My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate, who has made some powerful points. Where to start? Well may one ask. There is certainly no shortage of challenges. The area is a real minefield. I suppose the right place to start is with the Bill, although it may not necessarily be the right place to finish.
I first thank my noble friend the Minister. Let us spare a thought for her; she has to grapple with a 400-page Bill, quite apart from all the additional documents and memoranda—and with Members of this House. She has set out the case very fairly and clearly and will approach the issues with characteristic hardworking determination.
The Bill is the right place to start and, as someone who believes very much in devolution, I think devolution is the right and wise approach. Indeed, the right reverend Prelate himself lives in, and is representative of, an area that now has devolution and which is all
the better for that. People are better served by it, often with better solutions, arrived at nearer to people and often more effectively, be it Manchester, the West Midlands, Teesside, Tyneside or, indeed, West Yorkshire. It is the right process. I also very often support the combining of county authorities.
As I have said, the Bill is a starting place—this is a process—but clearly, it offers just a procedural framework. Given what we have seen during the pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis, the idea that we will solve some of these problems with a statue of JB Priestley and a sense of place is for the birds. We need a better-performing economy and better public services, and certainly, we need to concentrate on housing. I hope we will be able to approach the Bill in that spirit, in respect of both private and social housing. We need more of it, and urgently. That will happen only with those magic words: “a budget”.
This is not down to the Minister. The Minister will perform and do a good job on the Bill, but we need to look beyond the Bill to how we deliver our country out of the crises and challenges we face—housing, the economy, and the health service. This Bill is not an obvious candidate for addressing the health service but, when we talk about levelling up, people are looking to our health service, thinking about how it served us during the pandemic and wondering how we will get ourselves out of this god-awful mess. That has to be with a budget to enable the health service to face up to some of the challenges of the 21st century—treatments, vaccines and so on. Similarly, on skills, many of our youngsters are still grappling with problems from the pandemic; that area too needs resourcing.
I hope the Bill is able to do something about the challenge of climate change, as well as housing. It has always been a mystery to me—and not just me—why we do not do more on the insulation of old buildings. It would be a boost for a green economy, for energy security, for our housing stock and for jobs. In short, it would be popular with everyone. No wonder the Government do not want to touch it. It really is extraordinary, so I hope we will be able to do something about that too.
The Bill is welcome. The Minister is working hard and should be congratulated on her efforts, but it is about not just what happens here—although that it important—but what happens elsewhere. We have to keep that within our sights and make a real difference to the lives of people in our country today.
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