Playgrounds

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called to speak. I will call the first Front Bencher at about 5.10 pm.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I must now impose a four-minute limit. I call Leigh Ingham.

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[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (in the Chair)]

Order. I now need to put a three-minute time limit on Back-Bench speeches.

English Devolution

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Decisions taken in this place are subject to rigorous scrutiny and accountability, but recent history in several areas shows that that is not always the case with local decision making—not all councillors and mayors are paragons of virtue. As we dissolve more powers, can my hon. Friend explain what levels of scrutiny and accountability will be built into his plans?

[Jim McMahon]

It is a very important point, and we were mindful of that concern because devolution in England has been developed by deal, rather than with a clear framework from the outset, so there are natural gaps. I do not decry, by the way, the progress made previously in filling in the map of the midlands and the north of England, but we need to reconcile that now.

If we give more powers and resources downwards, we need to ensure that the checks and balances are robust. There is a lot that we need to do. There are recommendations in the White Paper on the principles of a local public accounts committee, for example, so that public spending can be brought into scope. We are also looking at oversight for the bodies that strategic authorities establish, such as trading companies or joint ventures, to see whether they should be in scope of best value. We are also looking at checks and balances for the officer structure and whether to bring in an accountable officer structure, as in a local authority, to ensure a clear difference between the political and operational leaderships and the powers that each has.

Miners and Mining Communities

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) and the hon. Member for Leigh (James Grundy), who is no longer in his place, for securing today’s debate. It is always a real pleasure to follow our miner, my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery).

Coalmining was a mainstay of the economy for almost a century. In South Shields, we had St Hilda’s, Whitburn, Harton and Westoe collieries. It is therefore no surprise that people in my constituency would be hard-pressed not to know or be related to a miner. Generations of families worked down our pits. Our former pitmen will testify that it was not a glamorous job; it was dirty, hard and dangerous graft, but those negatives were well worth it for the steady income, the camaraderie, the friendship and the community that they built around our pits. That way of life and the social bonds are the thing that all former pitmen and their families say they miss the most.

Thatcherism has many ugly legacies, but the miners’ strike of 1984 to 1985 was one of the most visceral, personal and defining moments of the 20th century. It was the moment of the strongest resistance against her industrial vandalism and the hollowing out of our mining communities. Not content with closing our docks and shipyards, the pits suddenly became uneconomical, she said. Those who tried to resist this blatant destruction of our communities were arrested and convicted. This weaponisation of the state against ordinary men and women fighting for their livelihoods during the strikes draws worrying parallels with today’s anti-strike legislation. It is why we need a public inquiry into Orgreave, and it is why this Government should introduce similar legislation to that introduced in the Scottish Parliament pardoning those convicted of matters relating to the strike. All they were trying to do was save their jobs.

I know all too well what unemployment—or the constant threat of it—can do both mentally and physically: it is utterly soul-destroying. There is one heartbreaking story that all of us in South Shields are sadly familiar with: that of a lovely family man and colliery engineer made redundant who, after dropping his children off at school, put a chain across the front door, wrote a goodbye letter to his family, climbed up the stairs, went into his bathroom, poured petrol over his clothes and, with a match, set himself alight. In 1993, his pit—Westoe pit—closed, signalling the end of not just coalmining in South Tyneside but a tradition and a way of life.

Our memories of the solidarity of the trade union movement and the rejection of the trickle-down economics that have proven such a driver of inequalities in our region have endured, because the challenges facing former coalfield communities are not consigned to the history books; they have deepened alongside regional inequalities. The economic gap between coalfield areas and the rest of the UK has been widening considerably over the last decade. Average earnings for workers in former coalfield areas are 7% below the national average. That is the legacy of de-industrialisation.

South Shields, as a post-industrial and coastal constituency, has faced and continues to face several challenges. Those are challenges that we have proven time and again that we will always overcome. In South Shields, we do not wait for Government help that never comes—we get on with stuff. Our port of Tyne is now the base of the biggest offshore wind farm in the world. We are home to hundreds of small businesses, and we have been instrumental in the fight against poverty, paving the way for holiday clubs and setting up a mobile community supermarket.

