Baroness Lister of Burtersett:

Moved by Baroness Lister of Burtersett

4: Clause 1, page 2, line 3, at end insert—“(2A) The levelling-up missions must include a mission to reduce the proportion of children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions.”Member's explanatory statementThis would include in the levelling-up missions a mission to reduce child poverty based on the UK Government’s domestic commitment to meet the universal UN Sustainable Development Goal 1.2: by 2030 to ‘reduce at least by a half the proportion of…children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions’.

My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 4, which is supported by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baronesses, Lady Stroud and Lady D’Souza, to whom I am very grateful, even though they could not all be in their places. I also give my support to Amendment 7 in particular. I am also grateful to Action For Children, and Paul Wright of Children’s Alliance, for their support.

The amendment would add a child poverty mission to the existing list of levelling-up missions, but it does so in a very different way to that put forward in Committee. I will explain that in a moment but first, I will give a very brief recap of the case. The latest official figures show that over 4 million—nearly a third—of all children are living in poverty. There is an even higher proportion among some minority ethnic communities and a growing problem of deep poverty, as demonstrated by the Social Metrics Commission, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud.

While poverty rates vary regionally, Tower Hamlets stands out as the local authority with the highest rate—nearly 50%, according to my colleagues in the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. They used government data, which also show that children are more likely than the overall population to be in low-income households, so it is perhaps not surprising that the Trussell Trust has found that nearly half of all households experiencing hunger include children —a significantly disproportionate number. This is among the latest in a flood of reports I have received, since we debated the issue in Committee, documenting the hardship experienced by children in low-income families.

As I pointed out in Committee, both the Levelling-Up Secretary and the former Prime Minister who introduced the levelling-up strategy have acknowledged that it has to address poverty, in particular child poverty. That child poverty was not mentioned in the white paper was, according to Mr Johnson, an accident, but the accident has not been rectified. Indeed, the opportunity to do so in Committee was rejected, despite strong support for a child poverty mission throughout the House. Moreover, it was disappointing that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, that poverty might be written into the existing missions was simply ignored. Mission 2, on opportunities, would, I suggest, be the obvious place to do so.

The Minister’s rejection of the previous amendment in Committee appeared to be based on three propositions. The first was that such a strategy was unnecessary in light of the usual list of what the Government are already doing, together with an example of local authority action to support child poverty reduction at local level. Listing various initiatives does not constitute a strategy. While the anti-poverty strategies pursued by some local authorities are indeed inspiring, it was clear from a recent event organised by Greater Manchester Poverty Action that, despite the good work they are doing, what local authorities are able to achieve is hampered by the lack of a national anti-poverty strategy.

Secondly, on the much-repeated mantra that paid work is the best route out of poverty, it is certainly an important route, but for all too many it represents a cul-de-sac if it simply means in-work poverty. It is not an argument against a wider interdepartmental strategy.

Thirdly, there is the Government’s aversion to income-based targets. I do not accept the Minister’s argument, nor do most academics or charities working in the area, but I shall spare noble Lords a debate on this. Instead, in a spirit of compromise, I have redrafted the amendment to address her concerns so that it now refers to

“poverty in all its dimensions”.

This phrase is taken from the UN sustainable development goal 1.2, which commits all signatories to work to

“reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions” by 2030.

Noble Lords who are not familiar with the sustainable development goals might think that this is an odd commitment to include in domestic policy but, as was made clear in a 2019 Written Statement from the Department for International Development, these goals apply to all people in all countries, including here in the UK. The amendment is in fact much less prescriptive than the goal itself but, given that the UK Government are committed to meeting the sustainable development goals and the then Secretary of State acknowledged that

“there is more work to do if we are to meet the ambitious targets by 2030”,

I hope the Government accept that this amendment would help them to do so. They might not like targets, but I am afraid that they are committed to the SDG target.

