Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

John Stevenson Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

I completely agree with that sentiment. Any new legislation that may be introduced at a future date will not be looking to criminalise anyone for just being homeless. That is a firm commitment that I can make here today. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Let us look at the Government’s rough sleeping strategy as an example, and at the other ways we can outreach to ensure that those who find themselves homeless, often through no fault of their own, find the support they need to get back on their feet.

On vagrancy, my colleagues and I look forward to continuing to work with Members across the House on our goal of ending rough sleeping and ensuring that people in need receive appropriate support to help them move away from life on the streets for good.

Strengthening our communities also means strengthening local leadership. We all know from our constituencies that Whitehall, however well intentioned, cannot always understand a community as well as the local people who live and work within it, so our ambition is for local areas to determine their own futures, allowing local leaders to take charge and enable their communities to thrive. We therefore want to offer the option of a devolution deal with a directly elected leader to every part of England that wants one by 2030, creating clear local leadership and greater accountability for any new powers conferred on them.

Members will recall that the Bill puts in place a framework to achieve this by creating a new model of combined authority—a combined county authority—which is more suitable for areas outside urban centres. This means that areas and communities everywhere, not just in major cities, can benefit from bespoke devolution deals that work for them. Providing these opportunities for all communities across England will increase innovation and enhance local accountability. This in turn will lead to more co-ordinated decision making with greater flexibility over funding, all of which will empower areas to attract more inward investment.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have been grateful for the support that our reforms have attracted in our discussions with hon. Members and local areas, and Members will be aware that our devolution negotiations and conversations are continuing at pace. In the summer, we announced new devolution deals with York and North Yorkshire, and with parts of the east midlands: Derby, Derbyshire, Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. There are more deals to be signed soon. Implementation of the east midlands deal is dependent on provisions in this Bill gaining Royal Assent and coming into effect, but they will of course be subject to statutory processes, including parliamentary approval of secondary legislation on creating new institutions with the devolved powers. The invaluable feedback from our discussions so far has allowed us to table three amendments today to put some matters beyond doubt.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

The Minister is talking a lot about those areas where there is devolution already or where there is the potential for devolution, but what about those areas where there seems to be an absence of any discussions?

[Dehenna Davison]

As I say, we have discussions under way at the moment and we are looking ahead to which new devolution deals we can start exploring. I am certainly happy to work with my hon. Friend to see if this is something we can deliver in his local area in Cumbria, too.

Our first amendment relates to clause 16, which allows the conferral of local authority functions, including those of county councils, unitary councils and district councils, on to a combined county authority, or CCA.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not recognise that, as we have heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice), not every area of the country wants a Mayor, and that it would be wrong to force a Mayor on those areas?

[John Stevenson]

I will come to that point about particular areas. My belief is that if we believe in devolution, we have to set out what we believe, embrace it and introduce it. One of the problems with our present devolution settlement is that there is too much inconsistency. There is a patchwork of devolution and a patchwork of local government that is not in any way beneficial for individual areas or for the country as a whole.

I genuinely believe that the introduction of Mayors has brought leadership to particular areas. It also creates accountability and responsibility, and we are seeing the successes up and down the country, including in Teesside, in the midlands and in Manchester, where we have Mayors who have demonstrated leadership in their locality. But the Government’s approach seems to be very different. They have adopted what I would describe as a gradualist approach to devolution, a policy that appears to be about bottom-up with a degree of incentives or pushing local areas to go down a particular route. I accept that it has had some success, and there is indeed some potential success in the pipeline, but it has been limited to date.

The result of Government policy is uneven devolution and, as I have said, a patchwork of inconsistency across the country. What we really need is clarity and consistency, but I accept that that is probably going to be for the future rather than for the next couple of years. Right now, I do at least support the direction of travel that the Government are taking with regard to devolution and I will certainly support the Bill, but their approach appears to be only to approach existing local authorities to instigate discussions for a devolution settlement in that particular area. They are almost waiting for requests for devolution, and any success will depend on the decisions of local authorities in particular parts of the country.

But what about those areas where there is support for devolution, but not necessarily from the local authority in that area? Areas can be held back by the actions of individuals or individual authorities when in fact that locality supports a devolution settlement and actually wants one. We saw that happen in Cumbria a few years back when a devolution settlement was in prospect but held back in many respects by the views of the leader of a particular council. For example, businesses in a particular area could be supportive of a Mayor and devolution, as could charities, parish councillors and minority political parties on councils—indeed, councils could be divided on the issue—but for one reason or another the dominant view would be against a devolution settlement rather than for one. There could also be support for devolution among the wider population. There is a growing appreciation that areas that do not end up with a devolution settlement and a Mayor are likely to be left behind. Because of the finance and a Mayor’s ability to be an advocate, areas will lose out if they do not have that voice. When the Chancellor goes to the north of England to speak to local leaders, his automatic choice will be to speak to Mayors. Areas that are bereft of a devolution settlement do not have a Mayor, so they will be left behind.

I tabled new clause 1 to create a reserve power for the Government to step in if they feel that a particular area has an appetite for devolution and a Mayor but is being held back by, say, the machinations of local politics. Having that reserve power would enhance the Government’s ability to negotiate devolution deals and would strengthen their position. I therefore hope they will consider introducing this measure.