Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Report (1st Day)

That the Report be now received.

My Lords, I beg to move.

My Lords, before we begin Report, I want to make some points to draw the House’s attention to our concerns about the Government’s approach to the proper and timely legislative scrutiny of this Bill.

First, when we received the Bill into this House and prepared for Second Reading back in January, I and others were surprised to see that it contained three chapters that had not been scrutinised in the other place but had been added in after it had moved on to here. Then, following our debate in Committee, ahead of Report and with no prior warning, the Government added in a whole new schedule—nine pages in length—along with further amendments on childminding provisions, and altered the Long Title to reflect this.

I know that the Minister understands my concerns, and I thank her for arranging a meeting at short notice last week to discuss this. Can she now confirm, as we agreed in that meeting, that Committee rules will be used for the debate on the childcare amendments and any amendments to them on Report, and that, if deemed necessary, amendments will be accepted at Third Reading on this part of the Bill alone?

Finally, on Friday evening I had an email from the department apologising for the late tabling of further amendments, apparently to allow substantive discussions with the devolved Administrations prior to tabling as they relate to the devolution settlement and securing legislative consent for the Bill. Late discussions with the devolved Administrations unfortunately seem to have become a regular occurrence, but it would have been helpful if we had been made aware and alerted to any impact on timings in advance.

To be quite clear, I hold the Minister in the highest regard, I am not complaining about her as a Minister and we very much appreciated her apology. However, it greatly concerns me that the department has shown a lack of respect for the need to have proper legislative scrutiny from both Houses if we are to secure legislation of the expected highest standards.

My Lords, I fully endorse the sentiment expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock. It is most unfortunate and not the responsibility of the Minister at all. She has been considerate and helpful with her time and that of her officials throughout our scrutiny of the Bill. Nevertheless, three chapters were added to an already very large Bill after it left the House of Commons, and then more than 150 amendments were tabled last week—some, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, said, late on Friday. Then we find that a whole new schedule on childminding has been added and is so out of scope that the Bill’s Long Title has had to be altered.

The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which is very important legislation to be considered by this House, is already being brought into a bit of disrepute by the addition of chapters, a new section altogether and amendments. I am sure the Minister feels as uncomfortable as we do about the way that this has been dealt with, but I wish to express my concern, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock..

My Lords, I acknowledge that the Government have proposed a number of changes to this Bill ahead of Lords Report and that they deserve proper debate. Our amendments were tabled a week in advance of this stage commencing, as is usual, apart from the limited changes arising directly from our discussions with the devolved Administrations, where it was important to let negotiations conclude.

I have been very willing to meet noble Lords—I thank the noble Baroness opposite for accepting and appreciating that—from all sides of the House to discuss any aspects of the Bill, as have my officials, and I am grateful for the many conversations which we have had over the past week and previously. With a Bill of this complexity, we may not always get our engagement completely right, but our genuine intent has been to keep noble Lords well informed of our proposals, and I apologise once again to the House for any shortcomings in that.

The amendments we have proposed should also be seen in the context of the overall size of the Bill. A number of changes are being made in response to the report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Where substantive additions to the Bill are proposed, principally on childcare, it is only right that we allow time for them to be discussed fully, and I assure the noble Baronesses that we will do that.

Clause 1: Statement of levelling-up missions

Amendment 1

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 6, after “Parliament” insert “within 30 days of the passing of this Act” Member's explanatory statement This amendment would require the statement to be laid within 30 days, meaning the statement could not be laid any later than the deadline for the statement detailing the application process for round three of the Levelling Up Fund which would, under a new Clause after Clause 5 also proposed by Baroness Hayman of Ullock, also have to be laid within 30 days of the Act being passed.

My Lords, I have a number of amendments in this group, all regarding the funding for the levelling-up proposals that the Government have been working on for some time. One of the reasons I have brought this back at this stage is that I was not satisfied with the responses we received in Committee. Since we debated this matter in Committee —I think we started Committee back in February/ March; we seem to have been doing this Bill for a long time—the House of Commons Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee produced a report in May, Funding for Levelling Up. It expresses a number of concerns about the inadequacies of the Government’s method of delivering funding for levelling up, the allocation process and the extent to which different funds are compatible with the needs of communities in the short and long term. The committee also believes it creates several obstacles to delivering success in this area.

One concern that the committee raised in its report is about the lack of data available from DLUHC. DLUHC has conceded that it does not have sufficient data in relation to Whitehall departmental expenditure on the full range of levelling-up funds or on combined authority income or expenditure. Our concern is about how DLUHC can make significant policy decisions in relation to priority areas or funding allocations or even on the measurement of success or failure of this policy of levelling up. How can it achieve its objectives or measure those objectives if it is not given adequate data to support those tasks?

The White Paper commits DLUHC to reducing the requirements to access competitive funding and simplifying the funding landscape, so we are pleased that the department has recently announced measures to simplify the funding landscape for local authorities. However, this must be seen in conjunction with the fact that local authority revenue funding has reduced significantly since 2020.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that introduction. It is my job to speak to Amendment 11 in my name. It has a rather odd objective, which might not be clear from the text: I am trying to help the Government to honour their very welcome commitment to a levelling-up grant of about £48 million which they have offered to the Isles of Scilly Council to supply new vessels for the journey to the mainland. Unfortunately—we discussed this in Committee—new information came to light last week which prompted me to put this amendment down.

