Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I want to talk briefly about the granularity of data, the choice of data and its use, and the need for independent assessment and evaluation of the use of that data in judging the success or otherwise of attempts to level up. On Monday, I raised the need for granularity of data, particularly in relation to my concern about the disparities between urban and rural areas. I am very pleased to see that Amendment 10—I support my noble friend, and my name is on the amendment—proposes that the granularity could be done perhaps at local authority level and even, where possible, at postcode level. The noble Baroness’s Amendment 58 talks about data collection at the level of

“regions, counties, councils and council wards”.

We should all be thankful to the Minister, because she has already very helpfully responded to many of these concerns in a response on Monday to my request for granularity. She agreed with the sentiments but then went on to provide rather more detail, which she said was very complicated. I promised to go away and put a wet towel on my head and look at it in detail afterwards, as she promised she would—I suspect we both now have. It is very interesting to read. She told us what is happening within government to better identify geographical disparities, and talked about

“data visualisation and experimentation techniques”

and

“a transformative data analysis strategy at subnational level.”

I still do not really know what that all is, which is the point of what I want to say, but crucially, the Minister said 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.”—[Official Report, 20/2/23; col. 1482.]


We should be enormously grateful that that is on the record.

However, the problem is that we also have to be very clear about how the data is going to be used. We might collect it at a granular level but I hope we will also be able to have more detail about how the data is going to be used. Why? Because, sadly, there have been examples where this Government claim to have collected and used data but that does not really seem to follow.

I note, for example, that the current Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a tranche of the levelling-up fund allocations. In the press conference that followed, when he was asked how this money had been allocated, he said it was

“based on an index of economic need which is transparently published”.

However, when people went to look for this transparently published documentation, they could not find any. The Treasury had to come up with a statement afterwards to say that the information was coming “shortly” but was unable to say when that would be. When at a later stage people questioned how this all worked, the Treasury spokesman, in explaining the bandings which had apparently been used to allocate how the money was spent, went on to say:

“The bandings do not represent eligibility criteria—and money will be allocated to the areas most in need. Further technical details will be published by the government in due course.”


When, in due course, it eventually came out, and there were queries about all this, the Treasury announced that the factors used included

“strategic alignment with government priorities”,

whatever that may mean.

My point is that it is really good that we are going to have granular data, and I think we should specify in the Bill how that is going to be done. But we also need openness and honesty about how the data is going to be used. That is why the other amendment from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, is so important, talking as it does about the independent body that will analyse this information.

My final point is simply that I absolutely accept what the Minister says about her concern about putting all the missions on the face of the Bill. But it seems to me that the public have a right to know the key areas of concern that we will use to judge whether levelling up between the various areas of the country has taken place or not. My noble friend on the Front Bench used a very good phrase: she said we should have it in “headline form”. That is really what my noble friend’s Amendment 10 does. It makes a suggestion; I am sure he would accept it is a starter for ten. Other issues have been raised; I could raise, for instance, the issue of home insulation, which is a hobby-horse of mine. In any case, we have time, as my noble friend said, between now and Report to actually get consensus across the House on what the key headline issues are that we are keen to tackle. We can then have separate debates elsewhere about the details. So I think all three amendments in this group cover these three crucial areas of having granularity of data, having a clear understanding of how the data is going to be used and independently evaluated, and what the data is actually going to cover: what are the key issues of concern that we have in the whole effort to level up?

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am beginning to think that eight days is not enough for Committee. I am sorry about that, but it is such an exciting Bill and we all have so much to say. The point about which data to collect is interesting, because, of course, there is data that is extremely negative and it would be difficult, perhaps, to find a category for it. For example, so far, a huge amount of money has been wasted by the levelling-up funds, because local authorities have often used a lot of time and energy putting together bids that have failed. Are the Government going to collect the data on that waste of money, which obviously —in these days of 13 years of underinvestment in councils and the loss of EU structural funds—means a lot to councils and will affect the service that they can give to their residents? There has been a failure of levelling up already and perhaps we are not measuring everything we should be measuring.

There are a couple of dozen local authorities run by Greens as part of the administration. Many Green councillors have expressed their dismay to me at the level of waste in the levelling-up fund, and it very much concerns me. Instead of taking a long-term view of what is needed, the Government sought quick wins, quite understandably; I can entirely support that idea. However, they demanded submission of “shovel-ready projects”, combined with tight deadlines for submissions, so local authorities had to quickly piece together bids, rather than taking the time to develop what they might have thought were the most impactful and valuable project proposals for their areas. Personally, I see this as a continuation of Boris Johnson’s natural urge—which I saw quite a lot of when he was Mayor of London—to splash money around on grand ideas that grabbed headlines but often failed to come to any sort of fruition.

So far, I do not think the levelling-up fund has been value for money, and it has not been targeted at areas that need it most. There has been a lot of political decision-making about where the funds go, and it is alleged that they have disproportionately benefited Conservative-voting areas. The Government now need to give local authorities a long-term view of what is needed and let them put together long-term proposals. They need capital funds that will be made available over a period of years and support them to dig deep into what would benefit their own areas, because they will know best. I can see a lot of late nights in my future with this Bill, and I do hope that the Government will listen to what we are saying.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not know, but the council is already in train and working. On the fact that it has not come to Parliament, I will ask what the remit has been for the past year. It may have been a remit just to get together on some early work, but I will get an answer to my noble friend on that.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt because I know that the Minister wants to get on, but can she tell us at least whether the advisory board has expressed any view on the levelling-up Bill before us, and whether she will make that public?

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I do not know whether it has any views on it at the moment, but I will ask that question.

Alongside this, my department has also established a new deep-dive team, to take a new place-based approach to policy-making. This is quite important. This team gets to know specific places. To date, these places have included Blackpool and Grimsby. It combines the granular data that we are beginning to put together with local knowledge, to identify a set of policy interventions to make a noticeable difference to the people living there.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Taylor of Stevenage and Lady Young of Old Scone, brought up individuals. We go down to council wards, but there are people. We are talking about people. The levelling-up White Paper is a plan for everyone. The focus is on the left-behind places, but the ultimate goal of levelling-up policies is to improve the living standards and quality of life of the people living in those places. This means that where individuals with certain protected characteristics are disproportionately affected, they will benefit from the whole levelling-up programme policies and systems change. For example, some ethnic minority groups have, on average, poorer health outcomes. They are more likely to be living in non-decent homes. By aiming to reduce these disparities across the UK and in places where they are most stark, levelling up will have a positive impact on the places and, as importantly, on the people.

There were a number of questions or comments on the levelling-up fund, which I would suggest are probably for the sixth group of amendments. However, I will answer a couple of them; they were all more or less the same views. The levelling-up fund index identifies those places in greatest need, as we have heard, of this type of investment. In this round 2, 66% of funding has gone to category 1. Those are the places of greatest need. Over rounds 1 and 2, 69% of funding has gone to category 1. I can also say that in investment per head of population, the highest investment went to Wales, followed by the north-west and then the north-east. The money is going to the right places but that is just as an aside because this will come up again in group six.

This approach, set out in the Bill, sets a clear, uncluttered and long-lasting framework for measuring the progress of levelling-up missions. I hope that this provides the noble Lord sufficient assurance to withdraw his amendment.