The Government’s levelling-up rhetoric rings hollow in my constituency, which has been rejected for towns fund and freeport bids and two rounds of levelling-up funding. The level of child poverty in South Shields remains stubbornly high at 40% and unemployment across South Tyneside is 6.7%, which is higher than the north-east average, yet in the Chancellor’s recent Budget he allocated London’s Canary Wharf double the amount of funding that our entire region will get.

The privatisation of once-nationalised industries that followed our pit closures has done nothing but deepen inequality, delivering profits for shareholders and decimating services that we all rely on. That is happening at the same time that the Government are pocketing the miners’ pension surplus. More than £4 billion has been given to the Government, with £420 million of that in the last three years alone. The Government keep saying that we need to strike a fair balance, but there is nothing fair about it when miners and their widows are left destitute on as little as £18 a week. We should not be surprised, because as the WASPI women know all too well, this Government have form when it comes to pension grabbing. Our miners were prosecuted and made redundant, and saw the heart ripped out of their communities, and now they are being robbed of their pensions, their retirement and the dignity that they all deserve.

We know all too well in South Shields that if you close a pit, you kill a community. Our proud mining heritage will always remain because of people like Gary Wilkinson, a local film maker, Bob Olley, our local artist, and Alan Mardghum and Stephen Guy from the Durham Miners’ Association, and places like South Shields Museum. Thanks to them, the generations who follow will know that underneath the South Shields streets, housing estates and fields they walk on, there were once thousands of pitmen gathering coal to power our country. We are proud of the past that we have inherited in South Shields, and it is one that we will continue to use to build our future—one that we will build with the next Labour Government.

Levelling Up

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Young]

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend. I have had many conversations with her council leader about devolution in Greater Lincolnshire. I look forward to visiting Scunthorpe very soon, hopefully with further good news on that front. I would be delighted to be shown around by my hon. Friend.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

Here’s a first: I would like to thank the Minister. At last, after over two years of waiting and at significant cost to our council, the Government have eventually granted South Shields a piecemeal sum of money. He also knows that, thanks to Tory economic failure, the cost of delivering our bid is now much higher. I have just heard his response to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), but can he confirm whether it means that in South Shields we are getting more or less money now?

[Jacob Young]

I am delighted to be able to give the hon. Lady the good news for South Shields today, building on the future high streets fund, which I know she is aware of, in her constituency. The money we announced today for South Shields—£20 million—will be given to South Shields to spend on the bids it outlined. There will not be additional funding coming in on top of that, but the project adjustment request allows the council in her constituency to move money around within the bid to account for inflation and other things. I am delighted that we are able to be levelling up in South Shields, with £20 million today on top of the future high streets fund that we have already given to her constituency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 16th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

2. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the Government’s levelling-up policies in reducing regional inequalities.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

17. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on supporting coastal communities.

[Mr Speaker]

I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box.

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[Jacob Young]

The hon. Gentleman will know of the £20 billion reserved for transport investment in the north, and I am sure that some of that can be dedicated towards electric vehicles.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

A conservative think-tank recently reported that coastal communities such as mine have lower life expectancy, inadequate transport links and people who are comparatively poorer. After repeated rejections for towns and levelling-up moneys, are my constituents not right to blame the Government of the last 13 years for this deliberate levelling down?

[Jacob Young]

The hon. Lady, like me, represents a north-east coastal community, and she will be aware of our devolution agreement with the North East Combined Authority, which hopes to address some of the challenges in her area.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Let us hear from another: I call Emma Lewell-Buck.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T5. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker.Not only have the Government legislated to allow sewage on to our beaches and into our sea, but they are now limiting funds for local authorities to stop historic coastal landfill sites polluting our coast. One of those sites is in gorgeous South Shields. When can we expect the Government to do something about it?

[Michael Gove]

Actually, the way that this Government have handled Ofwat has ensured that we have done more to improve water quality—[Interruption.] If the hon. Lady were to ask the chief executive of any water company about the toughest Environment Secretary that they have had to deal with, they would know. But anyway, on the key question of South Shields, I agree that it is beautiful, and I will have the chance to visit soon. The additional money that we are making available for the devolution deal for the north-east should help, but I would be delighted to visit and find out more.

