Extract from Lords repeat of Commons statement on Levelling Up - Mar 18
Friday, 19 March 2021 07:54
The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing,
Communities and Local Government (Lord Greenhalgh) (Con): The
approach to levelling up needs to be seen as a package of measures.
The levelling-up fund is more capital-focused and follows on from
the £3.6 billion towns fund, while the community renewal fund—the
precursor to the UK shared prosperity fund—is more revenue-focused.
Alongside that, we have the increasing devolution of funding, which
amounts to around £7.49 billion...Request free trial
The Minister of State, Home Office and Ministry of Housing,
Communities and Local Government () (Con): The approach to levelling up needs to be
seen as a package of measures. The levelling-up fund is more
capital-focused and follows on from the £3.6 billion towns fund,
while the community renewal fund—the precursor to the UK
shared prosperity fund—is more revenue-focused.
Alongside that, we have the increasing devolution of funding, which
amounts to around £7.49 billion over 30 years for the nine
currently agreed devolution deals..
(CB): We know that a commonality among people
who suffer poverty is, on most occasions, that they did not do very
well at school. This leads to a low-wage economy, low-wage health
and low social mobility and opportunity. We are talking about
poverty —it is the only reason you would talk about levelling up.
If are going to level up and to address poverty, then is this not
the chance we have to take to excel with our schools and to put an
enormous amount of investment into our children and the children of
the next generation?
(Con): My Lords, I completely agree
that education is very much the engine of social mobility and
addresses the points that were raised. We need to judge our
levelling-up agenda against a package of measures that could also
support skills development through things such as the new community
renewal fund and the UK shared prosperity fund.
To read all the exchanges, CLICK
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