Baroness Hayman of Ullock:

Moved by Baroness Hayman of Ullock

7: Clause 1, page 1, line 14, at end insert—“(2A) The levelling-up missions must include missions which relate to—(a) pay, employment and productivity;(b) research and development;(c) public transport connectivity;(d) broadband and 4G and 5G coverage;(e) primary school attainment;(f) skills and training;(g) life expectancy;(h) wellbeing;(i) pride in place;(j) home ownership;(k) violent crime;(l) devolution.”Member's explanatory statementThis inserts the Government’s levelling-up missions into the Bill.

My Lords, my Amendment 7 would insert levelling-up missions into the Bill. I will also support and come to a number of other amendments in this group, and I have tabled Amendment 59 on health outcomes, which I will discuss in due course.

On Monday, we heard much about the fact that, in February of last year, the Government announced their levelling up white paper with much fanfare. I start by reminding noble Lords of what was in that White Paper and what it proposed. It set out the 12 medium-term levelling-up missions, which we will debate in this group. They look to do things such as increase pay, employment and productivity and boost well-being across the UK, all by the challenging target of 2030. Also, sitting behind those missions are what the White Paper called the “six capitals”, which were identified as

“the factors that will help drive” the levelling-up missions. We have not really debated those, but it is important that we remind ourselves of what the White Paper proposed. These capitals are:

“Physical capital—infrastructure, machines and housing … Human capital—the skills, health and experience of the workforce … Intangible capital—innovation, ideas and patents … Financial capital—resources supporting the financing of companies … Social capital—the strength of communities, relationships and trust … Institutional capital—local leadership, capacity and capability.”

The White Paper goes on to say:

“Levelling up is about aspiring for every place … to have a rich endowment of all six capitals, so that people do not have to leave their community to live a good life.”

I am sure that every Member of this House would support that ambition and those principles.

This all underpins the new policy regime, which is based on five mutually reinforcing pillars: establishing the 12 missions; reorientating government decision-making; empowering decision-makers in local areas; transforming the government approach to data and evaluation; and creating the new Levelling Up Advisory Council. I draw your Lordships’ attention to this, because we need to remember the huge ambition contained in the White Paper and how that has been translated into the Bill we are debating in Committee. That is why we are disappointed that the measures in the Bill are not enough to meet the Government’s 12 missions for reducing regional inequality by the proposed date of 2030. For example, the Bill provides a new source of funding for councils, which will be given a fixed share of the new infrastructure levy on local developments, which we will discuss later. However, the money involved is likely to be very small as a share of overall council budget, falling far short of the Government’s ambition in the White Paper to simplify local government funding. That is why we are disappointed that the proposals, including the missions themselves, are not clearly spelled out in the Bill.

While I am discussing the subject of funding, the Government have been criticised for allocating more funds to the south than to parts of the Midlands and the north in round 2 of the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund. Projects in London and the south-east received £360 million, which is three times more than schemes in Yorkshire and the Humber. One reason is that competitive bidding remains a stumbling block, and we should remind ourselves that the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, described the process as a “begging bowl culture”. It pits communities against each other, discourages co-operation between areas and leads to authorities submitting bids based on government criteria rather than on genuine local needs.

If this is how the Government intend to approach levelling up, I fear that the already numerous challenges of addressing regional inequality will only continue to grow. The country is also sitting on the tipping edge of a recession, and this is very likely to impact areas such as rates of employment and productivity, housing, well-being and transport interconnectivity, and threatens the ability of the Government to make progress on these levelling-up missions.

The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, will shortly introduce her amendment on metrics. I drew the Committee’s attention to my concerns about metrics on transport in our last debate, but there are also wider concerns about the metrics that the Government have developed. For example, the Institution of Civil Engineers has said that the more detailed metrics for measuring progress on levelling up should be geared towards local outcomes in areas such as skills training, higher life expectancy and pride of place. These are central missions that will need to happen if they are to be achieved.

In general, more weight should be attached to the whole-life benefits of projects and programmes and the role of improved interconnectivity through enhanced infrastructure investment, instead of fixating on achieving the lowest capital cost in delivery. This is to ensure that there is sufficient value for money for households who are under significant pressure due to increasing inflation and living costs. It is imperative that any project scoping takes into account additional inflationary impacts in order to mitigate against any delivery problems. We know that this has already been affecting many projects that were granted funding from the first round of the levelling-up pot.

Furthermore, the Institute for Government found that only four of the 12 missions are clear, ambitious and have appropriate metrics—outcomes the Government will measure to demonstrate the progress towards their 2030 target. It says that the other eight all need to be recalibrated if they are to have any chance of delivering on the Government’s promises to level up the UK. It also calls on the Government to put the right systems in place to ensure that Ministers and civil servants are held accountable for progress on the levelling-up agenda. It believes the proposed levelling-up advisory council cannot provide rigorous expert advice and scrutiny when it operates only at the discretion of the Government and cannot perform independent analysis. We had some debate about this on Monday. If we have no idea which departments will be leading any co-ordination of policy relating to each mission, it will be even harder to hold the Government accountable if things start to go off track.

My amendment does not ask the Government to include the exact missions as printed in the White Paper, particularly as there is concern that some of them are potentially not good enough or achievable. What we are trying to do is build into the Bill the areas that we believe the missions should be compelled to cover and address.

I turn to my Amendment 59 on health. Other noble Lords have similar amendments that we are happy to support, and I look forward to hearing from them. My amendment looks to include health outcomes in geographical disparities. I assume someone else will be introducing the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London’s amendment that would require that at least one levelling-up mission introduced by the Government focuses on addressing health disparities. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, seeks to put in a new Clause inserting a health and well-being mission. We would fully support these amendments, because we are particularly worried about the geographical inequalities in health outcomes, not least because the health disparities White Paper has been scrapped. Perhaps the Minister can explain why.

We know that good health remains out of reach for far too many people in the UK. The deep inequalities in health between the poorest and the wealthiest are widening. Failing to address poor health and economic inactivity will slow the economic recovery that our nation so desperately needs. If we have poor planning—residential or economic—people’s health is impacted. If we have poor transport planning, if pollution reduces life expectancy, if someone has a cold, damp house or faces housing insecurity, they will have poor educational outcomes and are likely to have a poor job, poor pay and poor prospects and to get trapped in a cycle.

