Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Lords Chamber

I urge the Minister, who I regret to say probably will not agree to adopt Amendment 57, to at least acknowledge that there is a problem and say that the Government will work on it. If the Government are committed to a further round of levelling-up funding—I believe they have already announced that there will be another round—will she give the most careful thought to how she can respond to this debate and influence her colleagues as to they can return some functionality and trust in this broken system as they set out on the third round?

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

My Lords, one of the reasons why I and my colleagues have been so determined that we define geographies, missions and metrics as clearly as we can is that those three criteria should define where the levelling-up funding goes. I totally support Amendment 57 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, for that very reason. Unless those criteria are clearly defined, the Government have the ability to move the money around to those areas they want to have some funding. Unfortunately, that has been the experience to date.

I have raised before and will repeat again, because it is very important, the fact that the House of Commons Library carried out an analysis of the round 1 and round 2 funds for levelling-up bids. It found that, in the first round, the following criteria were set out: economic recovery and growth, improved transport connectivity and the need for regeneration. The majority of that funding, though not all of it, did indeed go to priority 1 local authority areas, which were categorised by the Government.

When it came to round 2, the Government changed the rules, as reported in the House of Commons Library, so that they would move some authorities into priority 1. One of those authorities that moved into priority 1 was Richmondshire in North Yorkshire, which then got another round of funding from these levelling-up bids.

I have to say exactly what my noble friend has just said. When that happens, you lose trust that this is going to be a fair system, and there is a loss of credibility in the claim that what the Government are intending to do is to focus their energy with a laser-like focus on those areas of the country that, by their own statistics, are in desperate need of considerable amounts of government funding. I do not mean just one-off funding, such as in Richmondshire in north Yorkshire to build a pavilion in a park; that does very little for people who are in need of skills, better-paid jobs and the ability to travel to jobs, whose health is poor and who cannot get to national health services easily—it does nothing for them.

So one of the reasons why I was so pleased to see this amendment was that it talks about having long-term and strategic distribution of levelling-up funds. What the Government seem to be doing at the minute is spreading the funding jam across the country to suit their particular needs, rather than putting a significant amount of funding into certain areas to give them a real long-term boost to achieve the missions that we have debated long and hard today and on Monday.

I will again repeat that a town in my area has had City Challenge money, single regeneration round 1, neighbourhood renewal funding, communities funding—and it has now got some levelling-up funding. I have to tell noble Lords that the folk who live there are still living in desperate circumstances, with low-paid jobs, poor housing, poor health and low skills. All that funding has not shifted the dial much at all—we have lovely road signs declaring what town people are in, we have a nice sculpture and a nice market square—but the folk are still living in poor-quality housing with low skills and no particularly great job prospects.

That is what we need to be doing, and that is what we are not doing, so I am hoping that the Minister is going to stand up and say, “This is a really good idea and we’re going to accept the amendment”.

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[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I thank the noble Baroness for that and for the work she is doing in encouraging the private sector to get involved.

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

We have had a bit of a discussion about priority areas 1, 2 and 3. I would be grateful if the Minister could write and let us know what criteria the Government use to categorise areas and how, between the first and second round, some moved into category 1. I do not know whether any moved down. It would be useful to have that information.

[Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)]

I will be very happy to provide that information.