Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Foster of Bath Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 24th May 2023 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Caithness (Con)]

My Lords, as we enter this record-breaking 15th day in Committee on a Bill, I pay huge tribute to my noble friends on the Front Bench and noble Lords on the Opposition Front Bench for their considerable patience, humour and endurance.

The sadness of this levelling-up Bill, which has not ground us down, is that there has been absolutely no give from the Government. I am not as hopeful as the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for this amendment, because I fear that the top right-hand corner of the Minister’s brief will say, “Reject”. If I may say so, that has not helped the process of this Bill. Perhaps a message could be sent back to the department that, if one wants to get the Bill through this House, there could be a little more understanding that a lot of the amendments, whether from the Opposition or our side, are there to constructively help the Bill, not destroy it. Because we do not divide in Committee, we will have to go through the whole process in a few weeks’ time on Report, which will be longer and more agonising than it might necessarily have been.

I come at this from a different perspective from the noble Baroness, who made an interesting speech from her own experience. When I came here, I was told that you speak on your honour and experience and vote on your conscience. It is wonderful that we have someone like the noble Baroness, with her experience, but I come at this from the point of view of having served on the Food, Poverty, Health and Environment Committee of your Lordships’ House. The devastating evidence that we received on food made me reassess what the priorities ought to be. Food in this country will probably kill you more quickly than any disease. We eat an enormous amount of processed food—it is 57% of our diet. Some 80% of the processed food that we eat in this country is not fit to be fed to children. It is not good for us, which is why 60% of us are obese and the number is growing. It is one of the unsung scandals that will one day hit the headlines in a major way. Hopefully, we can take some action before that happens. The cost is astronomical. It is estimated that the bad food that we eat contributes to losses of about £74 billion a year to the British economy.

That is the angle that I come at this from, so let us do anything we can to help to grow and produce our own vegetables freshly. It must be devastatingly sad for farmers to grow top-quality food—because our standards are so high—only to have it macerated into virtual poison and sold in supermarkets. What a waste of time and effort, from their point of view.

I also come at this from the health and recreation angle, picking up the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I do not have my own kitchen garden, but I dig my daughter’s. I have been fascinated by doing that with my grandson because, over the last three years, I have noticed a considerable change: this year, he was fascinated by the difference in the sizes of the seeds of the peas, the salads and the courgettes. He kept asking why each one was different and why they were not all the same. He has now taken charge of his vegetables in the garden. His willingness to eat green vegetables has gone up in proportion to his interest in the garden, because they are his vegetables and they are now on his plate. He has seen them grow—he helped me to plant them and will help me to pick them this autumn.

When I was doing this with him a couple of weekends ago, I thought that this amendment absolutely encapsulates that. I gave your Lordships just one instance, but, if this were done on a much bigger scale, not only would there be recreational and mental health benefits from being outside and digging the garden but the young would be educated. My grandson and I now have a competition about who is the first to see the robin once we start digging, because, sure enough, one will appear on a fence-post, looking for what we have turned over in the hope of getting a free meal. If this can be done for those who have never had the experience of handling food in its natural state, the benefits could be amazing.

Going back to what the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, said about the gardens that she helped to create in London, I multiply my experience of this and think, “Yes, we can do something”. That is why I hope that the Government will take on board that this is something where local authorities can give a real benefit. It is not allotments; it has to be on a different scale from that. We have heard about the problem with allotments and how long the waiting lists are, so a different tack has to be taken to try to get the local authorities to move, because the end benefits are so worth while.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, that we on these Benches have supported her in the past and will continue to do so. I should reveal that it was me who quietly raised the issue of resources with her just before we began. I note that the amendment mentions identifying

“resources required to bring all land contamination in England to safe levels”.

I say to her and the Committee that that will be a challenging task. She rightly pointed out that, in your Lordships’ House, we are not allowed to discuss those matters, but I hope that someone will take this on board, whether through this amendment or through anything else, because it is a big issue.

This is a helpful reminder to us that, if we recognise that huge problems are caused by land that was previously contaminated, we have to make sure that we are not continuing to create problems for the future with the contamination of land now. Separately, I have been looking into the issue of lithium-ion batteries and the way we are currently disposing of them, which I do not believe we have yet addressed. There are all sorts of problems. People have been killed by lithium-ion batteries exploding, but increasingly they are being dumped, not least in single-use vapes, which, sadly, many young children are now using. They are thrown away in landfill sites and cause all sorts of problems. It is worth checking what lithium can do: lithium toxicity can lead to cancer, brain damage and even death, so we are currently creating toxicity in our landfill sites that we need to address. This is a reminder to do that.