In Committee, the Minister accepted that child poverty is an issue that needs to be acted on. I am grateful to her for meeting me and the right reverend Prelate last week to propose a welcome, albeit small, concession by way of introducing child poverty statistics into the levelling-up metrics, which I shall leave her to spell out. But again, that alone does not constitute a stratagem. The Westminster Government remain the only Government in the UK without any kind of child poverty strategy, despite the 2021 recommendation for such a strategy from the Select Committee on Work and Pensions.

In conclusion, I would like to quote from a short film shown recently in Westminster by the Food Foundation, focused on Melissa, a mother from Solihull who is struggling to make ends meet. Speaking of families in poverty generally, and of politicians, she said:

“They”— the politicians

“know we’re here, but they don’t see us”.

The inclusion of a child poverty mission in the levelling-up strategy would be a tangible way for the Government to say, “We do see you and we are serious when we say we are committed to eradicating child poverty”. I beg to move.

I declare an interest in that I am vice-president of Marie Curie and co-chair of the Bevan Commission on health in Wales. I shall speak principally to Amendment 7 in this group, which is based on the previous amendment in Committee from the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London, who is also a signatory to this amendment.

The levelling up white paper, the precursor to the Bill, published in February 2022, identified that:

“One of the gravest inequalities faced by our most disadvantaged communities is poor health”.

Yet health disparities are not explicitly specified in the Bill and the health disparities White Paper has been scrapped, hence this amendment. In Committee the Minister stated that the Government are committed to working with the devolved Governments to reduce geographical disparities across the whole UK and to share evidence and lessons from across the country, learning what works and what does not. Today we have already heard the Minister re-emphasise this in summing up on previous amendments.

Levelling-up missions must address inequalities right across the life course, from cradle to grave. Tackling health inequalities is essential to improving the nation’s economic health as well as people’s well-being. Inequalities in life expectancy are the result of poor health literacy and those broad social determinants of chronic illness and poor health. The Bill purports to reduce geographic disparities using a range of mechanisms. There are marked regional differences in health outcomes across the nation; within and between regions, disparities are increasing.

The largest decreases in healthy life expectancy were seen in the most deprived 10% of neighbourhoods in the north-east. Between 2017 and 2019, healthy life expectancy at birth for women in the north-east of England was 59 years, 6.9 years less than for women in the south-east; for men, life expectancy was 5.9 years shorter. Alarmingly, ONS data showed that healthy life expectancy was around 19 years shorter in the most deprived compared with the least deprived areas of the nation. In these deprived areas, people had a more than threefold risk of dying from an avoidable cause. Before the pandemic, health inequalities were estimated to cost the UK £31 billion to £33 billion each year in lost productivity, £20 billion to £32 billion in lost tax revenue and higher benefit payments, and almost a fifth—£4.8 billion—of the total NHS budget.

The pandemic sharply exposed the real impact of health inequalities through excess mortality in some population groups, and exposed a number of related socioeconomic factors and regional conditions that exist across the life course. Poor housing, inadequate diet, including maternal malnutrition, and adverse childhood experiences have long-term consequences, including crises in adult life, greater need for NHS and social care support and poorer employment prospects. Living on a low income is a source of stress, and emerging neurological evidence suggests that this affects the way people make health-affecting choices, ranging from food to activity.

Poor-quality and overcrowded housing is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, depression and anxiety. Access to good-quality green space improves physical and mental health and lessens obesity. Deprived inner-city areas have far less good-quality green space and higher atmospheric pollution. Unemployment is associated with lower healthy life expectancy and poorer physical and mental health, for unemployed individuals and their households. In 2019-20, employment rates in the least deprived decile were 81.5%, compared with 68.4% in the most deprived decile. Such unemployment damages the nation’s economy.

These health inequalities, starting in childhood, persist right through to the end of life, when social disadvantage is often exacerbated by regional disparities, leaving palliative care needs unmet, particularly for those 90,000 people who die in poverty and deprivation, and those in rural areas where a quarter of the population are aged over 65, unlike younger urban populations. In the UK, those living in poverty, particularly in the most deprived areas, are more likely to die in hospital than in the community and have more emergency hospital admissions in the final months of life. When they leave bereaved children, these young people have worse long-term outcomes in mental health, employability and so on.

