The Government’s so-called “levelling-up” agenda will seek to “change the economic geography of the country”, Michael Gove has told his Cabinet colleagues.
The long-awaited White Paper is expected to be published on Wednesday in which Communities Secretary Mr Gove is expected to detail plans for creating better opportunities outside the South East of England.
The plan to establish more equal education and employment chances was a key tenet of Boris Johnson’s offer at the 2019 general election, at which voters handed him a landslide majority.
The Prime Minister’s pledge to deliver Brexit and create better jobs outside London saw the Conservatives take a number of seats in Labour’s traditional heartlands.
Many of those areas across the Midlands and north of England hope to be among those to benefit from the Government’s proposals.
A Downing Street spokesman said the Prime Minster told Cabinet ministers on Tuesday that levelling-up was “a great moral mission that has the potential for fantastic economic benefit”.
He added: “Levelling-Up Secretary Michael Gove said the aim of levelling up was to change the economic geography of the country and that the white paper set out the tools needed to achieve this, including investment in education and skills and further devolution of powers outside of Westminster.”
Having been accused of presiding over a zombie Parliament in recent weeks as he fends off controversy around possible No 10 lockdown-busting parties, Mr Johnson told his top team that the white paper would “make it clear to the public that we have a plan in place to deliver on the people’s priorities”.
It comes after Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi announced his department’s proposals for improving education opportunities on Tuesday, with plans to identify 55 “cold spots” nationwide where learning outcomes are weakest, including Rochdale in Greater Manchester, the Isle of Wight, Walsall in the West Midlands, parts of Yorkshire and Sunderland.
The Department for Education said that teachers would be offered a “levelling-up premium” to improve retention, while £200 million would be assigned to the Government’s Troubled Families programme, as announced last year in the Spending Review.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said research showed there were clear geographical inequalities across the UK, but stressed that they will not be fixed quickly.
The think tank found that in 2019, workers in London were paid £20 per hour on average, 60% more than the £13 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and Grimsby, Lincolnshire.
Fewer than one in five children from Grimsby go to university and get degrees, compared with one in three children from London, with half of those from the Humber port town who get degrees moving away by the age of 27.
IFS director Paul Johnson said: “Levelling-up economic outcomes between places must mean getting high-paid jobs more evenly spread – much easier said than done.
“Meanwhile, if people born in poorer areas are to see the full benefits of that then educational attainment in these areas must simultaneously be improved, or else many of the good jobs will be filled by graduates moving in.
“Decisions since 2010 to cut public spending in poorer areas more than in better-off ones will not have helped.”
But the IFS and other critics pointed out that London should not be forgotten in the levelling-up agenda, with people in the capital more prone to poverty due to a combination of low wages at the bottom end of the jobs scale and high housing costs.
London and the South East also pay a higher share of the tax burden – tax revenues per person in 2019-20 were 88% higher in London than the north-east of England, the IFS found.
Paul Johnson added: “It is really important to remember in all this that, while high-paid jobs are unevenly spread, low-paid jobs, and indeed poverty, are not.
“A higher fraction of London’s population is in poverty than that in any other region. We need to worry about places, but we need to worry about people too.”
Nick Bowes, chief executive at Centre for London, said: “The hundreds of thousands of Londoners living in poverty and struggling to get by on a daily basis are just as worthy and important of extra support as in any other area.”
Conservative councillor Nicolas Heslop, chairman of South East Councils, said economic growth in the region could be in “danger” as an “unintended consequence of diverting policy to prioritise” other parts of the country.
Meanwhile, Mike Clancy, general secretary of the union Prospect, said the white paper presented a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset the economy”.
He called for “action to deliver low-carbon jobs” and to build up skills across the country, along with opportunities to work in the defence sector.
“Levelling-up must be more than lofty rhetoric to distract from current scandals in Westminster – it requires sustainable, long-term and strategic investment in our communities,” he added.
