My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 6 in my name, but first, I point out that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has raised a number of important issues of process and timing. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, because Parliament will have to work around them. The noble Lord pointed out that that it is now 17 months since the White Paper was published and that the way things are, with a general election pending, we are likely to hear more about the levelling-up missions in 2025. As I understood it, he said that it would be useful if Parliament could debate the missions earlier, and he is right.
However, I do not agree with the noble Lord regarding my Amendment 6, on which he poured a little cold water. It is actually about indicators, not missions: it is about how you measure, through missions and metrics, how successful the Government have actually been in delivering on their objectives.
I remind the House as we start Report that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. My amendment would define the criteria that should be used to evaluate the success or otherwise of levelling-up policies across all government departments. I emphasise the obvious point that that levelling up is not just for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities to pursue. Indeed, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, said in the previous group, we must tie funding to the levelling-up missions across Whitehall. By implication, that is fundamental, because all departments are supposed to be driving levelling up, so we need to be able to assess how successful they have been in doing that.
My amendment states:
“A statement of levelling-up missions must include an assessment of geographical disparities in the United Kingdom, broken down by local authority and by postcode area and council ward”.
Let me be clear: “postcode area” means the first three or four digits of a postcode, not the second half. Otherwise, I do not see how, if we talk only in terms of regions of England, we ensure that all parts of England are being considered for those outcomes. We have to cover urban, rural and coastal areas—all parts of England. We therefore have to have systems that will produce the evidence we need.
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In Amendment 6 I have identified what assessment there should be of geographical disparities. I have given 11 indicators, the first of which is
“levels of public spending, both capital and revenue”.
This might, for example, explain why the regions of England can receive significantly different sums of public spending, notably the east Midlands, which is
the lowest region in England per capita. I am not sure how many people understand that levels of public funding can vary significantly between the English regions, and in some cases, it is not obvious why the figures are as they are. However, having a requirement to explain levels of public funding, both capital and revenue, as an indicator would help to inform public debate.
My amendment also addresses
“levels of private sector inward investment … levels of disposable household income … levels of employment, unemployment, and economic inactivity … differences in housing supply and tenure … levels of educational attainment … numbers of young people not in education, employment or training … levels of child poverty … success of government policies in reducing health inequalities … the availability and cost of public transport, and … levels of fuel poverty.”
Let me take the latter as an example of what I am trying to get at. The Minister may tell me that I have missed it, but I cannot find any mention of fuel poverty anywhere in the document on the 12 missions, the headline metrics and the supporting metrics. Yet many people are restricted in what kind of fuel they can use. Competition may not be as strong in a rural area, say, as it is in an urban area, and so on. We need more than just missions and metrics; we need clear indicators so that the general public can understand better what the achievement of levelling up could amount to. If we have a base with those 11 indicators, we will then get the basis for a trend analysis over a number of years.
The levelling up White Paper made it clear that the Government want
“to end the geographical inequality which is such a striking feature of the UK”.
I agree with that, as I think almost all Members of the House would. The question is: how will we know that we have succeeded? Having a mission and metrics is not quite the same as having headline indicators that tell us whether we are going in the right direction in each of the areas I have tried to identify.
This is a very important amendment, because it defines geographical indicators that would help us to know whether levelling up across all departments in Whitehall is a success. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply. The issue is clearly complicated a bit by what the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, said earlier, but I was not convinced by the Minister’s reply when we discussed this in Committee and I should give notice that I am minded at this stage to test the opinion of the House.