Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Lord Walney Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 17th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Walney (CB)]

I know that your Lordships will be uplifted to know that that was not in fact the valedictory contribution from the noble Baroness, Lady Harris—as was so cruelly suggested by the Minister at the outset.

I declare my registered interest as the chair of the Purpose Business Coalition, which has developed 14 levelling-up goals which bear a striking—some might say suspicious—resemblance to the 12 missions referenced in the Bill. As noble Lords would expect, I really welcome the fact that they are included in this legislation, but, unlike some of the contributors, my instinct is to think that the balance between accountability, scrutiny and levels of flexibility is probably about right.

Let us look at some of the missions. They are not arbitrary; some are very specific. For example, the skills mission seeks to enable 200,000 more people by 2030 successfully to complete

“skills training annually, driven by 80,000 more people completing courses in the lowest skilled areas.”

That is the kind of level of detail that an incoming future Government—and even the Minister today—might want the flexibility to reassess after a year or so, so I hope that noble Lords, particularly those on the Opposition Front Bench, will carefully reflect on the amendments they want to bring in this area.

Of course, the wider and more important point is that no legal commitment will deliver the outcomes in the missions, in and of themselves, no matter how tightly the legislation is drafted. The commitment to eradicate child poverty, put into law by the Child Poverty Act 2010, was insufficient to deliver that goal; and making net zero legally binding will prove insufficient unless the Government of the day make a conscious, concerted and sustained commitment to underpin the legal requirements with a sustained programme of action. As legislators, we naturally tend to believe that passing legislation, in and of itself, will drive change. It may be helpful, and it is often necessary, but it is often insufficient to do that.

What my noble friend Lord Stevens and others said about the levelling up White Paper was absolutely right: it is an excellent analysis of the framework of geographical inequality and, broadly, the levers to fix it. When it was published in February last year, it was obvious that the levers required to deliver the missions of change were not yet there, but it felt like a commitment to focus the wider lever of machinery of government on those commitments could be real and genuine. Nearly 12 months on, I do not think that even the Government’s most ardent advocates would candidly say that they are sufficiently focused to corral the different levers at their disposal to reverse the decades-long increase in inequality between regions—not just levelling up between north and south, important though that is, but, as several noble Lords have mentioned today, inequality within regions. An example is the difference between the productivity levels in Manchester, which has done an extraordinary job in bringing its productivity level up to the national average—the only area outside London and the south-east to do so—and the productivity levels in the areas of Cumbria that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, talked about and that I and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, had the privilege of representing in the other place. It is a really stark difference.

Increasing empowerment and spreading the powers of devolution more widely outside the city regions are welcome measures, but they will be insufficient in and of themselves unless there is a much greater government focus on understanding that the issue is not just the powers but the lack of capacity that has developed over decades. That will not be reversed simply by handing over powers and letting government get on with it and compete with the big cities. We saw that level of commitment in the White Paper, but it does not seem to be there at present, and I hope that the Government will reflect on that.