Boris Johnson’s promise to “level up” the UK is “highly unlikely” to be achieved, experts have warned, after the government published a 350-page white paper underlining the yawning gaps between regions.
Setting out 12 “missions” to help left behind areas catch up, levelling up secretary Michael Gove hailed the long-awaited document, telling MPs it would “shift wealth and power decisively to working people and their families”.
Experts said the weighty document, littered with references to Renaissance Florence and larded with footnotes, gave an accurate picture of the UK’s economic imbalances.
It finds that if the 25% of areas where productivity is lowest could be levelled up to the national average, it would bring economic benefits equivalent to £2,300 a worker, for example.
But Gove was accused of failing to match his ambition with adequate resources.
Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank, said, “The targets are largely in the right areas, but many look extremely ambitious – that is to say highly unlikely to be met, even with the best policies and much resource.
“There is little detail on how most of them will be met, and less detail on available funding. There is something for everyone, and hence little sense of prioritisation: ambition and resource will be spread very thin.”
The 12 “missions” cover everything from healthy life expectancy to local transport links. The government will legislate to give departments a duty to achieve these goals by 2030 – an approach previously taken by Labour governments in relation to child poverty.
Gove also promised a fresh wave of devolution from Whitehall, with local areas offered a “menu” of options, including the creation of new metro mayors.
“We need to allow overlooked and undervalued communities to take back control of their destiny,” he said.
Torsten Bell, director of the Resolution Foundation, said the plans combined “George Osborne and Tony Blair” by promising more devolution and redirecting spending towards poorer areas.
However, Prof Sir Michael Marmot, director of UCL’s Institute of Health Equity, warmed that the funding promised as yet is “tiny”, given the “scale of the problem”.
“Mr Gove’s reliance that the money he is putting in will ‘trickle down’ to those who will benefit is, simply, inappropriate by an order of magnitude,” he said.
Marmot, who carried out a seminal report into health inequalities, added that they had been worsened by spending cuts. “At the heart of the dramatic and avoidable falls in life expectancy has been the government’s agenda since 2010 to cut public services. This comes on top of the mass deindustrialisation of the 1980s and contributed to stripping the heart out of those communities the levelling up agenda is intending to reinvigorate.”
Lisa Nandy, the shadow levelling up secretary, echoed that view, furiously accusing Gove in the House of Commons of “turbocharging the decline of our communities, cutting off choices and chances for a generation of young people”.
She asked Gove: “Is this it?” adding: “He talks about 12 missions. This is 12 admissions of failure.”
The National Audit Office has warned that Gove’s department is not monitoring closely enough how it is spending the £11bn set aside for levelling up schemes, and whether its approach in different areas is working or not.
Gove set out a smörgåsbord of specific policies in the white paper, some of which have already been announced. Promises included everything from ensuring additional Arts Council grants are spent outside London and south-east England, to “refocusing” brownfield development away from the capital, to funding more grassroots football pitches.
He argued that the renaissance of areas outside London and the south-east would be driven by private sector investment – though the government is also promising to redirect public spending, including on research and development.
Sources at Gove’s department insisted the Treasury was fully behind the levelling up plans, saying: “Rishi loves it.”
Will Tanner, the director of the Conservative thinktank Onward, suggested by setting public targets, and promising to publish an annual assessment of its progress, the government was “changing the rules of the game”, creating targets “against which departments, including the Treasury, will be held to account.
“Just as the Office for Budget Responsibility drives fiscal discipline, so too will this regime create a rod for the government’s back to ensure that opportunity is spread fairly around the UK.”
