funding, and I am sure that she is as aware as I am that the various places that it used to come from are scarce and in very short supply these days. So match funding can also deter people from bidding for things. I know that it is not compulsory to have it, but, if you think you will not achieve your bid without it, it may deter people from bidding in the first place. It seems almost certain that the areas that need match funding the most are the least likely to have access to it, so it goes against the principles of levelling up.

I was pleased to hear the Minister talk about the recognition of the need to address the complexities in the funding landscape, which is vital. Moving forward, as the delivery of the missions gets more complex, we absolutely need to be clear about a straightforward mechanism for funding.

I was pleased to hear the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, which was helpful. I am grateful for the work that Business in the Community does across the country in helping to move the levelling-up agenda forward. I was impressed and pleased that she mentioned the issue around capital funding and having revenue funding to support it. Too often, funding pots are allocated and things are built and delivered—because that is what ticks the box for the department concerned—but the ongoing revenue for that project is not considered and ends up being a local burden that can, in some instances, result in the original project never being delivered properly, because there is not the revenue to deliver it. So I hope that future funding pots will take that into consideration.

I was shocked about the Blackpool project being funded but then going into a period in which it is not. You cannot stand these projects up and down at very short notice: they take a lot of planning, and the disappointment for young people engaged in something when the tap is turned off and that project stops is almost worse than doing nothing at all, because it adds to their feelings of having things taken away from them.

On the short timescales and short delivery times, if levelling up is going to work properly, it must work with a great spirit of co-operation and collaboration between those tasked with delivering it—there may be more than one public agency doing that. Having these very short bidding times and delivery times in some instances is not at all helpful, and I hope that that can be taken into consideration.

We heard information about the town deals and the towns fund. I have been quite close to one of them, and, although there is an equal lack of transparency in allocation, there was very serious scrutiny of what the outcomes would be before the bidding and allocation. That is something that we should look to for the future.

I was pleased to hear the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, about the serious lack of credibility in the scheme. I talk to my colleagues in local government all the time, and there is no doubt in my mind that there has been a great loss of credibility in the scheme. The Minister referred to a feedback process; it may be that that has got going fairly recently, because the second-round funding has only recently been announced. But those who were involved at the time certainly felt that they had not had an adequate opportunity to receive any feedback. Of course, they want to learn because, if there will be multiple rounds of this, people want to know what they did wrong and, equally, the ones who got it right want to know what they did right.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, referred to the reason we have been pressing so hard on these definitions of geography, missions and metrics, and how they will be used: because of how they will be used to determine funding. Even if funding for levelling up were to be considered for a completely different model—such as one much more like the sort of model I would like to see, which is local government being given the funding and being allowed to get on with it—surely we must have a method which determines how funding follows need, rather than just whoever puts in the shiniest bid at the time.