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[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 504GJF from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, also supported by the noble Lords, Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Wasserman. However, this is not the amendment I would have liked to see. That would read: “The Vagrancy Act 1824 is hereby repealed”. That amendment was ruled to be outside the scope of this Bill. This amendment is a tentative step in the right direction and the very least we should be taking forward at this stage.

Your Lordships’ House played a crucial part in getting the repeal of this antiquated Act into the House of Commons’ version of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022. This House passed the repeal amendment on a cold February night, at 25 minutes past midnight, earning the thanks of the coalition of homeless charities, led by Crisis, that had campaigned for this change over many years. In the Commons, Nickie Aiken MP and the right honourable Robert Jenrick MP helped secure this repeal, and all that remained was for the commencement date to be set. But the Government postponed the repeal for well over a year, pending the results of consultation on whether losing the 1824 legislation would deprive police forces of powers they need to address “aggressive begging”.

Those of us involved in the efforts to get rid of this archaic Act have emphasised two points. First, the criminalisation of people sleeping rough not only sends out all the wrong messages in a civilised society but directly undermines efforts to help people off the streets and provide them with the support—for example, to tackle alcohol and substance misuse and mental health problems—that they desperately need. Many homeless people, knowing that homelessness is itself illegal, will not come forward, even if they are abused and harassed by obnoxious bullies. The police have a role not in arresting the homeless but in supporting them to receive the help they need. Indeed, it would seem a step forward if the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017—which requires certain public bodies, including prisons, to notify local authorities when they know of people at risk of homelessness—could be extended to embrace the police as well.

Secondly, there is the objection that powers need to be retained from the old Act—invented or included in a new Act—to protect the public from anti-social begging. We considered this point when discussing the repeal of the Vagrancy Act with Ministers. We were not convinced that there are gaps in existing legislation that need new laws. The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 provided a range of powers to deal with nuisance of this kind. Other legislation, including the Modern Slavery Act 2015, addresses cases where criminal gangs are involved. Drawing upon the expert legal advice of the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, we concluded that it was entirely unnecessary to create new legislation to supplement all of the existing police powers. Indeed, only a very small minority of police forces currently make use of the Vagrancy Act, strongly suggesting that, since the others are operating without recourse to the penal measures in the old Act, a new Bill is quite unnecessary.

I recently asked the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe of Epsom, for news of positive action by the Government to end street homelessness, which they aspire to do by the end of 2024. It was good to hear the positive measures being taken to fund local initiatives and support multiagency working. There is much more to do, and I encourage the Government to step up the important positive work to ease the miseries of those sleeping rough on our streets. In the meantime, let us have all the evidence that government has collected on the Vagrancy Act, including its damaging impact. Let us move forward as quickly as possible towards the repeal of this dreadful relic of the Napoleonic Wars, before its 200th anniversary.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am sure that we are all disappointed that we will not hear from the noble Lord who also sponsored these amendments—

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

There is a convention that, if you speak in a debate, you have to stay until the wind-ups. Sadly, I have a commitment that means that that would not be possible. I endorse everything that has been said.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

We are grateful to the noble Lord, and we will miss him for the rest of our deliberations.

We have had many interesting debates on the issue of housing during the discussion on the Bill, from the need to introduce the decent homes standard into the privately rented sector or to address much more urgently the need to improve the energy efficiency of our homes. But I would argue that these amendments are particularly critical, not least during the cost of living crisis, as they deal with the really important issue of evictions and homelessness. Of course, they come at a time when there is huge pressure on temporary accommodation, given all the additional demands being made—not least, in housing refugees. We know that local councils are massively stretched and are using bed and breakfasts and hotels well beyond the legal limit.

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[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Kennedy. I shall speak specifically to my Amendment 504GC. As evidenced in previous debates on the Bill, levelling up can clearly be about large and strategic macro issues, but a significant aspect of it is that, on an individual level, some people simply cannot read as well as we would want. On an individual level, there must be an aspiration to ensure that all adults are literate. Speaking on this issue in another place, Margaret Greenwood MP said:

“Poor literacy skills and illiteracy often consign people to insecure and low-paid work. They are a form of deprivation that can lead to isolation and poverty and can leave people vulnerable to exploitation”.—[Official Report, 23/11/22; col. 353.]


