The government's plans to provide equal opportunities across the UK have been made even more difficult by rising prices, according to Michael Gove.
The Levelling Up plan aims to improve opportunities across the country. The programme was set out by the Conservative party in their 2019 manifesto.
However, the cabinet minister for the strategy, Michael Gove, raised fears regarding the impact of rising costs after a BBC Panorama investigation raised questions about whether the money is reaching the most deprived areas in England.
As reported by the BBC, Mr Gove said his department was helping councils to ensure bids are effective, and that the government must stick to ensuring it delivers on its 12 "missions" for the Levelling Up policy - ranging from improving education to faster broadband capability to local transport - with a deadline for delivery in 2030.
"Unless we stick to those missions, then the cost of living issues that we face at the moment will deepen inequality," said Mr Gove.
Labour's Lisa Nandy, the Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, said the government should begin by focusing on getting inflation under control. "By their own admission, their mismanagement of the economy is going to make levelling up harder," she told the BBC.
It has been reported that £1.7bn has been allocated to towns and cities across the UK during the first round of the so-called Levelling Up Fund.
When Panorama sent FOI requests to councils in the 100 most deprived areas in England, it says it found that 28 councils had all their bids rejected. This allegedly included 18 areas that were on the government's top priority list, including Knowsley and Blackpool.
Meanwhile, 38 councils won all, or some, of the money they requested, and 34 councils did not submit a bid in this round. A second round for the fund will open for applications at the end of May.
What is Levelling Up
A recent poll by YouGov revealed that 74 per cent of people don’t actually understand what Levelling Up is. To dispel the confusion, The North in Numbers podcast aimed to shed light on the strategy.
The North in Numbers podcast tells the human stories behind various statistics for the north of England. In this episode - the first of series three - host Annie Gouk gets to the bottom of levelling up, speaking to policy experts and people working in some of the key areas the strategy targets.
Andy Westwood, Professor of Government Practice at the University of Manchester, said: “At its core, levelling up is really about recognising how unequal the UK is. That inequality exists between regions, but it also exists within regions too at the local level.”
The north is a particular focus of the agenda, having been hit hard by long-term economic change such as deindustrialisation and the move away from manufacturing. The region falls behind in everything from health and education to housing and transport, and that north-south divide has only widened thanks to recent events.
Professor Westwood said: “Austerity, Brexit and Covid have all come together to create a cumulative effect over the last 10 years. Whatever one thinks about each of those individual things, together they’ve made those inequalities grow.”
One of the key areas of inequality the government is trying to tackle is education. School children in the north start to fall behind from a very early age, faring worse than average at early years foundation stage, and continuing to under-perform at GCSE level.
Another crucial element of the levelling up agenda is transport. Figures from IPPR show that over the last 10 years, the north has received £515 less per person than London in transport spending, and this is reflected in worse public transport options and greater car use.
While there are several concerns raised in the episode about the proposed delivery of levelling up, the general consensus is that it is a much-needed strategy - and that current plans at least make a good start. Jonny Webb, senior research fellow at IPPR North, said: “The good thing about the levelling up agenda is regardless of whether we do see these outcomes achieved over the next decade, what it has done is put into the centre of our political discussions the importance of thinking about inequalities between places.
“I think we’ll now see politicians take it seriously and try to make efforts to close some of these divides. So even if it doesn’t happen in the form of this White Paper, I’m optimistic that we will see some progress on this.”
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