The Bill could break the cycle for many if it truly focuses on the population rather than being diverted by commercial short-termism. This is not about taking away from some to give to others: levelling up must address overall well-being and health inequalities across the life course for us to be an economically stronger nation. Without this as a common thread and a foundation for all missions, attempts to level up will fail. I hope that I will get overwhelming reassurance from the Minister today, because otherwise I will be really tempted to test the opinion of the House on this important issue.

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for tabling this Amendment, to which my name is attached. The stated intention of the Bill, reiterated many times by the Government in both Houses, is the moral duty to reduce economic, social and environmental disparities between and within different parts of the UK. I will make two points.

First, the overriding cause of disparity is poverty. Families not having sufficient funds to buy food is resulting in some 14% of the total UK population—11 million people—being forced to use food banks. The main driver of hunger and recourse to food banks is low income; 82% of those facing hunger—the vast Majority—are in debt. Vulnerable sectors include the disabled, single parents, carers, ethnic minorities and the LGBTQ+ community. According to the Trussell Trust’s latest report, Hunger in the UK, this level of poverty leads inevitably to greater, deeper and more far-reaching disparities in health and well-being—yet, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, it is not a focus of any of the Bill’s 12 missions. There is no reference in the Bill to poverty or the means to reduce it, nor any suggested practical measures to support communities facing a cost of living crisis or to achieve long-term health and well-being. It is not enough to indicate eliminating such inequality as an “intended outcome”. We must be a little more explicit.

Secondly, the failure to address the pressing issue of severe poverty as a cause of inequality in the Bill does not make sense. It means that there will be no regular annual reporting on this particular inequality and no obligation for the Government to reveal whether or not the goal of reducing poverty has been reached. This amendment would at least ensure that lifting families, especially children, out of poverty could provide the necessary structure for tackling other disparities. Without such clear and unambiguous reference to poverty, levelling up cannot be genuinely transformative.

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 4, to which I have put my name and which I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, for leading on, and to Amendment 7, to which my right reverend friend the Bishop of London has added her name. She sends her apologies that she cannot be present today.

I draw attention, as has been done already, to the latest research on the number of children living in poverty in the UK. I highlight particularly that in 2021-22 in my part of England, the north-east, more than one in three children were living below the poverty line. The number of children living in poverty in the region has seen an increase of 26% since 2014-15—the steepest rise of anywhere in the country during this period.

I too thank the Minister for the very helpful meeting we held last week. I look forward to hearing what specific commitments she might make, especially around including child poverty in the annual metrics through which the impact of the Bill will be measured, and I welcome the recognition that these metrics will bring clarity to the issue of child poverty in the UK. Nevertheless, it is vital that reducing child poverty becomes part of the solution to achieve levelling up and is not seen solely as a by-product of it. I believe it is the primary purpose that should lie behind levelling up.

How can we expect levelling up to be achieved when the number of children growing up in poverty remains so high? How can we expect opportunities to be spread equally across the country when the most deprived areas are experiencing the largest increases in child poverty, resulting in lower educational outcomes and poorer physical and mental health? The experience of poverty in childhood holds back far too many people, preventing them reaching their potential. If we do not make ending child poverty a priority, levelling up will similarly be held back. Put simply, this needs to be a foundational mission for the whole levelling-up agenda.

I turn to Amendment 7. We are all in consensus that good health is key to our flourishing and that we would like to see health inequalities narrowed. However, the health disparities white paper was scrapped in recent memory and, while the new NHS Long Term Workforce Plan has much to commend it, it demonstrates the lack of a plan to tackle health inequalities. Meanwhile, the healthy life expectancy gap remains and disparities within regions are sometimes even starker than between them, as the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, has explained.

The NHS was born in order to work for equitable health. I hope this amendment will ensure that that remains the case. It would ensure that a specific mission relating to health disparities is introduced, including health outcomes towards the end of life; inequalities do not vanish when a person is at the end of their life but persist in access to palliative care. The amendment is necessary because, although we are grateful for the Minister’s assurances, there is still nothing in the Bill that holds the Government to the missions set out in the White Paper, which are the substance of our work to level up. Health is vital to levelling up. It is my conviction that Amendments 4 and 7 go hand in hand and that both need to be in the Bill.