Levelling-up Fund Round 2

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Frazer]

I thank my hon. Friend for those points. Feedback will be given and I am sure that officials will work in the manner that he suggests. I would like to point out that Dudley got £25 million from the towns fund, which I hope he welcomed, but of course we can do more.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

In her letter rejecting our bid, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), said that she knew how much time and effort were spent on our ambitions for South Shields town centre. With respect, she doesn’t. It is an absolute insult. Our freeport bid was rejected, our towns fund bid was rejected and now two levelling-up fund bids have been rejected, all in favour of wealthier areas. When will this Government stop using public funds for their own political advantage?

[Lucy Frazer]

I am sorry that the hon. Member has been unsuccessful. As I mentioned, there is a third round. I look forward to announcing any results of that in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

My hon. Friend is another fantastic champion, not just for his constituency but for the whole of the south-west. We will announce the outcome of the bids in due course, but his question has been heard loud and clear.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

T8.   Answers to parliamentary questions have revealed that the Government’s spending guidelines relating to local authority delivery of the holiday activities and food programme have seen, in just one year, more than £37 million wasted on the likes of publicity and marketing, as opposed to being spent on food for hungry children. Why is that?

[Lee Rowley]

As the hon. Lady knows, local authorities need to make a set of decisions whenever any money, such as grants, is made available. If she wants to provide any further information, the Department will be happy to respond to her.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

Alongside purpose, a sense of pride nourishes personal and communal togetherness; it builds social solidarity. Where we begin, live life and end it roots our days and shapes our dreams. Homes matter because having a place of one’s own to build a family’s future makes those dreams come true. Those who advocate housing targets clinically miss the point. Making homes of which people can feel proud is what public policy must make possible.

The Government’s decision to drop mandatory housing targets, under which local communities have been obliged to endure seemingly endless and unsustainable development, is therefore wise and welcome, if overdue. I have been pleased to play my part, alongside other sensible colleagues, in encouraging that sharp turn in thinking. I am delighted that local communities and the councils they elect will no longer have housing imposed upon them. They will be in sole charge of what is built and where. Never again will the imposition of top-down targets be a justification for developments that are out of scale or character with the prevailing built environment or the local landscape. We have bolted on to villages and towns throughout this kingdom unsuitable and unsustainable housing estates of catalogue-build, identikit houses that bear no relation to the local vernacular and are, frankly, a very poor legacy to pass on to generations to come.

All that we build should make us proud. Our inheritance is what our forefathers built for us, and our responsibility is just as great as theirs. Development should, wherever possible, be regenerative, and it should be incremental. Every hamlet could take a few extra houses; every village could take more; towns many more than that; and cities, of course, many thousands. When we understand that development can be incremental, people will cease to object to it in the way they do currently.

There are those who dismiss beauty—they are crass to do so, because people deserve the chance to live in lovely places, including less well-off people. Unfortunately, that is too often not the case. I welcome the Government’s decision to put beauty at the heart of the housing agenda by raising design standards and making sure that developers and local planners adhere to those standards. It is also important that communities have their say. When they are faced with a choice between the ubiquitous kind of bland, identikit housing that peppers too much of our country or well-designed homes, they will usually choose the latter.

There is, however, concern about the industrialisation of the countryside resulting from the Government’s relaxation of the moratorium on onshore wind. It is critical that topography, visual impact, the connection to sites of special historical interest, areas of outstanding natural beauty and sites of special scientific interest, and the connection of turbines to the grid, are all taken into account. Not only is this a dangerous energy policy—I do not have time to explore that—but it also risks spoiling much of the English landscape and ruining vistas that are cherished by local people. If we really believe in local consent for housing, we must follow through and believe in local consent for that kind of infrastructure development, too.

As I have said, all that we build should add to what is there. We will be judged as a Parliament, and indeed as a generation, by what we pass on to generations to come.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I will speak briefly to amendment 73 and new clause 83, which stand in my name.