Surely, one aim of levelling up is to break this cycle. Although there is an existing legal duty on local authorities and the Secretary of State to improve public health in England, there are no corresponding legal duties on local authorities to reduce health inequalities and improve well-being, despite the fact that it is they that will need to deliver this agenda.

I shall give an example from where I live, in north-west Cumbria. Like many areas, we have a shortage of GP services and a lack of dentists—but I would like to look at cancer treatment. In the north of Cumbria, 59% of people with a cancer diagnosis are not seen within two months of their diagnosis and are not being treated for the first time for more than 62 days after diagnosis. This is simply not good enough, and we are not going to change this for the better unless the deep inequalities in health provision and outcomes are tackled head-on.

Finally, I offer our support for the remaining amendments in this group—on housing, from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, and on education, from the noble Lord, Lord Holmes. All these things are important and should be in the Bill. I beg to move.

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 15 in the names of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman of Ullock and Lady Watkins of Tavistock, and me. For this stage of the Bill, I draw attention to my housing and planning interests as in the register, including as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, vice-president of the Town and Country Planning Association and president of the Sustainable Energy Association.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London is not able to be with us on this Ash Wednesday, but I know she feels deeply about this issue, not least from her distinguished career within the health service. I hope that I can cover some of the points that she wanted to make, and I know the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds will join in the debate.

Amendment 15 would ensure that health disparities are included in the Government’s levelling-up missions by getting this issue into the Bill. Improving public health and reducing health inequalities was a centrepiece of the original levelling-up white paper. Two of the original missions, seven and eight, were aimed respectively at covering the gap in healthy life expectancy between localities and addressing determinants of mental and physical ill health, but these ambitions do not feature in the Bill. Ominously, it now seems that the promised health disparities White Paper may not see the light of day. There seem to be delays, too, in producing strategies for tackling the so-called obesity epidemic and for smoking reduction.

However, health inequalities in the UK have grown worse over the past decade after centuries of increased healthy life expectancy. Gaps have widened: the Inequalities in Health Alliance of 155 member bodies, convened by the Royal College of Physicians, notes that there is now a 19-year gap in healthy life expectancy between the least and the most deprived communities, and health inequalities cost the country £31 billion to £33 billion a year.

I declare an interest as the chair of the Oxford University Commission on Creating Healthy Cities, which reported last year. We concluded that, if central and local government gave priority to achieving better outcomes for physical and mental health, they would simultaneously address wider inequalities in society, improve productivity, support efforts to tackle climate change, and reduce the escalating costs of the NHS and social care. The Oxford study, driven by Kellogg College’s Global Centre on Healthcare and Urbanisation and the Prince’s Foundation, recommends that health creation should be the key focus of efforts to level up. Our commission supported the Government’s White Paper and its health objectives, and these deserve to be incorporated into the legislation before us. The whole levelling-up agenda can be a massive contributor to improvements in health and well-being.

This amendment is a necessary precursor to later amendments that link specific policy measures for the built environment—for planning, housing, transport and the environment—to the core issue of health. These important amendments would be greatly assisted by a backdrop of the Bill having a clear focus on health inequalities as one of its key missions. This would match advances in Scotland and Wales, where the emphasis on the health dimension in public policy and guidance has been strengthened over recent years.

Finally, in support of the right reverend Prelate’s amendment, I add that using health as the touchstone for levelling-up policies increases wider understanding and public support for the varied local projects that will follow enactment of the Bill. What assurances can the Minister give that we will see a focus on health, and specifically on health inequalities, in the levelling-up missions? What can the Minister tell us about the missing health disparities White Paper? I support the amendment.

My Lords, at Second Reading, I remember applauding, broadly speaking, the ambitions of the white paper. However, I share the concerns of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who of course brings to this much more experience than I do.

I am pleased that, already, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has alluded to the interconnectivity of all these different missions; they cannot be seen in silos or in isolation. For example, if you have children who are turning up at school unfed or living in poor housing, you can try teaching them what you will but it may not be very successful, and that has an impact not only on individuals but on communities and their flourishing.

I will speak to Amendment 15, tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, and briefly to Amendments 7, 30 and 31. Health disparities require discrete attention in the Bill. It is not an optional extra. The Bill as it stands states the missions but does not provide mechanisms for action or accountability. How will we be able to measure whether they are effective or not? The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London has said that, although assurances by the Minister are very welcome, they are not enough; they have to be backed up in the Bill with measurable implementation gauges.

Good health is key both to human—that is, individual—and social flourishing. As I said, we cannot separate out such things as housing, education, health, transport and so on as if we can solve one without having an impact on the other. However, there are inequalities between the regions in many of these areas. I speak from a context in the north: the whole of west Yorkshire, most of north Yorkshire—but do not tell the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of York that—a chunk of Lancashire, one slice of County Durham and a bit of south Yorkshire. The inequalities are serious. The economic squeeze, in the words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, is an incubator for inequalities, and we know the impact that inequality has across the board.

The White Paper rightly recognises the centrality of health to levelling up, but the actions by which this will be achieved could be argued to be lacking—and we certainly need long-term solutions and not quick fixes or slogans that sound good but do not lead to content. Can the Minister therefore offer assurances of the Government’s commitment to health within the levelling-up agenda in ways that can be measured and accountability upheld?

I support Amendment 30, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond. The Government must give formal consideration to the inclusion of social prescribing. Why? Because social prescribing recognises the social determinants of health and the importance of community in improving health at every level. There are good examples already of where this is being explored, such as the National Academy for Social Prescribing, and I endorse the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, at Second Reading in this regard. There are examples of services run by faith and community groups in London and beyond, and the pilot by the DHSC in Wolverhampton is promising. The key to all of this is the relational dynamic in the well-being of both individuals and communities. This leads me to ask how social prescribing might be used to tackle inequalities in health and well-being. I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that.

I turn briefly to Amendments 7 and 31. The text of the missions might be important but we need evaluative measures in the Bill so that they can be measured. Otherwise, they are merely aspirational and all we can do is trust the word, however well-meaning, that is applied to it. Moreover, how can the Government be held to account on delivery? Commitment to the missions can be measured only by some process of assessment on implementation, and this needs to be in the Bill.

I conclude with the obvious statement that healthy life expectancy is surely a key measurement of our effectiveness in tackling health inequalities.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 20 in this group, calling for the provision of safe and affordable homes for all. It references a definition of affordable homes that appears in Amendment 242, to which we will come in due course.

