Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Stunell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 20th February 2023 Lords Chamber

I ask the Government to consider very carefully where we have got to and where they are taking us. The Bill gives them the opportunity to say, “Yes, we acknowledge the fact that, in effect, there is home rule—something completely different from what English councils have—and we will work with the legislatures. We will agree what should be done in a way that will show that this Government are capable and enthusiastic about maintaining the union by accepting we have devolution, where policy powers in these significant areas covered by the Bill were transferred.” That is what my amendment seeks to do.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas. They have laid some very important foundations for my Amendment 29 which, I think, will take noble Lords into territory they have not explored before.

I want to make it clear that we strongly support the principle of levelling up. We welcome the analysis in last year’s White Paper as it strongly supports the case that many of us have been pressing for over decades: when policies and state investment are shackled to rigid short-term cost-benefit analysis, the rich will routinely get the investment and the poor will automatically lose out. I illustrated that by reference to investment in green jobs in the last debate. The White Paper identifies the situation in this way:

“In the UK, the depletion of civic institutions, including local government, has gone hand-in-hand with deteriorating economic and social performance.”


I agree with the authors of the White Paper’s analysis of what institutional and government changes are needed, which is to strengthen the civic institutions—including local government—as an important step to reversing the deterioration in economic and social performance.

We also support what the White Paper says about the setting of time-bound targets and long-term missions to achieve them. We strongly believe that those missions must be properly established, monitored and held in common democratic ownership—a point that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, was expressing in slightly different language. That, I believe, is exactly in tune with the spirit and the words of the White Paper but, sadly, it is completely missing from the Bill itself. This amendment is designed to improve the Bill and, in turn, make levelling up a reality, not just a slogan. The focus of Amendment 29 is, therefore, on the missions and how they are to be established and by what process they should, over time, evolve. We heard from the Minister earlier on—for that matter, it was reinforced by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley—that the view in Whitehall is that it should be controlled, managed, described, evaluated and monitored by Whitehall. The way we are proceeding rather tends to suggest that this is the prevailing consensus, though I hope not.

People are frequently heard to say that the missions are set out in the Bill. In fact, the Minister—in what was, no doubt, a slip of the tongue—said exactly that in the previous debate, though she did subsequently refer to the White Paper. The Bill and the White Paper are not the same documents. This House can change the Bill; whether we do remains to be seen but we can, in principle. We cannot change the White Paper and the missions are set out in the White Paper, not the Bill. There are six capitals set out, and the missions enhance the six capitals; then there are five pillars which are what the 12 missions stand on. I have not actually seen the drawing that shows how this all goes together. Anyway, neither the missions, the capitals nor the pillars are in this Bill.

It has also often been said, sometimes by the Front Bench opposite, that the missions will powerfully hold this and future Governments to account. No, they will not; the Bill says that Ministers can chop and change the missions when they see fit. So far, not one of the 12 missions in the White Paper has been approved by Parliament. Indeed, come the autumn, changed circumstances—it might be poll ratings, it might be a new Prime Minister, it might be almost anything these days—might dictate that additional missions should be promulgated, or existing ones cut or modified.

At that time, noble Lords may or may not be allowed to debate the statement when it comes forward, but we certainly will not be invited to amend it, and nor will any of the democratic institutions around the four nations be invited to do so either, notwithstanding what the White Paper has to say. On page 100 it says:

“Local decision making has tended to generate better local economic performance, as local policies are tailored to local needs. There is an empirical correlation between the degree of decentralisation of decision making and … disparities in economic performance”.


I am sure that noble Lords fully understand what that quotation means, but it says in plain words that if you give the decisions to local people, you will get better economic performance.

Unfortunately, that insight has not yet led anybody in Whitehall to consider asking those local decision-makers what missions might work best in their circumstances. That is despite the White Paper setting out one of the five pillars—we have not heard much about the five pillars until a couple of minutes ago—on which this all stands. One of them, set out on page 105, is,

“greater empowerment of local government decision-making”.

I hope that the abrupt reversal of the approach set out in the White Paper with what is actually provided to us in Clause 1 is more a result of traditional Whitehall hubris than of a traditional bait-and-switch trick, where we are all so longingly looking at the promised land of levelling up that we fall right into the hole of rigid centralisation in front of us. That is what the mechanism in Clause 1 does.

Whether it is pride or trickery, the fact of the matter is that it is absolutely contrary to the spirit of the White Paper and its recognition that local decision-making produces better results. This amendment is designed to get back to the words and the spirit of the White Paper and to embed the missions in a democratic countrywide consensus that can survive rotating chairs around the Cabinet table or the perils of the ballot box.

I was not at all impressed by the argument advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, that an incoming Labour Government would want all the reins in their hands. Of course they would; anybody running the Government in Whitehall would always want to have all the decisions at their command, but this will succeed or fail on whether it has broad democratic countrywide consensus. It will not work if it has autocratic, top-down authoritarian delivery and decision-making.

The White Paper helps me again, because it reports on page 111 that out of 35 OECD countries in 2016, the UK ranked 14th in sub-national share of total government investment. Our main comparator countries have twice to four times larger a share of their total government investment spent through the sub-national Governments and regions of those countries. With apologies to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, I say that, in this phraseology, sub-national includes Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A direct consequence of that unhealthy small share of investment coming via sub-national decision-makers is that most new initiatives are led by central government, because it has all the money. Of course, that includes how it is intended to be under Clause 1 as drafted, setting all the missions and targets by ministerial diktat and without the opportunity for amendment. They are the missions which everyone else—every other democratic institution in the United Kingdom—is to be beholden to for the next seven years without so much as a by your leave from this Parliament.

Everyone recognises that centralisation of initiatives has not worked out well. Historically, there are many examples. The White Paper says on page 111 that joining up central government policies with the needs of places “has been unusual”. You can say that again. One size does not fit all. The White Paper points out that one size fitting all is not a recipe for success.

The White Paper goes on to say that it is even worse than that:

“In the UK, where policy is … set centrally, silos can hinder coordination.”


There are so many government silos, I have lost count. There are probably 30; it might be more. Of course, those silos fire random policies out at high speed, with very poor guidance systems, and spatter the whole country.