As we all know, planning can be one of the most contentious issues in any community. Whether or not local communities are happy, there is nothing worse when permission has been granted than developers doing nothing at all with the site, only half completing it, or leaving it derelict for a number of years. The Government’s proposal in the Bill for completion notices is welcome, but it is still weighted in favour of faceless developers, not local communities, and gives developers too long to act. My amendment would ensure that planning permission can be withdrawn and building works removed, with the site being restored to its previous condition in a timely manner, shifting legislation in favour of local communities.

Despite levelling up being one of the Government’s flagship policies, they continue to struggle to define it and, consequently, how its success can be measured. The technical annex to the White Paper, which addresses how levelling up will be measured, says:

“Further work will be undertaken…to…refine these metrics.”

New clause 83 would help to do just that.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Emma Lewell-Buck Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

I rise to speak to new clause 7, which is tabled in my name. I thank Members from across the House for supporting it and the Minister for the listening to my pleas. In short, new clause 7 intends to prevent the imposition of council tax on individual tenants of a room in a house with shared facilities, or in a licensed house of multiple occupancy.

This issue came to light in my Gosport constituency where the high street, like so many others up and down the country, is in decline. A local businessman, Daryn Brewer, identified an opportunity to breathe new life into our high streets and at the same time create affordable accommodation for young professionals. He is doing that by buying up empty disused shops, redeveloping them and bringing local independent traders into the shop space while converting the spaces above into high quality shared living accommodation. The residents have high-spec individual ensuite bedrooms, but shared kitchen, laundry and workspaces. They are effectively professional houses of multiple occupation and are known as Pro Pods. This is levelling up in its most pure form: reimagining our high streets as places where we do not just shop, but live, work, socialise and spend our time. At a stroke, it makes low-cost, high quality affordable living accommodation and takes some of the strain off the housing market.

Generally speaking, HMOs are in band C or D for council tax and are therefore classed as one dwelling, meaning the landlord is legally responsible for paying the council tax for that single dwelling. However, over recent years there has been a growing trend for the Valuation Office Agency to start to re-band those bedrooms as individual dwellings in and of themselves, meaning residents across Gosport, Portsmouth and, increasingly, across the whole country, are being hit with unexpected and completely unaffordable council tax bills. The VOA has stated that it is not taking a new approach to HMOs or systematically revaluing HMOs. However, this is a growing issue, one that my right hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) and I have brought to the attention of successive Ministers over the last couple of years, and one that colleagues across the House are increasingly seeing among their local landlords and developers. That is evidenced by the number of Members backing new clause 7.

There are several reasons why this issue poses a problem. First and foremost, it is placing a huge financial strain on people, often young professionals at the very start of their careers, who are suddenly landed with a council tax bill of up to £1,000, even after they have been allocated the single person discount. In some cases, it has even been backdated three years, so there could be a bill of up to £3,000. We can imagine how this is causing untold distress and misery, especially at a time when other living costs are rising. There have even been incidents of previous tenants being chased for a council tax bill they did not know they owed after they had moved out, due to reclassifying and backdating—a dreadful situation.

Shared housing is a core pillar of the housing sector. In 2018, HMOs provided up to 3 million sharers with rental accommodation across England and Wales. It is a significant contribution to the housing sector, so this issue has the potential to become a major problem. If these bedrooms start to be classified as dwellings and become band A, where the tenant is legally liable for paying the council tax, goodness knows where it will end. There are other knock-on impacts of this trend that I want, very briefly, to put on the record.

Disaggregation creates individual units, which are usually not self-contained. Once disaggregated, there is nothing to stop a landlord putting cooking facilities into these places retrospectively, thus creating miniature flats. Those do not meet housing standards or create quality living environments.

We also have the issue of housing numbers. Bedrooms within HMOs that are rebanded create a “dwelling” in law. That means that those bedrooms are added to the UK housing numbers, even though they do not meet the minimum national space standards and are not self-contained. Unwittingly, the VOA, local authorities and therefore, ultimately, the Government would be fudging the housing numbers. For each bedroom that is rebanded by the VOA as a dwelling, local authorities can claim on the new homes bonus scheme. That suggests that the Government could award those bonuses to local authorities without proper homes being created through the usual planning process.