Mission 10 in the white paper—although they are not actually numbered as such, but it is the 10th mission —sets a target that is only seven years away, focusing on creating a secure path to home ownership. According to the technical annexe to the White Paper, it aims to ensure that everyone has access to good-quality housing, with a particular focus on improving areas where quality is low—I underline that. That is a very big ambition and a very worthy one, and seven years is an awfully short time to deliver it.

It is very important because it is also going to be the gateway to tackling a whole set of other missions, which the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, set out in her speech on Amendment 7—which of course we support very much. Health and well-being are essentially connected to the housing quality of the people who are being measured, and that includes their overall capacity to participate properly in education. Is there somewhere for children to spread out their homework? Is there a bedroom that they can sleep in properly? There is no argument that this is a good idea, and indeed the Government have, within planning policies, an intention at least to make sure that affordable housing is provided.

However, what those non-governmental organisations, the homeless organisations and many local councils’ housing departments fret over is that affordability as defined in the planning regulations is actually unaffordability in real life. If we do not shift that definition of affordability and take a more realistic view about what it is, it is absolutely clear that, however much effort is put into housing and affordable housing, it will fail to deliver what the Government want to achieve by 2030. Homes will be simply too expensive for lower-income purchasers, while renters will remain trapped in overpriced and undermaintained property well beyond that seven-year target.

This amendment is designed to come to the rescue. It sets out clearly a route for the Government’s missions to deliver genuinely affordable and safe housing for everyone, creating enough space in the housing market for people with limited means to afford a roof over their head through either renting or buying or through shared ownership schemes. The amendment also requires homes to be safe. I have to say to noble Lords that 10 years ago it would not have been seen as necessary to include that point in a Bill, but the devastating revelations following the horrific Grenfell Tower fire have undermined that complacent view. Again, we know from Shelter and others working in the field that too many people are living in unsafe as well as unaffordable homes.

However, the substantive part of this amendment and the part I want to explore a little more is “an affordable home for all”. It is a great slogan, and of course it is at the heart of the housing debate currently running in our town halls and planning departments, and of course throughout the Government and particularly among their Back-Benchers, among many others. Every local planning authority has an affordable housing policy—and so do the Government. As I am sure the Minister will tell us, they are spending a lot of money on it. Why, then, does it turn out that so many affordable built under these carefully crafted policies are in fact unaffordable to those who need them most? The fact that undermined so many good intentions is that affordability in planning policy is being calculated by the Government by reference to house prices and not by reference to buyers’ income or spending capacity. Obviously, a home which is going on the market at 80% when the 100% figure is £1 million is a very different animal from one that is going at a time when the housing price is £500,000 or £250,000.

This amendment addresses the slippery word “affordable” head on and proposes a definition of affordable that is based on the income of those seeking a home and not, as at present, a notional discount on current market prices. That definition is set out in detail in Amendment 242, which obviously we shall come to in a different group in due course, which is referenced as “Meaning of ‘affordable home’” in Amendment 20. Briefly, we define affordable in terms of local housing allowance for units provided for renters and as a percentage of income in relation to the mortgage costs for buyers. It provides a fundamental reshaping of the term “affordable” so that there is an objective framework within which policies and funding can be deployed, with the knowledge that the homes delivered via that policy will be affordable to those in pressing need of them.

If we continue to misuse the term “affordable homes” in our public discourse and policy-making, we will continue to miss the targets and the Government will fail in their missions. Much worse than that, families across the country will continue to be left out and left behind, and the circle of deprivation will continue with it. I will add that many of the other missions which also have deadlines of 2030 will be compromised or fail completely. This amendment opens the door to a solution by reframing “affordable” in terms of the income of the family rather than the capital price of the home, and I beg to move.

My Lords, my Amendment 21 joins a queue to add, amend or clarify missions. This queue can feel a little like a fanciful—farcical, even—wish list, but the Government only have themselves to blame for the fact that some of us are just trying to pin down these missions rather than rely on guesswork.

My guess is that, as much as the Bill relates to planning, it is not unreasonable to assume that there will be a housing mission. Indeed, in the missions published in February 2022 we are told so. However, I was shocked when I read its content: increase home ownership and housing standards, tick; more first-time buyers in all geographical areas, tick; and a 50% reduction in non-decent rented homes, tick. But, extraordinarily, there is no mention of increasing the supply of houses or of targets to build more homes at a time when we need that to happen with missionary zeal if we are to stand a chance of making levelling up more than a slogan.

If the Government are serious about increasing home ownership, having more first-time buyers and ensuring that the rented sector expands and improves, we need more houses or the policy will run into the housing affordability road block. We heard a lot about affordability from the previous Speaker, the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. At present, the average home costs over eight times average annual earnings, as against the historic norm of three to four times. Put bluntly, house prices and rents have risen beyond what any reasonable person would think it acceptable to spend on one of the most basic human needs. Those high prices and rents are responsible for many of the social ills that the Bill is allegedly designed to address—from worsening living conditions, falling home ownership, rising homelessness and the spiralling costs of housing benefit.

Half of all first-time buyers—rising to two-thirds in the south-east—rely on the so-called “bank of mum and dad”, which is fine if you have parents who can do that for you, although, with more and more mums and dads suffering the brunt of the cost of living crisis, that might be on the wane, anyway. Those who cannot turn to their parents are not only left behind but, ironically, end up paying a lot more in rent each month than their peers with a mortgage. Meanwhile, renters in London spend 40% of their income on rent, which is simply unaffordable, and rental prices are being pushed up by supply not meeting demand. We therefore need to build more houses to bring prices into line with earnings, whether we are buying or renting.

The hugely impressive housing campaign group Priced Out, staffed by young people who are passionate about housing, explains this well. It says:

“The affordability of housing is a significant concern for millions of people. If we don’t fix the root cause of this problem, we will continue to ruin lives and futures”.

Priced Out has hopes that the Bill will tackle that root cause. So do I, and that is what my amendment is about.

Of course, there is more to this than a demand for paper targets. Just because something is written down, I do not necessarily trust it. Over the years, we have all heard endless pledges from Governments of all stripes included in all political parties’ election manifestos, yet we still have a supply problem. The UK remains one of the slowest and least prolific homebuilding countries among all 28 members of the OECD. Too often, under previous Administrations’ versions of housing missions, we have seen distractions from the core issue of increasing the supply side.