As I said, the department offered £48 million to the council on the basis that the council would have control of the fares, the timetable and the freight costs, and would put out to tender the operation of building a ship and the service. Noble Lords will probably be interested to know that Transport Focus did some market research earlier this year, which showed almost unanimous support from the 2,500 islanders for the idea of having a competition to get the most efficient and best value for money service, rather than just continuing with the existing operator, which has been there for many years. Many people think that it needs to be subject to competition.

The operator, the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company, asked whether it could have half of the £48 million without competing in a tender because, it said, it was a very good company. Ministers rejected that, thank goodness, in a very robust way. I could quote from the letter of the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, but I do not think I need to. She and her colleagues are being very supportive of the concept of levelling up to get the best possible deal for the fares and the service quality for passengers and freight for the people who live on the Isles of Scilly.

The trouble is that the existing operator has now announced that it wants to go ahead and finance its own ship, without saying what the fares or the timetable will be. Will it run in the winter, for example? If you are going to raise £48 million or so in the private sector, that will of course put the fares up—but the operator will not tell us what the fares are going to be. Over the weekend, we have done a few calculations of what the fares might be and compared them with those for journeys of a similar distance from the mainland of Scotland to Islay, which some noble Lords will probably know. It is actually quite frightening, so perhaps I might offer a few examples.

I will add one sentence in support of the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. It is critical that we tie the funding of levelling up to the missions, not only for transparency but to work together as a union. I will return to this when we come to government Amendment 9.

My Lords, I will speak briefly to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I have worked in various guises on trying to preserve the sea link between Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly for some 25 years now. The Isles of Scilly Steamship Company is trying to undermine what is absolutely essential but has not been able to happen over 25 years: private funding of that ferry service. I believe that this cannot happen at the moment. Never mind the fares for the future: fiscally, it will not work as a scheme. That means that the money will be lost and, after 25 years, the “Scillonian” will not be replaced and those islanders and their economy will be cut off from the mainland. That is why this amendment is important, and I too hugely thank the Government for the generosity and understanding that they have shown to the islands and west Cornwall in terms of the levelling-up funding.

My Lords, I remind the House of my relevant interests: I am a councillor on Kirklees Council in West Yorkshire and a vice-president of the Local Government Association. This group of amendments focuses on the areas that have benefited, or not, from the initial round of the levelling-up fund. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, there are many examples of levelling-up funds failing to reach those parts that the Government’s own White Paper assesses as being in need of targeted funding over a sustained period.

Throughout our considerations of the Bill, I have said that this vast tome, the levelling up White Paper, should be at the heart of what we are discussing and what the legislation should be doing. As I said in Committee and at Second Reading, it seems to me that the Government have lost their way. The White Paper is not perfect, but it makes a good start in setting out what levelling up should be about. One of the phrases in it is that levelling up should be “broad, deep and long-term”—I agree. Experience of previous iterations of levelling up, from city challenge to neighbourhood renewal and several other policy interventions in between, has demonstrated that scattering plugs of funding is not sufficient to ensure that communities that have not shared in the nation’s prosperity begin to do so. The cycle is not broken without dedicated and long-term investment; that is what the White Paper says. The fundamental approach currently being pursued is inadequate to meet that challenge.

The Government have so far distributed funding via a bidding culture, which, as many noble Lords will know, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands has criticised, calling it a “begging bowl culture”. Such a bidding culture is also costly, in time and money, and leads to many more losers than winners. One example, which I think I have given before, is a major city in Yorkshire investing a six-figure sum in its bid for levelling-up funds only to receive a big fat zero. It seems to me that this process needs a fundamental rethink. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, was right to use the example of the House of Commons Select Committee on this very issue, but the National Audit Office has also raised concerns about the use of levelling-up funds and how the bidding culture has worked —or not.

My Lords, Amendments 1, 17, 304 and 305 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, are all linked to a proposed new requirement for government to lay a statement detailing the application process for round 3 of the levelling-up fund. That has already happened in the first two rounds of the fund. We published information on the impartial assessment and decision-making process, alongside a full list of successful applicants. We have also provided feedback to unsuccessful applicants in both rounds. We will continue to improve the process used to award funding, taking on board the feedback we have received, which will be reflected in our approach to the next round of the fund.

We have also published our monitoring and evaluation strategy, which makes clear how the fund will evaluate impact against a range of criteria, including healthy life expectancy, well-being and pride in place. On the timing of the statement of the levelling-up missions, which is mentioned in Amendment 1, we have committed in the Bill to publish this within one month of Part 1 of the Act coming into force. We argue that this is already an appropriate and prompt timescale.

Amendment 3, also in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, looks at how levelling-up funds are supporting the levelling-up missions. This Government are committed to transparency. The Bill will place a duty on the Government to publish a clear statement of their levelling-up missions and to report annually on their progress against them, including, where relevant, the contributions made by particular projects and programmes. We have also already published transparent criteria for assessing projects and initiatives to be funded via key levelling-up funds and have published all funding allocations made to places.

In relation to the levelling-up fund specifically, in round 2 of the fund we asked applicants to set out which of the 12 levelling-up missions their bid supported. Several of the criteria used in the levelling-up fund evaluation strategy align closely with our missions, including pride in place, health and well-being. Alongside that, transport forms one of the three investment themes, and more than £1.1 billion has been awarded to improve transport infrastructure in the first two rounds.

I move on to Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. I must apologise to the noble Lord: when he tabled his amendment, I thought it was about planning and did not realise that it was about the Scilly Isles in particular. I will give the answer that I have, because the amendment mentioned planning, and I think it is important that noble Lords have the answer —but I will then say something about the Scilly Isles.