It would seem that the most recent national survey of adult basic skills in England was as long ago as 2011. It showed that 1 million adults had literacy skills at entry level 3 or below. At this level, people are deemed to be functionally illiterate, although they can, for the most part, read straightforward text on familiar topics and obtain information from everyday sources—but this is not reading at a level that any Government should want the population to function at. It is not the level at which a parent can be confident to read with a child beyond infancy, and it is not the level at which a parent can assist with, or show interest in, schoolwork with children as they grow up. It is not the level at which a worker can seek retraining, upskilling or new opportunities.

As is often said, talent is everywhere but opportunity is not. Adult further and community education provision is not uniform. This provision affords opportunities to adults who have a lower level of literacy than that which we want for everyone. For precisely that reason, this amendment calls for a report on the “impact of geographical disparities” in adult literacy on levelling up and regeneration and for the Secretary of State to publish a strategy

“setting out steps they intend to take to improve levels of adult literacy”.

In 2022, 11 years after the survey to which I referred, the National Literacy Trust found that 7.1 million adults can be described as functionally illiterate. If this is accurate, we are, as a nation, allowing about 16% of our population to languish without the skills they need both personally and to be effectively economically active. As I said, the provision of adult learning opportunities to address low levels of literacy in the population is not uniform, and therefore neither is the participation. This amendment would require the Government to publish the information and then the strategy. If we accept, as I am sure we all do, that employers value and require essential skills, of which literacy is clearly the foundation, improving the capacity of those who struggle to read and write must be a priority.

Speaking as a teacher of many years, it pains me to recognise that not every young person finishes their schooling able to read and write as well as they might or as we would want. However, for a variety of reasons, adult illiteracy and low levels of literacy are a fact in our society. Regrettably, there have been significant cuts in adult education, with as much as a 50% fall in classroom-based adult learning opportunities. This must be addressed if we are to afford the opportunities needed to ensure that all are able to reach their potential.

The Government should not ignore this, especially now, as we continue to tackle education issues arising from the Covid pandemic. There can be no real levelling up without attention to adult illiteracy and a strategy to eradicate it. It is a matter of levelling up but also of social justice.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak extremely briefly and only to Amendment 499, just to ask the Minister two very basic questions.

It is my firm belief that, for far too long, there has been a failure by Governments of all parties to tackle the inequalities between rural and urban areas. So much of government policy is designed for urban areas and ignores the special and different requirements of rural areas. So, frankly, it is no wonder that there is a disparity in the cost of living between urban and rural areas. In rural areas, house prices are higher and wages are lower; council taxes are higher, but government support for their councils is lower; and the funding per head for services such as healthcare, policing and public transport is lower, but it costs more to provide those services. If you look at other issues, from broadband coverage to banking, you will see that rural areas lag way behind urban areas.

I said in my speech at Second Reading that the Rural Services Network used government metrics to come to the conclusion that, if all rural areas were treated as a single region, their need for levelling up would be greater than that of any other region. At the time, I asked what in the Bill would address that disparity. I ask again: in relation to this amendment, what aspects of the Bill will address the need to level up between urban and rural areas? Related to that is a question that I have also asked but that has not been answered: can the Government tell us how the absolute requirement for rural proofing of all legislation was carried out in relation to the Bill?

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to all three amendments. In different ways and on different aspects, they set out a clear path for the Government to address some significant issues that, unfortunately, are not covered in the main text of the Bill at present.

In passing, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, on his experience of public transport: welcome to everywhere that is not London. It is not just that there are no buses in rural areas outside London; he should try the urban areas.

At the moment, there are fundamental problems with how we deliver education to potential parents on how they might best help their children to develop and grow. There are also problems with delivering education in our formal education system for children and in our adult education and further learning courses and opportunities that are available to people not only immediately after leaving the school system but in later life. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, made that point powerfully, and I will reinforce it: in a rapidly changing technological society, what you might describe as in-course training is vital, even for people like me, to discover how to use the latest devices properly and effectively. That is very much the case for those who come out of the education system with a limited level of skills, and maybe without even having the resilience and skills to learn and develop themselves without substantial help and assistance.

So we have a ladder: literacy is certainly an issue in the absolutely crude sense of the word—whether people can read and write—but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, pointed out, it is a question not just of that but of being able to use that process to inform and educate yourself, to learn from what people present and give to you. That shortage spills into an inability or failure, at the end of your school career, to get magic pieces of paper that are the doors to routes to acquiring skills and qualifications. Of course, that failure means that there is an inability to get and hold high-value, high-quality jobs.