This Government in particular have tended to fall back on headline-grabbing demand-side quick fixes, such as help-to-buy schemes. However, this arguably makes things worse. Demand skyrockets by giving young, aspiring homeowners a state loan. But that means that prices go up, especially if we plod along with a fixed, stagnating supply of homes.

This just leads to a transfer of ownership of existing housing stock without necessarily prompting any new building. Big housebuilders benefit from the state subsidy, with little incentive to build more. However, how much time Opposition parties especially spend fetishising the types of new homes that should be built and who should build them has also been frustrating. This has ranged from demands for sustainable houses to—with no disrespect to the previous speaker—a focus on affordable homes. It often takes the form of stating that, for example, social housing should be prioritised. Surely who builds the homes that people need and what labels we give them should not be a matter of ideological dogma. We need a greater ambition than piecemeal political silos. If we built the number of houses that we need, more homes would be affordable.

The Bill needs to tackle the National Audit Office’s declaration that we need to build 250,000 more homes a year to take into account decreasing building since the 1960s and the deterioration and demolition of current housing stock. That is a conservative figure to deal with the actual shortfall. Some experts suggest that it is more like 340,000 a year until 2030 to tackle the backlog, and as PricedOut notes, even that figure fails to include the wider homeless population and those under 40 who are struggling on exorbitant rents.

However, even if we stick to the NAO’s target, surely that ought to be easily achievable given that in the 1960s, when housing and construction technologies were far less developed, 300,000 new homes were built annually. Too often, politicians suggest that we face insurmountable social challenges today, that all sorts of problems besiege us, but that can be used as an excuse. Politicians coming out of a world war in the 1940s and 1950s did not hold back from doggedly realising housing ambitions—ambitions that did not seem feasible but which created whole new towns. Lord Reith at the time called the new town plan an “essay on civilisation”. My theory is that in 2023 this Bill, unless it tackles housing supply, might indicate that civilisation is in decline.

We need to be ruthless—ruthlessly honest, anyway—in asking why it has become so difficult for Governments across the party spectrum to provide the homes that society needs. We need to identify what has gone wrong if this Bill, or the whole project of levelling up, is to tackle it. We know that it is not a problem of space or land shortage. Nearly 90% of land in England is not built on. Only 1.1% is used for residential housing, and that includes gardens. One problem is getting planning permission to build. We will be looking at that, and I will be commenting on it in a lot more detail, later in the Bill. However, it is frustrating that plenty of land does have planning permission but is held by big builders and land agents who see it as more productive to sit on it than to build homes in the present period. Yes, the Bill must tackle land banking, although it is not a black and white issue as it is sometimes portrayed.

We also know that there is one quick fix that could free up land now and allow building to start. The Government have access to land that could easily be released for development at the stroke of a pen and allow construction projects to start immediately. The problem is that this land is being banked but under the artificial designation of “green belt”. The green belt covers 12% of England’s land and ring-fences off large swathes of land around towns and cities that, despite its name, certainly does not comprise our green and pleasant land, nor is it the green space that the Government and all of us say that everyone should have access to. At the very least, a debate on the green belt should be part of the solution rather than being ruled out of play for fear of upsetting green lobbyists. That would represent a radical shake-up of land to build on and it is preferable to being restricted to the paltry drip-drip supply of previously developed brownfield sites that politicians suggest. As author James Heartfield notes, millions of new homes are not going to be built

“on a handful of derelict RAF bases”.

We must acknowledge that the many blocks to housebuilding are political choices. Increasingly, planning decisions and policy decisions are likely to prioritise fashionable eco concerns over citizens’ needs, prosperity, development or growth. Indeed, green ideological restrictions on housebuilding are now giving old-fashioned nimbyist concerns a veneer of progressive righteousness.

To finish, my question to the Minister is: why do the Government say they are listening to home owners, when they crumbled in the face of the Villiers amendment in the other place, but fail to hear the voice of young, self-styled yimbys saying gladly, “Yes, in my backyard” and declaring, “New homes welcome here”? I am wary of scapegoating nimbys, however, and the Bill could put forward a persuasive alternative vision. It should be not a caricature of plonking new builds on the edge of a beautiful village but offering housebuilding as part of a dynamic plan for areas that are neglected. Young people are leaving them because of a lack of infrastructure, homes and jobs, but they could come alive if we use housing in the right way. Levelling up should surely mean bringing towns, city outskirts and suburbs—even villages—alive with roads, rail links, schools, hospitals and investment in new industries, skills, jobs and training. This will make places where people want to live and work, and that is why we will need houses there. People will welcome them, even if they were previously nimbys.

I just emphasise that housing is not just a desperately urgent social need but part of the mix of creating thriving multigenerational communities across the UK. Tackling housing supply and putting it front and centre of any housing mission is part of making this vision a concrete reality, and I really hope that the housing mission goes beyond mere platitudes and says, “Build more houses now!”

My Lords, I am very glad to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, who has given us a very persuasive insight into a subject that I know we shall return to. I look forward to her contributing to further debates on the housing supply issue when we get to those parts of the Bill—perhaps in a fortnight’s time. We will have had a chance to take on board her excellent arguments.

I do not want to repeat what I said on Monday; I shall just precis it to this extent. I do not think we should put the missions in the Bill; we should have a process in the Bill that permits this House and the other place to consider the missions and metrics in detail every time the Government publish a statement. We can do that either by way of what I suggest in Amendment 25, which would give the two Houses the opportunity to debate such a statement; or the Government might at some point say that they should be published in draft and be the subject of debates by the two Houses. We are having that kind of debate today; it is exactly the kind of debate we ought to have every time there is such a statement or one is to be renewed, but at the moment, the Government simply lay it, publish it and that is it. That is not good enough.

I want to talk about two missions. I was not planning to say much about the first, but I was prompted by the amendment from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, so ably introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Best. I feel that we have been here before. My noble friend Lord Howe and I have definitely been here before. We published and introduced—he will have done it in this House—the Healthy Lives, Healthy People white paper of November 2010, which followed and reflected into policy at the time Sir Michael Marmot’s Fair Society, Healthy Lives work, which we and the previous Government supported prior to the White Paper.

