Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th July 2023 Lords Chamber

I therefore welcome the opportunity that the Bill gives to ensure that all government levelling-up policies take into account rural-proofing constraints, such as poor public transport, restrictive planning, geographic isolation, access to skills training, lack of digital connectivity and lack of affordable housing. For too long, those living in rural communities have lacked consideration in policy-making. The Government should take the view that rural-proofing can be an effective tool in assisting levelling up. The Bill could provide that by the adoption of this amendment.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the debate on these amendments. In doing so, I declare my financial services and technology interests as set out in the register.

We are talking about levelling up, which can really be reduced to enabling human talent, yet two of the key enablers of that talent get scarce a mention in the many pages of the Bill: regional finance, and all the new technologies that I believe can do so much to help in this overall and overarching levelling-up mission. That is why I have brought back Amendment 14 on the underuse of robots throughout manufacturing, the country and our production processes.

My question to my noble friend the Minister is simply this: when we consider the UK’s robots per 10,000 of the workforce, the issues we have on growth, which would lead to levelling up, and the multiple roles—economic, social and psychological—in which robots are already being deployed around the world in comparable nations and economies, does she recognise that we need a robotics task force? We need to unleash a community of robots to assist in this levelling-up mission, which will be of benefit right across the United Kingdom. With the ability to deploy robots into the economy and society, it can be done in a far quicker and far more economically, socially and psychologically effective way than some of the measures currently set out in the Bill.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have one amendment in this group, Amendment 12. It asks for an evaluation of progress towards each mission from an independent advisory council, to include the variances of delivery between different nations and regions—the geographical disparities that we have heard about from other noble Lords in this debate.

As I said in Committee, where we had a similar amendment, we believe that independent oversight enables good governance and good government. Clear, trusted and impartial analysis makes for better policy decisions. It delivers far better outcomes, and it can be only a good thing for our democracy. An independent body such as this can also ensure that progress in the development of the missions is being monitored on the road to being achieved. One of the things that concerned noble Lords throughout Committee and now on Report is that it is all very well having missions written down, but how do you achieve them and how do you monitor that progress? We already have good examples of independent scrutiny within government. The Office for Budget Responsibility is one example, and the Select Committees that sit here and in the other place also do independent scrutiny and provide advice and recommendations.

I am aware that in Committee the Minister said in answer to my proposals on an independent advisory council that scrutiny is in place through the Levelling Up Advisory Council. I appreciate that such a council could provide scrutiny, but where is the proper, clear independence in where it sits and how it reports? On the understanding that the Minister is going to mention that again, I ask her what reassurance she can provide that it is the Government’s clear intention that this council will be fully independent and that that independence can be demonstrated and achieved.

I will comment on some of the other amendments in this group, and I thank noble Lords who have introduced them today. When he moved Amendment 2, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, made some extremely good points about the timescales. When we look at the length of time before we see some of these reports, things can change an awful lot, not just with government but with policy and priorities. We were both involved in the debates on the Procurement Bill, for our sins, and we made progress on some of these kinds of issues in that Bill. I hope that the Minister has listened carefully to some of the arguments put forward by the noble Lord, because it is important that Parliament gets the opportunity to consider the statement and to have a look at whether it thinks it is the correct statement for the time or whether changes need to be made—or it needs to be started over again, for that matter. The noble Lord made very important points.

I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Shipley. It is of course important for Parliament to be able to debate the missions, but he came back to the question of how successful government is on delivery, or otherwise for that matter. That is one of the core areas of concern coming through in our debates when we look at missions and even the term “levelling up”.

The noble Lord also made the important point that this is about cross-departmental delivery, priorities and funding. We all know that government likes to work in silos, in individual departments; it is not straightforward. Even when I was in the shadow Cabinet—so looking at this from the shadow perspective—it was not easy to get cross-departmental working in the long term, although you could do it on short-term issues. This will be critical if we are going to deliver, so his amendment looking at the indicators of how we can achieve cross-departmental working is really important. I assure him that, if he wishes to test the opinion of the House on this matter, he will have our support.

I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. He very clearly laid out why his amendment is needed. As someone who has spent their life living in rural communities and was brought up in a rural community, he does not have to convince me. Every Government seems to talk about rural proofing to ensure that rural areas are considered, yet the concept as it has been formatted, both previously and now, has clearly failed. Had it been successful, we would not have so many existing challenges facing our rural communities.

We know that rural communities are being hit hard. My area in Cumbria is a good example of this: young people leave to seek better opportunities, older people move in to retire and then you have what they call “super ageing” rural communities without so many young people to work in them. It is therefore harder to deliver care and support for an ageing community. We also know that there have been cuts to rural police services, and we hear that houses in rural areas are less affordable, yet these areas have twice the proportion of officially “non-decent” homes as compared with suburban residential areas.

We talk about rural proofing in relation to the impact of policies on rural areas. I think we are looking at it from the wrong end of the telescope. Policies should be developed for rural communities in the first place, reflecting the challenges that we face. If are going to rural-proof properly, we need to do both. I have probably said enough on this, but I am sure noble Lords have gathered that, if the noble Lord, Lord Foster, wishes to test the opinion of the House, we will be very happy to support his amendment.

Finally, on the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, as we said in Committee, he is absolutely right to raise the potential of robotics to assist with the levelling-up missions. It is an opportunity that we should not miss, and which could also provide jobs in this country—much-needed jobs in skilled work. I hope that the Government will work further with the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, on how this could be achieved.