My Lords, I support the Amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and thank her for her commitment to striving for fairness and equality and to eradicating child poverty for the nation’s most disadvantaged children.

An effective way in which the Government could improve our children’s health and well-being is to tackle child poverty. To do that, there must be a clear strategy. What better way to do that than by placing this amendment as a mission in the levelling-up Bill, to reduce the proportion of children of all ages living in poverty? Surely it is an obvious place for this amendment to sit.

The evidence on child poverty and its disastrous effects is becoming increasingly apparent. The Households Below Average Income report published by the DWP states that 350,000 more children were pulled into relative poverty in 2021-22. That means that 4.2 million children—29% of our UK children—were in poverty, up from 3.6 million in 2010-11. This is worrying because it will only continue to rise in 2023, given the cost of living crisis and the high mortgage rates hitting families harder and harder by the month.

Research has shown that there are geographical disparities across our nation, but there are also significant differences between the child poverty rates in ethnic groups. Children from black and minority-ethnic groups are much more likely to be in poverty—48%, compared with 25% of children in white families.

It is also disheartening to know that work does not provide a guaranteed route out of poverty in the UK. Unbelievably, 71% of children growing up in poverty live in a household where at least one person works. Is that not depressing? Between 1998 and 2003, reducing child poverty was made a priority. There was a comprehensive strategy and investment in children. The number of children in poverty fell by 600,000. That is what you call a mission of levelling up.

As I keep saying, childhood lasts a lifetime, so it makes financial sense to invest in our children as early as possible. Perhaps having a Cabinet-level Minister for children would help this mission. This year, research by the Child Poverty Action Group showed that child poverty cost the economy almost £40 billion a year.

In order for children to function at their best, especially in school, they need a proper, balanced diet. Shamefully, we are seeing a nutritional postcode lottery for our children. For example, some fantastic work is being done in London, meaning that all children in primary schools will receive a free school meal. In boroughs such as Tower Hamlets, all secondary school children will do too. Yet, if you travel outside of London to areas known for economic deprivation and high levels of child poverty, we find that the same children in need of a decent meal are unable to receive a free school meal, unlike their counterparts in London.

Without lifting children out of poverty, levelling up will not have the long-term positive impact that the Government hope to achieve through the Bill. If child poverty keeps at this high level and keeps on growing, children’s prospects will suffer, cancelling out any other positive aspects of the Bill. I plead with the Government and all noble Lords to support this amendment, whose mission is to reduce the number of children of all ages living in poverty in all its forms, as one of the Bill’s levelling-up missions.

My Lords, this group of amendments seeks to persuade the Government to be more specific about the missions and metrics of levelling up. I wish to speak initially to Amendment 8 in my name.

I remain very disappointed that the Government have failed to include their white paper missions in the Bill. It makes me ask whether there is some shame on the Government’s part in stating clearly in legislation that our country has the worst levels of regional inequality of any part of the European Union, and whether the Government are committed to addressing those inequalities with determination and sustained funding.

Amendment 8 challenges the Government to include in the Bill the missions so clearly set out in the White Paper. All my amendment does is repeat those missions. They are not perfect, and they are necessarily the ones Liberal Democrats would include. We would perhaps include something more specific on health inequalities and life expectancy, which is one of the missions, and we would include child poverty more specifically than do the ones on deprivation in the White Paper. However, those are the missions the Government have chosen and they will do a good job—if the Government keep to them, and to the metrics in the addendum to the levelling-up White Paper.

I accept the argument that the Minister gave last time, that missions change over time. Of course they do, and my amendment makes it clear that they will and that the Government should change them. However, that an entire Bill should fail to list what the missions are seems to me a failure of government ambition and determination. At the moment, the Government will set out their missions after the Bill has been enacted. Perhaps the Minister will be able tell us whether they will include all the elements in the White Paper.