We are talking about a very difficult mission to define. We are talking about reducing inequalities in society, because the inequalities in society are the source of the inequalities in health outcomes. Let us at least look at how we can tackle the many things that are the social determinants of health and try to capture them in something like, for example, disability-free life expectancy. The Government have used healthy life expectancy, which I think is the same thing. We know that it is poor in this country, and we know of the lack of public health support—notwithstanding that we had a shift a decade ago to support for local governance in public health, which I think has actually been proven to be a good thing, but which has not been funded in the way that local government and the health service would have wished it. We had a very good and helpful debate on that when the noble Lord, Lord Addington, who is in his place, had his Private Member’s Bill, but I will not repeat all that now.

When one looks at the metrics intended to support the Government’s mission, it is very curious. Yes, we need a tobacco control plan, although I do not know quite what the Government’s tobacco control plan now is. Yes, we must reduce the prevalence of obesity, but I do not now know precisely what the Government’s obesity strategy is. But as far as the reduction of prevalence or impacts of diseases are concerned, only cancer is mentioned. I am with the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Birmingham, here; I thought that in the NHS we had escaped from trying to elevate certain diseases to the point where they were regarded as more important than others. Certainly, when we talk about parity of esteem between mental and physical health, surely we must have parity of esteem between cardiovascular health and cancer diagnosis. Why do we regard one as more important than the other? There are metrics that could help us; the NHS outcomes framework was first established in about 2011 and is a work in progress, but is absolutely instrumental. It should be the basis, not the Government having a mission which picks one or two things out of the outcomes framework and regards them as important when others are not.

When I was Secretary of State, over a decade ago, we had, over time, been improving life expectancy in this country on average by one month in every year. That means that if you want to improve life expectancy by a year, on average it is likely to take you 12 years. Where does “five years” come from? Things have actually got worse, not better, since a decade ago—particularly since 2017, on the data. Based on what I remembered, it would take us 60 years to improve our healthy life expectancy by five years. The Health Foundation last March, after the missions White Paper was published, produced its own data. It believed that on the previous data it would take 75 years, but it had run it with the most recent data on life expectancy and healthy life expectancy since 2017, and the figure was 192 years. If we are to have a debate about the missions and metrics, let us get down into whether the metrics are reasonable. If they are not, they should be revised, because if we are going to be standing here in 2030—I hope we all are; disability-free life expectancy in the Lords is pretty good—we want to have achieved these missions. We do not want to have excuses for why we did not—for example, because the metric was not a reasonable one in the first place, or the Government have abandoned it.

I want to mention one other thing; at Second Reading, quite well on in the debate, the role of the private sector was mentioned. I just want to come back to mission 1 and this issue of the economy, because I am not quite sure why measuring pay is there. It is a measure of relative economic well-being, but targeting pay is not the answer. Targeting employment is a good answer; if people are in employment, pay will differ in different parts of the country because the cost of living and the economic structures differ significantly. Let us improve the economic structures, reduce the economic disparities and improve the economic growth in the less advantaged parts of this country, and the pay will come with them.

Productivity is essential. Lying behind it is the issue of how much private sector there is in the less advantaged regions of this country, as compared to the more advantaged. For example, London has 14.7% of the total workforce, but 20.5% of the private sector workforce. The difference between London and the rest of the country is dramatic. It is not that the Government give London a lot of money. My own area is the east of England. We are the only other region where the same applies, but to a lesser extent. We have 9.5% of the total workforce and 10.7% of the private sector workforce. If we do not target the development of the private sector in the regions where the economy is less advantaged, we are completely missing the point.

How do we do this? I looked at other data. It is interesting that, in each of my two examples—London and the east of England—the number of small and medium-sized enterprises is much higher relative to the total workforce. Again, this is pronounced in the case of London. London has 14.7% of the workforce but 19.3% of small and medium-sized enterprises. The east of England has 9.5% of the workforce and 9.8% of small and medium-sized enterprises. Why is there not a metric in the first mission about improving the economy in the less advantaged economic regions, focused on new business formation and the creation of a number of SMEs in these areas?

All across Europe, the European Commission is fighting to increase the rate of new business formation and to add more small businesses. It is the starting point for the scaling up of businesses. Why are we not doing this in this country and in this mission? Why is there not a higher number of small and medium-sized enterprises in places such as the north-west? We know that the enterprise is there, but the data is telling us that it is not turning into the number of sustained businesses and the opportunity to scale up.

My Lords, I will speak first to Amendment 31 in my name. It aims to ensure that initiatives and funding to achieve the aims of the levelling-up mission will be measured by a systematic, statistically accepted and agreed set of metrics. It fully supports Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, which seeks also to have the missions put into the Bill. These metrics will be used to measure progress. If they are not in the Bill, I do not know how we will get the public to understand what is being achieved—or not.

Amendment 31 is unashamedly lifted from the technical and metrics annexe to the levelling-up white paper. This seems to have been the will of the Government when it was written and published a year ago this month. Let us put this very acceptable set of measurements into the Bill and use them. This would give it some power and make it known that the Government are determined to put the missions into effect. It would make a difference in narrowing the gap in the spatial disparities.

The amendment sets out the key components of the metrics and references the main drivers of economic and social outcomes for places, which are named “capitals”. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, listed those capitals. We are using such strange terms—“missions” and “capitals”—but let us use them because that is what they are in the White Paper. To remind us all, the six capitals are physical, intangible, human, financial, social and institutional, so they cover a whole gamut of individual and community well-being. The missions are attached to them, and the metrics are then attached to the missions.

The basic assertion in the levelling-up White Paper is that in too many places those capitals are in poor shape. When they are, those places are the ones where spatial inequalities exist. The evidence in the annexe—the Government’s own document—demonstrates that

“economic decline in the former industrial heartlands and coastal towns exacerbated poor health outcomes, which in turn led to lower levels of human capital. The lower levels of human capital then reduced the incentives for business to invest in the region and skilled workers left to seek employment elsewhere, further reducing the incentives to invest. The result was a self-perpetuating loop in which lower human capital fed into lower levels of investment, thereby reducing productivity and earnings growth, depleting social capital and pride in place, and further exacerbating the migration of skilled workers and capital out of the region.”

That says it; let us put pressure on the Government to do it.

