My Lords, I apologise for not being present on the first group that the Committee discussed today, courtesy of Avanti trains. We now have three very important amendments, which go to the heart of whether levelling up can be achieved. It cannot be achieved unless there is a massive input of finances to local authorities and to CCAs in order to achieve it.
We all know how the system works at the moment. When this place signs off on an Act of Parliament which places new duties and responsibilities on local authorities, government Ministers are always quick to say, “This will all be covered by the new burdens doctrine”. That means that the new cost will be assessed in Whitehall, by some process which is more or less invisible to the general public, and a number will be added to the amount of grant which is then allocated by Whitehall to local authorities. Putting it more accurately, the original amount will be subdivided so that the new burdens are one fraction of it and the reduced grant overall, because of the economic situation, is the other. In other words, there is no extra money at all because the envelope of money has been predetermined by the Treasury and is simply divided one way or another.
Perhaps the key point in what the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, said was about the need for much more transparency on that funding relationship between central government and its decision-makers in Whitehall and the recipients of their decisions—the CCAs and local authorities. These three amendments are ways of establishing a process which would begin to deliver that. I very much hope that, in replying, the noble Earl will be able to give us some comfort that the message has been heard.
I say to the Government Front Bench that, if we could have some assurance that the new burdens doctrine was going to mean a genuine increase of funds for additional processes, we would have much more confidence that the levelling-up process could deliver, rather than simply reapportioning a few crumbs on the side of the plate from one place to another. It is about that process of funding the Government’s ambitions on levelling up; we really need to have some certainty that they have that process clearly in focus and in mind. We shall otherwise pass in due course, no doubt, a Bill that we all know will not provide a route for funding the initiatives which are absolutely essential if it is to succeed.
Turning quickly to the three amendments in front of us, I have characterised the first as a fair funding audit of local authorities which, it seems to me, would reveal at the local level some of the issues that I have just described. Increasingly large burdens are being placed on local authorities and combined authorities to achieve certain outcomes, but the Government are withholding money which would allow the authorities to deliver those.
Amendment 123 is asking about parliamentary oversight. I shall be very interested to hear how the Minister chooses to answer that. There is a great pressure—this was the topic we were talking about on the previous group—on auditing the performance of local authorities when they spend and allocate money, and when they undertake their risk assessments, but there is less investigation of how the Government are
handling their side of that equation. Maybe there is indeed scope for enhanced visibility and transparency and parliamentary oversight of that process.
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The third is surely something on which the Minister can give us some comfort. He has had five years to think about it and I hesitate to calculate how many Chancellors of the Exchequer, let alone Secretaries of State for Levelling Up, there have been in that time. Plenty of brains and much IQ have been devoted to this topic. The requirement that it be brought to a conclusion within the next 12 months seems highly desirable and perhaps a very useful spur to the Government to tackle what we all know is a very complex question: how should local services and democracy be financed? Who should they be financed by? What should be the way in which we reallocate resources, recognising—as surely the whole idea of a Levelling-Up Bill recognises—that wealth is generated in one part of the country, but the needs and the pressures are in other parts? How are we to reallocate those resources and are the Government going to be brave enough at last to publish the review which will allow us to do that on a transparent and proper basis?
I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply because it will decide for me whether levelling up is just a pile of paper or a real project for change in our country.