I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend. I am coming back to a point that she raised a moment ago on the Levelling Up Advisory Council, which I mentioned on Monday but did not at that time get an answer on whether it had met, what it discussed, what it said and to whom. I now discover that on 14 February a Minister in the department wrote to Clive Betts, the Select Committee chair, to say that the council had met several times, had met Ministers and was engaging in a research programme. It was interesting, because the letter said that the council had
“engaged in discussions on levelling up policy with stakeholders externally, including members attending an event with Carsten Schneider … Minister of State for East Germany and Equivalent Living Conditions, hosted by the German Embassy”.
Might the council engage at all with Parliament? We are told that the council has been around for a year, but I have had no engagement—no one from the council has come anywhere near me to suggest that it might talk to us about the levelling-up missions.