That is the argument for the metrics. All these need to be measured and reported to Parliament if spatial gaps are to be considerably narrowed and seen to have been so following independent scrutiny, as we discussed on Monday. For example, pay and productivity are rightly seen as key to improving the life chances of people living in areas where spatial disparities are greatest. Thus, pay levels for those in employment must rise to help break the cycle of decline. As the annexe to the White Paper states:

“This mission is directed at closing the significant and persistent spatial disparities in productivity, wages and employment”.

That might answer the plea from the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, for a measure of business and investment, because if you get business and investment at the right level, wages, productivity and employment will rise. That is what the White Paper says. Maybe his Government are at fault.

This metric could be readily measured by gross value added and by ONS data on pay. These measures are used by the ONS and can be applied to check progress, so putting this metric in the Bill would ensure that progress on raising incomes in areas of special disparities, as compared with the country as a whole, will of itself be a driver for change.

Improving skills and encouraging inward investment that requires higher skills will lead to higher-paid employment. Currently, there is a tendency for low-skill jobs in warehousing and distribution for online retailers to be created in areas that already have low pay and low skills, thus re-emphasising problems that are already there. Measuring the changes to skill levels, as defined in the metrics for mission 6 in the annexe, will be a driver for change and raising skill levels. In 2012, nearly 2 million adults were in funded FE and skills training—that figure is in the annexe. By 2020, that figure had dropped to below 1 million. The simple requirement of having to report to Parliament on progress on improving skills will be a significant driver to encouraging more adults to train or retrain, and there is no doubt at all that one of the negative pulls on economic growth is the poor skill levels in some parts of the country.

Another of the metrics set out in the annexe to the White Paper is the numbers who travel to work by public transport. In London that is over 50%, according to the data in the annexe—I was not quite sure that I believed it, but that is what it says—and in most other places in the country the figure is around 10%. So, measuring the modal shift that will be needed is important, not just for narrowing gaps but in supporting the net zero aim.

Currently bus services outside of London are in crisis with services being slashed, making it more difficult for those who rely on public transport to get to jobs, take up jobs and go to better paid jobs. The public transport mission is to improve local public transport connectivity in order to be

“significantly closer to the standards of London”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, is smiling because she has just one bus per week, so if she had two, that might help.

Noble Lords:

Oh!

We are laughing but in the end, it is no joke. It means that people are isolated and unable to get to employment. It is not just rural areas such as the noble Baroness’s. In one of the villages in my area—an urban area of west Yorkshire—you cannot get a bus after 5 pm. Come on! If we are serious about narrowing these gaps, we have to be serious about public transport. Many of those of us who live outside London will applaud that measure, because once it is part of a regular public reporting process, it will force change both in funding and in governance models.

I will not go through all 12 missions, you will be very pleased to hear, but that gives noble Lords a thread of an idea of what needs to happen if we are serious about helping parts of the country that suffer from not just one area of poverty, but which are deprived in all of these “capitals”, resulting in a serious negative pull on their lives and the lives of their communities.

The question for the Government is: are they serious about levelling up? If they are, the missions will be in the Bill, as in Amendment 7. If they are, the metrics should be included—in headline form, because I take the point that you cannot put in the Bill every way in which you are going to measure. All I have put in the amendment is that we will measure healthy life expectancy —about which we have had a bit of debate—which can be measured in a variety of ways.

If we do not include missions and metrics, we are not being serious about this. I feel very strongly about it, as perhaps you can tell, because unless we do, we are not being serious about helping people who do not have the same advantages and lifestyles as others are able to enjoy. We have to something about it; it is not acceptable.

I know this puts the Minister under pressure, but I want the Government to just say that they are serious about this and want to put this in the Bill, because these spatial disparities scar our nation and affect it negatively, through unfulfilled talent, lost opportunities and the cost to the public purse in subsiding low wages.

As party spokesperson, I would just like to comment on one or two of the other points made today. I will not delay the Committee too long. I have said already that on these Benches we totally support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman; we must put this in the Bill.

We had a really good debate on health disparities and the social determinants of health, which we may be able to do something about if we put the missions in the Bill. Obviously I support what the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds said on their concerns about how we measure that. I am open to whatever measure we think will work to improve the healthy lives that people can lead.

It is all tied up in these wider determinants of health, as is housing, which my noble friend Lord Stunell ably explained when speaking to Amendment 20. We are anxious for safe homes. If the cladding scandal has taught us anything—it should have—it is that we need to really focus, even more than the Building Safety Act has, on creating safe homes for people. It is not just safe buildings but safe environments for those homes. I hate the word “affordable”, so we will get that changed if we can.

I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, that we all agree we need more houses, but there is too much focus on numbers. The number of new homes is important, but so is the type of homes we build—for example, homes for extra care or small family homes, rather than large, executive four-bed homes, which are what developers always want to build. I look forward to having a debate on that.

We should remember that house prices in some parts of the country, such as my own, are not anywhere near those in London. If anybody is short of cash and wants to cash in their London home and move north, near two great national parks, you can buy a house for £100,000 near where I live. It might be a bit colder, but you get the national parks to enjoy. I hope we can have that debate as well.

This has been an excellent debate on something I feel strongly about. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

The contributions we have heard in Committee this afternoon get to the heart of the question as to whether the Bill, in practice, will have real-world impact. The discussions we have just been having on healthy life expectancy and homes really illustrate that general question mark. I suggest to your Lordships that two ways in which the Bill potentially could have impact would be, first, if, as amended, it forced a focus on the means by which the stated missions would be achieved; and, secondly, if it forced a more horizontal view across public policy to show how different aims connected in a shared way.

I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on healthy life expectancy. He quoted the position that I think existed in 2000s, when health life expectancy in this country was growing by about five hours a day. That is an extraordinary fact when you think about it. It means that, since the House has been sitting this afternoon, your Lordships would have gained about half an hour extra of life expectancy. Sadly, that no longer obtains, and the slightly draining sensation noble Lords may have had this afternoon more correctly corresponds to our physiological prospects.

The question is: does this Bill, in any way, in setting missions for healthy life expectancy, force a debate within the country and in government about the means by which you would actually do anything about it? My concern is that even having a mission and metrics potentially on the face of the Bill does not get you to the skin of the onion, peeling away the chain of causation by which you would reverse the unfortunate position we now find ourselves in. Looking at the amendments in this group and throughout the Bill, the question for me is: do they drive a focus on what real-world implementation would need to be to get the result we all want?

