My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I agree strongly with what the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe, said in her comments on housing. As my noble friend Lady Thornhill said, levelling up is a herculean task that we should all get behind. I therefore welcome the Bill, in so far as it could start to spread power away from Whitehall if properly implemented and expanded, and could help to drive further regeneration and more skilled jobs. However, I fear that the Bill as it stands will not achieve the Government’s stated levelling-up objective to
“grow the economy in the places that need it most”.
It will need substantial amendment to do that. There is at least to be a statutory requirement to report on progress with the 12 levelling-up missions, and I welcome that. But I hope the Minister can confirm that it will include the scale of private sector investment into those areas.
The three things that most people want from a Government are a decent home, a secure job paying a fair income and a rewarding education, and yet the number of households renting in England and Wales has doubled over the last 20 years, as revealed in the 2021 census. Inflation today is reducing the value of pay. The cost of childcare is too high for many families. ONS data has shown recently that disadvantaged pupils in schools in the north do less well than their peers in the south. Transport poverty is growing in rural areas as public transport services are cut. Local authorities are being forced to bid for extra money for key public services because the money is no longer in their baseline. This is not levelling up.
The levelling-up Bill is effectively a planning Bill. On housing, the test for the Government is whether it leads to the building of more homes, particularly homes for social rent. The Bill may help, but we will need to examine the detail of the infrastructure levy to assess that further. As our briefing from Shelter has said,
“the current planning system prioritises maximum delivery of unaffordable homes that can be sold to the highest bidder, instead of well-planned developments with homes that people can genuinely afford.”
As we have heard, there is currently a consultation on national planning policy. It ends in early March. Will the Government give us feedback before Report? We should have it.
Part 2 of the Bill is highly centralist. It does not offer devolution; it offers delegation and decentralisation, in which mayors and combined authorities compete against each other to win support from Ministers and the Treasury. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all have devolved powers, but the Bill will not treat the constituent parts of England in the same way, and I do not understand why. England needs greater fiscal devolution. No Government can run England, with its population of 56 million people, out of Whitehall, and yet England will continue to be run out of Whitehall if the Bill is enacted in its current form.
We need to provide proper empowerment to the geographical areas of England, following the example of the Basque country in Spain, where public and private sectors have worked in partnership with trade unions and the voluntary sector to drive prosperity in their region. It could be done in the UK as we build capacity, but it will not happen with the degree of centralised control by Whitehall that the Bill proposes. Strangely, the Bill is far too centralist even at a local level, so we should look very carefully in Committee at the powers that will lie in the hands of mayors and at how mayors will be scrutinised on the decisions they take. There is an assembly in London but there is no such structure elsewhere in England—why is that?
I accept that the Government cannot do everything, but they can drive more and better jobs, build homes that people can afford to live in, do more in education and training, deliver better transport, and lead proper devolution throughout England with greater fiscal powers to generate growth beyond the limited financial powers planned by the Bill.
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