Labour has promised to abolish the 12 levelling up 'missions' after labelling the Government's targets for judging the success of Boris Johnson's flagship political project "fundamentally dishonest".
In a speech to the Institute for Government (IfG) conference this afternoon (January 17) Shadow Levelling Up Secretary Lisa Nandy will say she will replace the missions set out by Michael Gove a year ago.
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The targets, which the Tory Levelling Up Secretary said the Government should be judged against by 2030, include getting 90% of children to the expected education standards and bringing Northern transport systems closer to London's.
It was part of the Government's Levelling Up White Paper, published last February to spell out in more detail how the Government will spread opportunity outside London and the South East.
But in her speech Ms Nandy will replace the missions with an "independent advisory council drawn from every part of the UK – to monitor the government’s progress against metrics which deliver tangible outcomes for people".
Labour says the criteria to be judged against "will be based on principles including resilience – in local, regional and national economies – connectivity to education, training, work, healthcare, family and friends; sustainability; and wellbeing".
The MP will say in her speech: “Who can argue with the levelling up missions? But that is precisely why they offer so little. Longer healthier, happier lives, blighted by less crime and supported by good public services are not an aspiration for government, but a right that any government worth its salt should strive to realise.
“Instead the Tories have taken their failure to deliver the most basic public services, taken their ideologically driven crusade to run down our key institutions, and twisted it into a perverse plan to keep shifting the goal posts on their record of delivery.
“We are calling time on this. We say if you can’t deliver it, don’t write it down. So we will replace the current levelling up missions because, apart from anything else, it’s fundamentally dishonest to introduce measures of success without definition, clarity or even the faintest idea of how you meet them.”
Last year Mr Gove revealed what he described as "12 bold, national missions - all quantifiable and to be achieved by 2030". He said they would be "the policy objectives for levelling up, and thus form the heart of the government’s agenda for the 2020s".
He also promised a new Levelling Up Advisory Council including members such as Sir Paul Collier, renowned economist at Oxford’s Blavatnik’s School of Government, providing further support and constructive analysis.
Since then he has been sacked by Boris Johnson before being reappointed by the Prime Minister's successor Rishi Sunak four months later. In the intervening period two other politicians have served as Levelling Up Secretary.
Ms Nandy is not the first person to criticise the levelling up missions. The IfG last year said only four of them "are clear, ambitious and have appropriate metrics...the other eight all need to be recalibrated if they are to deliver on the government’s promises to level up the UK".
It also emerged the Government can amend the missions where they deem necessary and it also provides provision for ministers to alter the strict timetable for delivery that was originally promised.