Of course, they could fail to do so, which is my concern. The Government might pick and choose to suit a different political agenda, and then the promise of levelling up will be dead. As we have heard from the noble Baronesses, Lady Lister and Lady Finlay, the lifelong and generational harm to individuals, families, their communities and this country will not be tackled if the Government determine not to follow the strategy in the agenda set out in the White Paper. Hope and trust will fade that those in power have any serious intention to make people’s lives better. We on these Benches will scrutinise that first government statement of levelling-up missions and metrics and hold the Government to account if they fail to set out the White Paper missions in full.

Throughout the debate this afternoon, the Minister has responded to our challenges on rural proofing and the levelling-up funds, as addressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, with a list, given to her by her department, of various relatively small—in the big scheme of things—packets of funding to address some of the inequalities. That is fair enough, and the example that comes to mind is £150 million for rural community assets, which could include public houses. However, this is not the same as having a sustained, long-term, deep-seated strategy, which is what the White Paper says should be happening. It is scattering bits of confetti, in the shape of funding, for issues to be addressed here, there and everywhere.

Given that the Government will set their face against putting the missions in the Bill, we must turn to having specifics in the Bill. We have heard two extraordinarily powerful arguments, one in favour of addressing child poverty, the scourge of this country. A third of children live in poverty. Perhaps many noble Lords live in areas where they see children in poverty. I do. I see them coming to school without a coat on when it is cold, without shoes that fit properly. I talk to teachers who tell me that the children are hungry. We are one of the richest countries in the world—this cannot be right. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and my noble friend made powerful arguments. We will support them wholeheartedly to get this in the Bill, because if the Government address nothing else, they are going to address child poverty.

We will also give our wholehearted support if the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, wishes to test the opinion of the House on putting health disparities in the Bill. She rightly argued, as the Marmot report told us, that if you deal with health inequalities, you will deal with the social determinants of health: decent housing, skills and well-paid employment.

If nothing else, if those two issues are laid out in the Bill, we in this House will have achieved at least something to improve the Bill—to ensure that the Government focus on two big issues that are fundamental to levelling up our society. I look forward to the Minister’s response. If those amendments are pushed to a vote, we will certainly support them.

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests, as I am still a serving councillor in both Stevenage and Hertfordshire.

It is always a huge privilege to follow Members of your Lordships’ House with such great expertise and passion for their subjects as my noble friend Lady Lister of Burtersett and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, supported by the noble Baronesses, Lady D’Souza and Lady Benjamin, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. I shall speak to their amendments in a moment.

First, I have tabled Amendment 5 to highlight a number of missed opportunities in the Bill. Some of the many issues we have raised relate to the deficiency of the Bill in clearly setting out a definition of what levelling up actually means to the Government and, as importantly, how it will reach every area—we have a later set of amendments on regional disparities—how it will be funded, how it will measure outcomes rather than outputs, and how in key areas it will start to turn the agenda from acute interventions, which are expensive and complex, to preventive work, which will be more effective and save costs in the long run. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hayman for setting out so clearly our concerns around funding; I will not comment any further on that subject.

It seems to us that the levelling-up missions are nowhere near ambitious enough to take this country forward in the wake of Brexit, the pandemic and climate change, and with economic changes that need a clear strategic approach to ensure that the United Kingdom keeps pace with scientific development, tackles productivity challenges and is a place where everyone has the opportunity and encouragement to play their part in growing the economy.

What we see in the levelling-up Bill is, too often, the sticking-plaster politics of the last few years, which will do little to tackle the long-term challenges. Our missions indicate our ambition and determination that our country will face those long-term challenges that really matter to citizens and society; keep focused on them in spite of day-to-day pressures; ensure that everyone—business and trade unions, private and public sector, and government departments—works together; and, key to the consideration of this Bill, make sure that local and national government work together in partnership to ensure that action happens at the right level and combines national strategy with local knowledge and expertise. Strong missions must be focused on tackling the long-term and complex problems that need long-term thinking and recognise that there is no silver bullet to solve them, only key partnerships worked at and sustained over time.