If this continues and bedrooms keep being rebanded, the Government could be seen to be encouraging the creation of dwellings that simply do not meet national space standards. Unless they grip that growing issue, they will potentially create substandard rental properties that would contradict the renters reform Bill and the decent homes White Paper.

The Bill is fundamentally about levelling up our wonderful country. By not addressing this issue, we are doing a disservice to our constituents, many of whom are young strivers, simply trying to build their careers and make their way in life. They have been hit unexpectedly with an extra financial strain that they have not budgeted for and certainly do not deserve, at a time they can least afford it.

I deeply regret that I had to table an amendment to put a stop to this. I have frequently raised the issue with the relevant Departments, but it has fallen on deaf ears. It has led me to fear, until this point, that some people working in this area may have forgotten that council tax is a property tax, not a head tax. It should not be down to individuals who are paying simply for a bedroom to foot the bill.

That is why I am deeply grateful to the Minister and the Secretary of State for engaging with me so brilliantly and openly on this issue, and for confirming that they will have an accelerated consultation on the issue with a view, potentially, to introducing the relevant regulations to prevent this happening and to address it. That will need to cover how we deal with the sites that have already been revalued, the bills that have been issued and the arrears that have been incurred, so that is not straightforward.

I am grateful for the Minister’s commitment to address this matter, and I have no doubt that she will. I know that she cares deeply about levelling up. She is an excellent Minister and I know that she wants to seize this once-in-a-generation opportunity to get the Bill right and deal with this issue. I thank the Minister for her commitment. I will not push my amendment to a vote and I look forward to working with her to make sure that we solve this issue once and for all.

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

I will speak to new clause 82 and amendments 71 and 72 in my name and those of my hon. Friends. New clause 82 seeks to reinstate the standards board. Every single one of us in this place should be able to get behind that, as it is not partisan; it is about restoring the public’s faith in local politics.

We have all seen examples of councillors acting outwith their role and their code of conduct. We also see, often, that the act that eventually leads to their demise follows an established pattern of behaviour spanning many years. Those around them may have been fearful of calling out their behaviour for many reasons. Last year, a councillor was sentenced after pleading guilty to a charge relating to the abuse of public trust in public office, yet he remains in post. In another area, two former council chiefs and a county council leader are due to appear in court after being charged in connection with a long-running police investigation into allegations of financial irregularity.

We all know, of course, that those cases are in the minority and that the vast number of councillors work hard for their community. However, those who behave in that way are currently given a free ride, as the framework around complaints is largely kept in-house. Councils and fellow councillors should simply not be allowed to police themselves. Such an arrangement puts officers, and particularly monitoring officers, in impossible positions. Those officers, who are in contractually and politically restricted positions, somehow have to find ways to manage governance and the expectations and pressures of political groups when the sanctions available to the standards committee are very limited and its members are political colleagues of those they are investigating. That point was noted by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which reported:

“We have heard of cases where Monitoring Officers have been put under undue pressure or forced to resign because of unwelcome advice or decisions”.

A Local Government Chronicle survey finds that 60% of monitoring officers do not believe that they have sufficient tools to tackle serious misconduct among elected members.

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[Mr Betts]

One of the problems with the Standards Board was that it was simply overwhelmed with complaints because residents were allowed to go to it at first instance, rather than appealing to it if their local authority did not deal properly with their case. Another problem was that parish council complaints were allowed under it. If those two issues had been addressed, the Standards Board could have dealt with a smaller number of cases, as an appeal system. It would have been a very different arrangement.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

My hon. Friend is correct. It is simply not in the interests of local people to have no mechanism at all to remove someone from office who is acting inappropriately. People in my area who have experienced the damage caused by our previous council leader and his supporters find offensive the suggestion that removing that level of accountability has somehow given them more of a voice or restored any power to them.

It is the greatest honour to serve our community, whether at council level or in Parliament. With that should come appropriate checks, balances and levels of accountability. The public need confidence in the system. They need to know that cases such as those that I have mentioned will never happen again. My new clause would ensure that.

