Queen’s Speech

Baroness Stroud Excerpts

Monday 17th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stroud (Con) [V]]

I start by adding my congratulations to the noble Lords, Lord Coaker and Lord Morse, on their excellent maiden speeches. I add my support to Her Majesty’s gracious Speech and congratulate the Government on their visionary leadership.

I have been heartened by the commitment to publishing a levelling-up White Paper that will set out bold new interventions to improve livelihoods and opportunities throughout the UK. This is a crucial agenda to pursue, but how do we know what policies will deliver the levelling up that we seek? How are the Government defining levelling up? How are they measuring success or identifying what levers need to be pulled, and in which communities? How do we understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of our communities so that we know where to put the energy and focus to level up? As far as I can find, the Government have not yet set out an established baseline against which to assess the effectiveness of this ambitious focus. But because this agenda is so important to the British people, last week the Legatum Institute—I refer to my entry in the register of interests—launched a tool to measure the success of the levelling-up agenda: a UK prosperity index to provide the baseline against which to measure progress and success.

With calls for regional renewal across the political spectrum, the moment is right for a new and holistic assessment of the UK’s strengths and weaknesses, which will help point the way towards true prosperity. Building prosperity—levelling up—is much more than bridges and trains, bricks and mortar, and material wealth. It reaches beyond the financial into the political, the judicial, the well-being and character of a nation; it is about creating an environment where people are able to reach their full potential. A community is prosperous when it has an open economy, an inclusive society with strong formal and informal institutions, and empowered people who are healthy, educated and safe.

If the country is to make the most of this reset moment, we will need to unlock prosperity and level up across all our regions and communities. In many ways, the UK is well positioned to do just this—it is one of the most prosperous countries in the world, ranking 13th out of 167 nations. Our national institutions are robust and we have one of the world’s strongest economies, powered by innovators and a world-class education system. This is an amazing country and we have been making great strides in many of the areas that already dominate the debate about levelling up, including infrastructure and the natural environment.

But there are also clear challenges. While levels of prosperity in the UK remain much higher than in other nations and increased during the first half of the 2010s, in more recent years this prosperity has been stagnating. This underlines the need for a more detailed assessment of what is going well and what is not. Interestingly, this stagnation is not driven by factors that currently feature much in the political debate—for example, infrastructure. Rather, we are being held back by declining enterprise conditions and weak health systems that were simply not pandemic ready, and we have insufficiently created the environment in which our family life and relationships have been able to thrive and feel valued.

All our concern has been for the economy, but we should have been even more focused on who we are becoming as a people at a local community level. For example, the index reveals that the West Midlands non-metropolitan region is the sixth most prosperous in the UK, with strong governance, low crime rates and good conditions for business. However, the region performs poorly on the strength of social capital and quality of health and education. This is where the opportunity for levelling up lies. The index reveals that London is the fourth most prosperous region of the UK, with a strong economy, good infrastructure, a supportive environment for business and good education. However, the city’s prosperity is undermined by declining safety and security, failure to build inclusive and connected communities, and the highest rates of poverty in the UK. This is an example of where the levelling-up opportunity lies.

To really become a prosperous nation, we need to understand these issues by local area and by community. This is why the UK prosperity index is such an important tool for the levelling-up agenda. Britain needs to become a place where we strengthen our local communities and truly value the family; where we care for one another, investing in our mental and physical well-being; and where we can innovate and build businesses that are not stifled by unnecessary regulation.

If this hugely important levelling-up agenda is to be effective it needs a baseline, an accountability tool. Will my noble friend the Minister agree to meet me to understand the UK prosperity index, a tool for levelling up, and how it can be used to measure the great strides forward this Government will make as they commit to levelling up the nation?