We must be more ambitious, like our mission to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7, which is aimed at tackling the consistent underperformance in our economy that sees Britain still trailing behind our partners rather than powering ahead. ONS statistics show that the UK’s GDP growth between the final quarters of 2019 and 2022 was the lowest in the G7, which means that the UK is the only G7 country in which the economy remains smaller than it was before the pandemic. Being as ambitious for our economy as the people in our country are for their families must surely be the launch pad of levelling up.

There can be no levelling up while people and communities still feel unsafe in the places they live, work or spend their leisure time. There can be no levelling up while we treat the challenge of producing clean energy with a lack of ambition. We need a mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower, creating jobs, cutting Bills and dealing with the crisis in energy security.

The noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, clearly set out the reasons why tackling health inequalities, which have beleaguered the UK for generations, must be part of the mission to level up our country in order to break the cycle. My local area is home to some of the most exciting cell and gene therapy developments in the world, so it is ironic that if you live in parts of my borough, you will live 10 years less than if you live in St Albans, 12 miles away.

In the United Kingdom we have 7 million people languishing on NHS waiting lists, waiting for surgery or procedures that could be life changing, never mind life saving. We must include in the missions for this country a stated aim to harness the life sciences to reduce preventable illness, speed up access to treatments and cut health inequalities. For that reason, if the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, chooses to test the opinion of the House on this subject, she will have our support.

Lastly, I come to the powerful words of my noble friend Lady Lister, who has been such a strong advocate for children, particularly disadvantaged children, in your Lordships’ House. It is a shameful indictment of this Government that the situation relating to child poverty has gone backwards since 2010. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said, it should be central to levelling up. The Child Poverty Action Group figure of 4.2 million children living in poverty, which has been widely cited in the debate, is a shameful indictment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, said, the situation is far worse for black and ethnic-minority children, and working is not the answer for everyone, with 71% of children in poverty living in a home where at least one person works. The figure cited that between 1998 and 2003 the number of children living in poverty fell by 600,000 shows that it can be done, but the figures are now climbing rapidly again.

The combination of low pay, poor housing and steep rises in the costs of food and energy is taking a terrible toll on the life chances of too many children and young people across our country. We heard recently from the National Housing Federation that too many children are in poor accommodation where they still have to share beds with their parents well into their teenage years. The generational change needed here requires breaking down the barriers to opportunity at every stage, for every child. That needs reform of the childcare and education systems to raise standards and prepare young people for work and life.

None of this can happen unless we all—across the political spectrum and society—make it our ambition to drive out the child poverty that blights lives, drains self-confidence, squashes opportunity and ambition, and continues the cycle that sees so many of our young people unable to make their full contribution to our country. It is unthinkable that we will see any long-term levelling up in our country without tackling child poverty. Indeed, the in-depth study on child poverty carried out by the University of Newcastle put at the top of its list of priority actions

“putting tackling child poverty at the heart of future devolution deals”.

That is a clear example of why it is entirely appropriate to have a statement of intent at national level—a mission—to drive bespoke action at local level. If my noble friend Lady Lister decides to test the opinion of the House on whether this must be included as a mission, she will have our strong support.

We would, of course, like to see Labour’s missions at the heart of the Bill, but even an optimist like me realises that this might be a little premature. However, the amendments on health inequalities and child poverty deal with aims that surely we all share and issues without close attention to which levelling up just cannot happen or be successful. I reiterate our support for them and urge all noble Lords to support those amendments.

My Lords, Amendment 4 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, would require the Government to set out a levelling-up mission to reduce child poverty. Amendment 5 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, would compel the Government to relate their missions to the Labour Party’s five priorities. What I am interested in is why child poverty is not in her amendment. Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, would require the Government to set out a mission on health disparities and healthy life expectancy. Amendment 8 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, would require the Government to include the missions and headline metrics from the levelling up white paper in their first statement of levelling-up missions.

