Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stevens of Birmingham Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

This has been an excellent debate on something I feel strongly about. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

The contributions we have heard in Committee this afternoon get to the heart of the question as to whether the Bill, in practice, will have real-world impact. The discussions we have just been having on healthy life expectancy and homes really illustrate that general question mark. I suggest to your Lordships that two ways in which the Bill potentially could have impact would be, first, if, as amended, it forced a focus on the means by which the stated missions would be achieved; and, secondly, if it forced a more horizontal view across public policy to show how different aims connected in a shared way.

I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on healthy life expectancy. He quoted the position that I think existed in 2000s, when health life expectancy in this country was growing by about five hours a day. That is an extraordinary fact when you think about it. It means that, since the House has been sitting this afternoon, your Lordships would have gained about half an hour extra of life expectancy. Sadly, that no longer obtains, and the slightly draining sensation noble Lords may have had this afternoon more correctly corresponds to our physiological prospects.

The question is: does this Bill, in any way, in setting missions for healthy life expectancy, force a debate within the country and in government about the means by which you would actually do anything about it? My concern is that even having a mission and metrics potentially on the face of the Bill does not get you to the skin of the onion, peeling away the chain of causation by which you would reverse the unfortunate position we now find ourselves in. Looking at the amendments in this group and throughout the Bill, the question for me is: do they drive a focus on what real-world implementation would need to be to get the result we all want?

In relation to this, I was with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, on her point about 250,000 homes and the need to deal with the supply side. I thought “My goodness, this is a speech from the noble Baroness I can actually agree with”—until she spoiled it at the end with gratuitous remarks about how we do not need green planning for housing, when of course that is precisely what we need. That is not the impediment to housebuilding in this country. We would be committing a historic error if we embarked on the necessary scale of housing construction without designing in congenial neighbourhoods and healthy lifestyles. The fact is that, in many developments that have been built, we are designing in, for example, car dependency. Your Lordships may be astonished to be reminded that, according to one estimate a few years ago, on average in this country we spend more time each week on the toilet than we do exercising. We are not going to change that fact just by the recitation of that rather startling insight; we are going to change it by doing precisely the opposite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, suggested.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I want to know who measured that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

There may be more questions but I am coming on to some of that.

That is why my department has established a new spatial data unit, transforming the way in which the UK Government gather, store and manipulate subnational data so that it underpins transparent and open policy-making and delivers decisions. This will include improving how we collate and report on UK Government spend and outcomes, including building strong capabilities on data visualisation and insights. Working closely with other departments, the unit will consider differences between geographical areas, such as regions, counties, councils, council wards and so on, according to the needs and objectives of specific missions or policy areas. I am more than happy to have a teach-in about this, as it is important.

[Lord Stevens of Birmingham (CB)]

Is the Minister willing to consider her department publishing for each local authority area the gap between the need for and availability of adult social care? That data is available already, and if the department started to publish it, it would build confidence across the House that the department would advance this agenda without the need for placing requirements in the Bill.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I would like to go back on that specific issue because we would need to work with the Department of Health and Social Care and get its agreement. We are quite early in the establishment of the unit in order to do that, but I will take back that issue and come back to the noble Lord.