My Lords, I will focus on levelling up, even though it forms but a fraction of this leviathan of a Bill. If the Bill and the wider levelling-up agenda are to meet their objectives of
“giving everyone the opportunity to flourish … living longer and more fulfilling lives … benefitting from sustained rises in living standards and well-being … and … realising the potential of … every person across the UK”,
to quote the White Paper, they have to be about people as well as places, as my noble friend Lady Anderson said in her inspiring maiden speech. The White Paper acknowledges the point made by my noble friend Lord Whitty that
“disparities are often larger within towns, counties or regions than between them”,
and the former Lords Minister stated:
“It is very clear that the levelling-up mission involves levelling up both within and between communities”.—[Official Report, 19/5/22; col. 558.]
However, they—I do not count my noble friend here—failed to draw the obvious conclusion that a geographical lens is not in itself sufficient. Then when a Conservative Back-Bencher in the Commons argued that
“levelling up applies to need not geography”,
the Secretary of State did respond, “Yes, absolutely”, and that:
“It is critically important that we … address poverty wherever we find it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 2/2/22; col. 339.]
The fact is that many people in poverty are not to be found in the poorest areas.
Despite Mr Gove’s admission, nowhere does the levelling-up agenda directly address poverty. Last year, the then Prime Minister, who championed levelling up, was asked in the Liaison Committee on 30 March:
“Do you believe it is possible to level up the country without reducing the number of children living in poverty?”
“No,” he replied. He was then asked how many times child poverty was mentioned in the levelling up White Paper. When he was told it was “none”, he responded that it is a “purely formal accident”.
If it was an accident, how come that accident is now being repeated? Specifically, could the Minister please explain why a mission to reduce the level of child poverty has not been added to the list of missions in the White Paper? A Written Answer to a Question from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham on whether a reduction in child poverty in every local authority across the UK is
“an intended outcome of the levelling up agenda”
stated that reducing child poverty
“is a central part of this vision”
and referred to the White Paper’s missions. But if it is a central part of the vision, why is it not explicit in the missions?
I hope to argue in Committee that there should be such a mission with regard not just to the number and proportion of children in poverty but to the depth of that poverty, because more and more children are being pushed further and further below the poverty line, in part because of the Government’s own social security policies. Action for Children has argued that tackling child poverty is key to levelling up and that this calls for a new child poverty strategy and review of how the social security system could be best used to lift children out of poverty and give them the opportunity to thrive.
Action for Children also makes the more general point that levelling up can only succeed if this includes levelling up for children. Only one of the missions relates specifically to children, and it does so in a way that frames children purely as future “becomings” through their educational outcomes, while ignoring them as beings whose childhood in the here and now matters—a bias criticised by the British Academy programme on reframing childhood that I chaired. Even from the narrow and, I accept, important perspective of educational results, there is no recognition of how those results can be affected by child poverty and hunger, and of the role that expanding free school lunches and breakfasts could play in supporting this mission.
In arguing for levelling up to focus on people as well as places, I am not suggesting that place does not matter. Indeed, it probably matters most to those who are least mobile geographically and has a significant impact on their well-being. I thus welcomed the Government’s eventual agreement to include community wealth funds in the recent consultation on the use of dormant assets, not least because proposals for such funds place great emphasis on the participation of local communities, including the most marginalised, in deciding their use. Is the Minister in a position to update us on the outcome of that consultation?
In conclusion, in the Commons Second Reading debate, the then Minister for Housing heralded the Bill as
“a major milestone in our journey towards building a stronger, fairer and more united country.”—[Official Report, Commons, 8/6/22, col. 914.]
But it cannot represent such a milestone without explicitly committing the Government to pursuing a child poverty strategy.
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