I have made our approach to levelling-up missions extremely clear in this House. They are subject to debate in Parliament, but the specifics of the missions are not written into law. Missions may need to evolve over time—including to make them more stretching as goals are met and to adapt to policy relevant to the day. We will not put any missions in the Bill. Missions are intended to anchor government policy and decision-making necessary to level up the United Kingdom. Missions should not, however, be set in stone. As the economy adapts, so will the missions reflect the changing environment and lessons learned from past interventions.

Governments will have to state before Parliament whether they will proceed with existing missions or establish revised missions. This is comparable with other key policy documents—for example, the Government’s mandate to NHS England—which are required to be laid before Parliament but without their contents being rigidly codified in legislation. Similarly, I have given repeated assurances to this House that our first statement of levelling-up missions will contain the missions from the levelling up White Paper.

In relation to health, we have already established a dedicated health mission, as outlined in the levelling up White Paper, with the aim of improving healthy life expectancy across the United Kingdom, improving health, well-being and productivity and reducing pressure on public services. The mission and supporting metrics are set out in detail in the levelling up White Paper and technical annexe and will be formally set out to Parliament in the statement of levelling-up missions.

I will add a bit more on health disparities, because this is important. Health disparities exist across a wide range of conditions, from cancer to mental health, and contribute to stark and unacceptable variation in the number of years people live in good health in the United Kingdom. That is one reason why, in January, the Government announced that they will publish a major conditions strategy, and an interim report on that is due to be published this summer. The strategy will tackle conditions that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England, including cancers, cardiovascular disease, strokes and diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases, dementia, mental ill-health and musculoskeletal conditions. The strategy will apply geographical lenses to each condition to address what noble Lords say is important—and the Government agree: to address these regional disparities in health outcomes, supporting the levelling-up missions to improve health and reduce disparities. So we are doing what the noble Baroness wants, and it is in the metrics for the missions on health.

We have listened to the debate on the levelling up White Paper highlighting challenges faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds and how these vary between and within places. Several missions address factors contributing to child poverty. As I said, the Government have listened to the feedback on this issue, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham for their helpful meetings recently.

The Department for Work and Pensions currently publishes local area statistics on children in low- income families. Subject to these continuing to meet our quality standards, they will be cited as a relevant metric in the Government’s statutory reporting on levelling up. This will be reflected in the Government’s first statement of levelling-up missions following Royal Assent.

The statistics on children in low-income families show the number and proportion of children aged under 16 living in low-income families year by year. The statistics are available on both a relative and an absolute poverty basis, before housing costs. They are available for a wide range of geographical areas, including region, local authority, parliamentary Constituency and even down to ward levels. The statistics will show the individual age and gender of children and the family status, giving us a really detailed local picture of poverty in particular areas. DWP has also announced plans to resume work developing an experimental measure of poverty based on the Social Metrics Commission’s innovative work. It is beginning to engage with stake- holders and will publish more information on its plans in due course.

I hope that the assurances and explanations I have given on these matters have reassured the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, that she feels able not to press her amendment, and that others in the group are not moved.

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken. They have strengthened the argument very much and really underlined that it is not possible to level up without explicitly addressing child poverty. I am grateful to the Minister for engaging with the arguments and, at I said earlier, meeting me and the right reverend Prelate, and I acknowledge that we have made some progress with the inclusion in the metrics of the child poverty statistics. I point out that we have those statistics only thanks to the right reverend Prelate, because the Government wanted to do away with them—but thanks to him, in whichever dreadful Bill it was I cannot remember now, we saved them, and I am very glad that they are now proving useful to the Government.

But simply having the metrics without a clear, explicit statement in the missions themselves is not sufficient. It does not meet the arguments that have been put by a number of noble Lords why addressing child poverty should be, as I think somebody said, a foundational mission to the levelling-up strategy. So, much as I am grateful to the Minister for moving since Committee by including the metrics, I am afraid it does not go far enough. It does not meet the arguments put by every noble Lord who has spoken. Therefore, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

Ayes 217, Noes 192.

Amendment 4 agreed.

Amendment 5 not moved.