Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department has taken to improve social mobility in each of the last seven years.

My Department is driving forward the devolution agenda in England. Across government we are making huge strides towards rebalancing the economy and empowering local government. 33 per cent of England’s population now has a directly elected mayor, with new powers to create jobs, improve skills, build homes and make it easier to travel. Across the whole of England we are devolving over £9 billion between 2015 and 2021 to Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) through our Growth Deal programme to spend on their priorities for growth. We have also agreed City and Growth Deals in Scotland and Wales and are in the process of negotiating more, including in Northern Ireland, making sure all parts of the UK benefit from the benefits of devolution.

Our place-based Industrial Strategy sets out a bold vision for the future of the UK. We are strengthening the role of LEPs and agreeing new local industrial strategies that build on local strengths and deliver on economic opportunities. We have also committed to replacing EU Structural Funds when we have left the EU, delivering the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, which will be aimed at reducing inequalities between communities across all four nations.

My Department is also fixing the broken housing market, supporting first time buyers to get on to the housing ladder while ensuring the housing market works for all parts of our community, getting more of the right homes get built in the places people want to live. The reforms my Department has announced put us on track to raise housing supply by the end of the current Parliament to its highest annual level since 1970.

The Troubled Families Programme commits £920 million from my Department to make sure local services intervene early to support families with multiple problems, including for example those affected by domestic abuse, parental conflict, drug, alcohol or mental health problems and where children are in need of help. This programme makes sure children are in education, parents in work and families have better outcomes and are able to be socially mobile.