In relation to this, I was with the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, on her point about 250,000 homes and the need to deal with the supply side. I thought “My goodness, this is a speech from the noble Baroness I can actually agree with”—until she spoiled it at the end with gratuitous remarks about how we do not need green planning for housing, when of course that is precisely what we need. That is not the impediment to housebuilding in this country. We would be committing a historic error if we embarked on the necessary scale of housing construction without designing in congenial neighbourhoods and healthy lifestyles. The fact is that, in many developments that have been built, we are designing in, for example, car dependency. Your Lordships may be astonished to be reminded that, according to one estimate a few years ago, on average in this country we spend more time each week on the toilet than we do exercising. We are not going to change that fact just by the recitation of that rather startling insight; we are going to change it by doing precisely the opposite of what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, suggested.

I want to know who measured that.

My Lords, as I have set out in earlier debates, it has always been the Government’s intention that the first statement of levelling-up missions would contain the missions from the levelling-up paper. I want to repeat what I said yesterday about why we are not putting the missions on the face of the Bill. The missions will be published in a policy document laid before, and debated in, Parliament. The first example of this document will be based on the levelling-up white paper and future iterations will include the headline and supporting metrics used to define the missions and measure progress towards them.

If we put them in the Bill, it would make this part of what we want to do—and what we think it is right to do—very inflexible. This way, Parliament and the public will have the opportunity to scrutinise progress towards the missions, including annually when the report is published. This is comparable to other key government objectives documents such as the Charter for Budget Responsibility, which is laid before Parliament for scrutiny. That is why we are doing it this way, and I thank my noble friend Lord Lansley for supporting that way forward for the second day running.

I now move to the Amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, which inserts the Government’s levelling-up missions into the Bill. As I have said, that is not what we are going to do, because we do not feel that there would be flexibility if anything changes—for example, economics, data, pressures and issues in particular areas of the country. We would not have the flexibility to change the missions and scrutinise them, as I have said.

The 12 levelling-up missions are the product of extensive analysis and engagement. They cover the areas that require improvement to achieve an increase in the six capitals in the White Paper—human, physical, intangible, institutional, social and financial—and are needed to reduce the geographic disparities that we discussed today and that are identified in the White Paper. They are designed to be ambitious but achievable. They are necessarily spatial in their nature and definition, and they are neither national nor aggregate.

The missions are supported by a range of clear metrics, used to measure them at an appropriate level of geography. These metrics take account of a wider range of inputs, outputs and outcomes needed to drive progress in the overall mission. The metrics cover a wide range of policy issues but are all clearly linked to the drivers of spatial disparities.

I reiterate that the Bill is designed to establish the framework for missions, not the content of the missions themselves. The framework provides ample opportunity to scrutinise the substance of the missions against a range of government policies.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, brought up the allocation of levelling-up funds being made according to government priorities, rather than local need. Places are invited to submit bids—under the themes of the regeneration of town centres, local transport and culture —that they feel best meet the levelling-up needs of their area. Part of our strategic fit assessment test is on how far a place’s bid locks into its wider levelling-up plans and how well it is supported by relevant local stakeholders and community groups.

My noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond is not here and will therefore not move Amendment 13, but a number of noble Lords brought it up and I felt I ought to respond to it quickly. The levelling-up White Paper highlights the importance of the educational attainment of primary schoolchildren and sets out a clear mission to significantly increase the number of primary school- children achieving the expected standards in reading, writing and mathematics. In England, this will mean that 90% of children will achieve the expected standard, and the percentage of children meeting the expected standard in the worst-performing areas will have increased by over a third. As we know, reaching the expected standards in these subjects is absolutely crucial for children to succeed at secondary school, which paves the way for success in later life. Ensuring that as many children as possible have these skills, regardless of their location or the current quality of their school, is an ambitious target, particularly as we work to recover lost learning from the pandemic.

We are already starting on that. The Education Endowment Foundation, which gives guidance and support to schools, has a £130 million grant. Importantly, we are supporting 55 education investment areas, including starting interventions in schools with successive “requires improvement” Ofsted ratings. We are also delivering a levelling-up premium—a tax-free additional payment to eligible teachers in priority subjects—which is very much weighted to those education investment areas. We have started already, with over 2 million tutoring courses, particularly for young people who were affected by the lack of education during the pandemic.

From Second Reading, I know that many noble Lords are interested in health inequalities in this country—we heard that again today. I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London is not here, but her Amendment 15 was nobly spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Best. It puts forward that the missions must include reducing health disparities. I note Amendment 59 from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and Amendment 30, tabled my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, who is not here, although it was mentioned by noble Lords. All of these would mean that geographical disparities include health outcomes.

As part of the levelling-up White Paper, we have already established a dedicated health mission, with the aim of improving the healthy life expectancy across the United Kingdom, improving health, well-being and productivity, and reducing the pressures on public services. The mission and supporting metrics are set out in the levelling-up White Paper and the technical annexe, and will be formally set out to Parliament in the statement of levelling-up missions. We believe that health is already sufficiently captured in the Clause setting out interpretations of Part 1, where the term “geographical disparities” is interpreted as

“geographical disparities in economic, social or other opportunities or outcomes”— and that will include health disparities.

I turn to the importance of community-centred ways of working, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds brought up. Recognising this, the NHS has committed in its long-term plan to improving access to community care and things such as social prescribing. The number of social prescribing referrals is a key metric used to measure progress on implementation of this commitment. Indeed, as of October 2022, there were already 2,793 link workers in place, who have already taken over 1.3 million referrals and continue to do that, thereby improving lives in communities across the country.

My noble friend Lord Lansley brought up the issue of metrics. The missions are supported by a range of metrics to measure them, taking into account a wider range of inputs, outputs and outcomes needed to drive progress. Metrics cover a whole wide range of policy issues. We worked across government to identify these missions and metrics, most appropriately for tracking progress. They are deliberately stretching and designed to force innovative thinking, as I know my noble friend would expect.

The reason we focus on healthy life expectancy incentives and activities across life is that they will incentivise activities across the life course and drive the prevention of the breadth of causes of ill health. If you talk to anybody in the health service, you will learn that prevention will be one of the important issues for them in the future. This not only impacts on mortality but supports a more rounded target which aligns with the levelling-up agenda. It seeks to ensure that people live longer, in good health, and are able to work, and therefore to contribute to local economies and national productivity, and place less demand on public services.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, the noble Lord, Lord Best, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds brought up health disparities very strongly. We believe, as a Government, that this is of course a very important issue to the country as a whole. In January this year, we announced that we will be publishing a major conditions strategy to achieve integrated whole-person care. It will alleviate pressures on the health system, increase the healthy life expectancy and tackle conditions that contribute to morbidity and mortality.