The consequence for the individual is, clearly and very often, a waste of their potential, a lack of fulfilment and, sometimes, an alienation from wider society. But the impact for the community is also negative, and the impact for our country and economy is very negative indeed. I say to the Government that, for levelling up to be successful, there has to be more economic growth in areas that are not flourishing at the moment.

To best spend taxpayers’ money on levelling up, however and wherever that tax is collected, it needs to go to areas that need the growth and help. It is exactly those areas where there is that deficiency in skills and professional qualifications, and where it is difficult to recruit people. That means that we are not getting the productivity growth in the industries and geographies where they are most needed. For instance, we get high economic growth in London and the south-east but not in the north-east of England. Unfortunately, all of these are connected in a line that starts with the process of how children grow and flourish in our education and training system.

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I believe that the time has come for some sort of national organisation for the taskforce expert group, preferably a commission, to look at these issues and to help government to take them forward. I beg to move.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendments 504F and 504G. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for the work that she has done, not only on this but on many related issues. She is a great asset.

As the noble Baroness mentioned, back in 2019 I chaired your Lordships’ special Select Committee on the Rural Economy. Part of our deliberation addressed the issue of land use at a time when regional spatial plans had been withdrawn with nothing to replace them. Several witnesses at that time told the committee that they were unhappy with the situation. For example, Hugh Ellis of the TCPA said:

“For me, a national spatial plan is essential. Almost every other advanced economy has one”.


It was hardly surprising that the committee concluded that the

“Government should revisit the merits of a spatial plan for England”.


Of course, much has happened since then, but we still have no form of detailed spatial plan. However, we are delighted that the Government have committed to publishing a land use framework, as they call it, by the end of the year. We know that your Lordships’ Land Use in England Committee recently considered the issue and welcomed the Government’s intention to produce a framework. As we have heard, there was some uncertainty as to whether the Government’s intentions were to have a framework that covered the full range of demands on the use of land, from food production and energy resilience to nature recovery strategies and access to green and open spaces.

The committee’s proposals are neatly summarised in Amendments 504G and 504F: to establish a land use commission

“to prepare and publish for consideration by Government the draft land use framework for England”,

and a requirement that the Government

“lay a land use framework for England before Parliament”.

Amendment 504F may seem redundant, given the Government’s commitment to bring forward such a framework this year, but it seems vitally important that we have something like this on the statute book pretty quickly to ensure that the commitments given by the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, earlier this week are followed through. It is not just a framework. The amendment is very clear that the output must cover the full range of demands on the use of land, and that, crucially, an exemplar list, while not exhaustive, is included in the amendment. However, it goes further, making it clear that numerous bodies, including other government departments as well as Defra, local authorities and relevant public bodies, should be involved and that there should be wide-scale consultation. It is important to set these down very clearly.

It may be that the Government will agree with such an idea in some form or other and bring forward some wording on a similar line. If there is to be further consideration of the wording, there is one other issue which I hope will be included. It would allay some fears if it was made clear that the proposed framework that the Government are going to bring forward is not seen as replacing, or even being in conflict with, the current planning regime. Your Lordships’ land use committee was very clear about this. It said:

“It is not suggested, and we do not propose, that the land use framework sets any distinct housing development policy or replaces the planning system in any way. Nevertheless, the framework cannot ignore the interaction of housing with land use and so it must incorporate some acknowledgement of this”.


I hope that it may be possible, at least in the Minister’s response. Further paragraphs in the report suggest a way forward, but the clear statement that the land use framework does not replace the planning system may be a useful addition to the amendment.

It is clear—and the situation is clearly changing—that the Government are not yet persuaded of the need for Amendment 504G, which proposes, as we have heard, the establishment of a land use commission. It is worth recalling that when the Government responded, quite recently, to the land use committee’s report, they said,

“we disagree with the proposal for a separate Land Use Commission”.

There has obviously been some shift, and it is good to hear that. Perhaps the Minister can at least confirm that she agrees that the Government have not yet been persuaded—not that they disagree. That is quite a significant shift in the language.

I genuinely hope that the Government will take this on board. A separate commission, as the amendment proposes, with commissioners from a wide range of backgrounds and experiences, will also ensure other things: that relevant data is collected on a regular basis, dialogue between all involved parties continues, advice and best practice is widely shared, an annual report is presented to Parliament for debate, and modifications to the framework can be proposed to the Government. These are all important things to ensure that we do not do it just once and then forget it, and that we ensure that we can move forwards.