I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and speak to the amendments in my name in this group. My amendments, grouped under two headings, “environmental restoration” and “human enablement and empowerment”, start with Amendment 13. I think we should have in the Bill that the bank should be prohibited from investing in any projects that are not inclusive by design. What does “inclusive by design” mean? It is simply this: that all users are enabled in whatever that system, infrastructure or structure itself actually is.
I can give a quick example, of where so-called shared space has been laid out across the country, with local authorities using public money to take areas—be that a local piece of public realm, a high street or whatever—which previously were independently accessible by all members of the community. When so-called shared space is put in, kerbs, crossings, road markings and barriers are taken out, and it becomes a free-for-all whereby toddlers and tankers, buses and blind people are somehow able to coexist because of this misguided concept. Public money is being used to take spaces that were previously accessible and make them effectively inaccessible. It is being used effectively to plan out of their local public realm more than one-third of the community. It is critical that in the Bill there is a clear statement of intent that anything that the bank invests in is inclusive by design.
Amendment 19 highlights the critical importance of energy efficiency and security. Much has already been said on energy efficiency, so I shall focus on energy security. There could hardly be a more significant time to make the point of the UK’s need to have greater energy security, and for that to be dramatically enhanced through understanding what it means to have a more local and more environmentally sound supply.
On Amendment 21, there could barely be a more significant piece of infrastructure than clean air. Air in so many parts of this city and other cities across the United Kingdom is actually killing our citizens. If the bank’s objectives are so clearly set as economic, with a capital “E”, clean air fits clearly within that. If we want our citizens, at whatever age or whatever stage they are at, to be fit, happy, healthy and able to develop and deploy all their talents, what they breathe could barely be more significant.
Amendment 22 looks at the UK cash infrastructure. I believe that, for reasons of financial inclusion and resilience, this again should be designated as infrastructure for the purposes of the bank—and perhaps even one stage above that, and designated as critical national infrastructure. For all the arguments around financial inclusion that we ran through in the Financial Services Act 2021—I intend to return to them when the financial services and markets Bill comes to your Lordships’ House—but also for the times in which we live, we need to have resilience in our financial systems. Cash would currently seem to be incredibly significant in providing that resilience, if and when things happen to the digital platforms and systems at local and national level.
Amendment 23 considers social infrastructure. Again, it is difficult for the Bill to espouse economic success so highly without seeing how tied to social infrastructure that economic success is—and indeed must be. There is now a fantastic body of evidence-based research and work around social infrastructure and the metrics which can be put in place. So the Bill should have social infrastructure in it to underscore both its critical importance and that it is not a “nice to have” or something additive but actually a driver of the economic success that the Bill espouses.
I turn to Amendment 24. If clean air is to be considered significant infrastructure, we must consider data and data systems as critical infrastructure—as well as the other issues talked about in previous groups on nature and the environment. So much around data will enable not just economic growth but also social, psychological, citizen, city, community, country and global growth—if we get it right. It is not an inevitability, but I believe that data is at least as important as any other factor to warrant inclusion in the Bill.
Similarly for Amendment 26, which puts skills on the same level, we can have whatever infrastructure investment for hard infrastructure, which is so tangible that it is so appealing to so many. However, whatever connectivity or infrastructure programme or project is funded, if we do not ensure that everyone is enabled to have those skills—digital, data, numeracy, literacy or resilience—and, if those skills are not seen as critical, it is really going to be a suboptimal infrastructure investment at best. In some instances, it will largely be a waste of money.
Amendment 27 reinforces the issues around social infrastructure and puts a “have regard” duty on the bank. It also asks that the bank looks to put in measures and means of measuring—the metrics—around social infrastructure for the benefits that this would bring. Again, even if one is considering this on the hard economic case, as the Bill is currently so over-rigidly founded, social infrastructure, despite its name, makes sense. Even if one only considers it on hard economics, it is obviously so much more.
Finally, Amendment 31, on green spaces, puts a duty on all infrastructure investments from the bank to have an element of green spaces as part of urban and suburban areas for the benefit of all—and, indeed, for the benefit of that investment itself. This goes to both the environmental and levelling-up points. Potentially, if we got this right and accepted this amendment, there would be £200 billion-worth of health benefits and 40,000 jobs; 3,500 communities would be enhanced, invigorated and enabled through having green space where currently none exists. For the final part of the amendment—that the bank comes back within six months and determines what percentage of any investment should go to green space—I believe that this should be somewhere “between 5% and 20%”.
In short, all these amendments are seeking to push environmental, enabling and enhancement issues right into the Bill to make lives happy, healthy and humane.