A number of noble Lords talked about the tobacco control plan. The new tobacco control plan was published in 2022, with a focus on reducing smoking rates, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas and groups. The Autumn Statement makes available £8 billion for the NHS and adult social care services for 2024-25, which is on top of a record settlement for the Department of Health and Social Care announced at the spending review. So we are taking health disparities seriously, and the way we are doing so is through these missions.

The noble Lord, Lord Lansley, brought up private sector involvement. I think—I know—that the missions will also serve as a clear anchor for the expectations and plans of the private sector. It is important to look at the missions in a wider context. He also talked about business investment. Obviously, we want to see more successful businesses in the United Kingdom. We have already introduced a £1.4 billion global investment fund. I hope noble Lords can see that we are doing a large amount to ensure that we are dealing with health disparities and the health of the nation in the Bill.

I turn next to housing. Amendment 20, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, would require mission outcomes to

“contribute to achieving a safe and affordable home for every family” in this country. Amendment 21 from the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, also addresses the role of housing in the missions. We all know that housing has a critical role in levelling up across the whole of the United Kingdom. It unlocks productivity and growth, provides people with a tangible stake in their community, and underpins the physical and mental well-being of our communities. This is why we are setting out a housing mission in the levelling-up White Paper, which states:

“By 2030, renters will have a secure path to ownership with the number of first-time buyers increasing in all areas; and the government’s ambition is for the number of non-decent rented homes to have fallen by 50%, with the biggest improvements in the lowest performing areas.”

The Bill recognises the need to build more houses in England. The department is currently consulting on revisions to the National Planning Policy Framework published in December and due to close in March, which includes seeking views on how best to embed levelling up in the planning system. The department will respond to this consultation by spring 2023, publishing the framework revisions as part of this, so that the policy changes can take effect as soon as possible. We agree that we need to maximise the supply of new, affordable housing and make sure that more people in housing need can have access to good-quality homes. Our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme will deliver thousands of affordable homes for both rent and to buy across the country. Already, £10 billion has been invested in housing supply since the start of this Parliament, and it will unlock 1 million new homes. As I said, we have also made a £11.5 billion investment in affordable housing. In 2022—this is particularly for the noble Baroness, Lady Fox—we delivered, in this country, 232,000 additional homes. More affordable homes have been built in the last 12 years than in the last 13 years of the previous Labour Government. We still have a target to deliver 300,000 new homes every year by the mid-2020s.

Given the extent of the Government’s actions on what are really important priorities, I hope that this provides the noble Baroness with sufficient assurance to withdraw her amendment.

My Lords, this has been a really important discussion, not just more broadly around the missions and the metrics and whether they should be in the Bill, but the debate we have had about health and health inequalities—that has been extremely important. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Best, for introducing the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London’s Amendment. It is a very important amendment on the issues of health inequalities getting worse. The noble Lord talked about the 19-year gap between the wealthiest and poorest communities, and I think that is very shocking. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds picked this up and talked about the serious inequalities in Yorkshire and the importance of long-term solutions and also referenced the importance of social prescribing. I absolutely agree with him that this is something that needs to be taken more seriously and more into account.

What really concerns me are the health ambitions in the white paper. If we are to tackle what we have just been debating, they really will not cut it—they will not meet this huge challenge. We have talked about metrics, but I want to talk about metrics in the health section. One of the key metrics is that the “ambitious set of proposals” will

“go further on reducing disparities in health … in the forthcoming Health Disparities White Paper”,

but where is it? It has gone; it has been ditched. How can we have a metric on one of the most important things we need to tackle to achieve levelling up when one of the major parts of the metric is no longer in existence? I would be grateful if the Minister could address that point.

There was also a debate on housing. The important connection between quality housing and health and well-being was made very clearly and well by the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. The noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, talked about the importance of increasing the supply of housing. That is absolutely right, we need to do that, but I also stress that there has been almost no social housing built in this country in the last 30 years. That is partly why we have such a problem.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, about the importance of both Houses of Parliament debating any further proposed missions. We need to make sure that we have oversight of what is being proposed. The noble Lord, Lord Stevens, asked a very important question about the means by which the Government are intending to do anything about health and life expectancies. What will actually be happening? What will be the causations to make the difference going forward? This is why, as I say, I am so concerned about the accompanying metrics not being fit for purpose.

On metrics, the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, introduced her amendment to put the metrics in the Bill. We have heard in this debate and through other organisations that many people do not have any confidence that the metrics as currently set out—I have just talked about health, and I talked about transport on Monday—will actually achieve the ambitions that the missions want, or come close to it, to be honest. We talked on Monday about a number of areas that really ought to be part of the missions but are not included at all, such as the environment or child poverty. These will also be critical.

I thank the Minister for her detailed response. She says that we cannot put the missions in the Bill because it would make it unacceptably inflexible. Would it be unacceptably inflexible if we had the headline issues—the issues that need to be tackled—so that we knew what we had to deal with to meet levelling up? Perhaps this could be accompanied by something along the lines of the suggestion made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, on any further detail being debated across both Houses. Could we not also have this being the case with the metrics, so we can ensure that everything that the Government want to bring forward to tackle levelling up is fit for purpose and will make a difference?

The Minister talked about allocation of funds; that was something I raised. She said there is not a problem with allocation because everyone can submit bids, but that is the fundamental problem. I reiterate what I said: competitive bidding remains a stumbling block. I remind her that the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, described the process as a “begging bowl culture”. This is the not the way to do allocation.

If you pit communities against each other, that does not just necessarily mean that the right community does not get the funding it needs—you stop co-operation. If we are going to succeed in this, we need areas to work closely together and support each other. So I find the Government’s continued belief that competitive bidding is the way forward very disappointing.

Finally, can I ask the Minister, having listened to today’s and Monday’s debates, whether the Government will consider revisiting the missions and metrics as they stand, with a view to coming back to the House with an improved offer? In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 7 withdrawn.

Amendments 8 and 9 not moved.