Amendments 71 and 72 simply ask that the Government align the levelling-up missions with the United Nations sustainable development goal to end hunger and ensure access by all people—the poor and the vulnerable, including infants—to safe, nutritious and sufficient food all year round, and that it be measured by tracking the prevalence of undernourishment in the population and the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity, based on the food insecurity experience scale. It is astonishing that a Bill that attempts to level up all parts of the UK does not mention hunger or food insecurity once, despite the Government acknowledging that it is not possible to level up the country without reducing the number of children going hungry and living in poverty.

[George Eustice]

The hon. Lady is right that this is an incredibly important issue, but is it not the case that all these issues were addressed through the Agriculture Act 2020, and the requirement to publish every three years a food security report that includes very detailed chapters on household food insecurity, which is what she is concerned about?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. He will know that those measurements have not resulted in reduced levels of poverty. The amendments would strengthen the Government’s commitment to reducing it.

There are 14.5 million people living in poverty across our country. Poverty among children and pensioners rose in the six years prior to covid, alongside a resurgence of Victorian diseases associated with malnutrition, such as scurvy and rickets. Surely the Government must have grasped that for at least five of their own missions to succeed people need access to food. Living standards, education, skills, health and wellbeing are all deeply impacted in a household impacted by hunger. The Government’s own reporting in the family resources survey, which was made possible only after years of campaigning to implement my Food Insecurity Bill, shows that households in the north-east are more likely to struggle to afford food than those anywhere else in the country. It would be totally misguided to think that we can level up the country without addressing that issue.

We know that the figures will increase. Already this year food insecurity has risen by almost 10%. Thanks to the Government’s economic mismanagement, the biggest fall in household incomes on record will only exacerbate those levels of hunger. The Food Foundation has found that levels of food insecure households are rising, with figures for September this year showing a prevalence in nearly 10 million adults, with 4 million children also suffering from hunger. If it were not for the over 2,500 food banks in the country, those adults and children would be without food. That should be a source of great shame for Government Members.

Regional disparities, which the Bill supposedly aims to level out, are more stark when we look at the fact that life expectancy in my part of the world, the north-east, is two and a half years less than in the south-east. Increasing healthy life expectancy is a huge challenge. The pandemic revealed the serious underlying health inequalities in this country. Public health funding will play a crucial role in helping to achieve the mission; however, in the most recent allocation councils faced a real-terms cut. That is just another example of where the Government’s actions do not meet their levelling-up rhetoric.

The Government commissioned a national food strategy, which found that diet is the leading cause of avoidable harm to our health; however, the Government have ignored Henry Dimbleby’s recommendation to increase free school meals eligibility. If the Government are serious about levelling up, tackling food insecurity is vital to achieving the levelling-up White Paper’s missions. As Anna Taylor, chief exec of the Food Foundation, said:

“If the Government wants to really get to grips with the issue, a comprehensive approach to levelling-up must tackle food insecurity head on.”

The Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), claimed that the amendments in Committee were not needed as the Bill is

“designed to establish the framework for the missions”––[Official Report, Levelling-up and Regeneration Public Bill Committee, 20 October 2022; c. 859.]

not the content of them. That sums up the vacuous nature behind all the missions in the Bill. By making them as opaque as possible, and lacking such content, the Government will not have to bother delivering on a single one of them.

The Government should accept this amendment today. By doing so, they would signal that at long last they accept that people are going hungry on their watch and they are eventually prepared to do something about it. I sincerely hope that they will do this, but I expect that they will not. In any event, I look forward to the Minister’s response later on.

[John Stevenson]

I want to speak to new clauses 1 and 2, but particularly new clause 1, which relates to the election of Mayors. These are straightforward new clauses and I will not be putting them to a vote, but I hope that the Government will give serious consideration to new clause 1 in particular, because I think it addresses a gap in the current devolution discussions.

When it comes to devolution, my preferred option would be for far more radical reform. I believe that local government in England is in need of substantial reform and that the Government should embrace devolution. The way to do this is to have devolution settlements right across the country with the appropriate powers and responsibilities so that we properly decentralise and also have consistency. I also think that, as part of that, the introduction of Mayors everywhere is a positive thing.