What will it take to ‘level up’ the UK?

Boris Johnson could “radically” alter local government in England as part of the government’s long-awaited “levelling-up” agenda.

A draft of the government’s levelling-up white paper, seen by The Independent, details plans to replace local government with a “single-tier mayoral style system” based on a model of a directly elected leader “over a well-defined economic geography”.

The plan would mean that the two tiers of local government in place across most of England – county and district – would be scrapped. Instead the new system would “take an approach seen in London”, with “one single structure taking charge of all services”.

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The plans would require a “huge overhaul of local government”, including the merging of England’s 181 district councils and 24 county councils, the paper added.

Full details of the government’s plans to “level up” the UK are as yet unclear, with a promised white paper now delayed until 2022.

What has the government said?

The leaked draft gives the clearest indication yet of the direction the government’s “levelling-up” ambitions are likely to take, The Independent said. But the government is reportedly already braced for a “backlash” against the plans.

The 2019 Tory manifesto defined levelling up as “investing in our great towns and cities, as well as rural and coastal areas” and “giving them far more control of how that investment is made”.

“Levelling up skills using apprenticeships and a £3bn National Skills Fund”, “making life much easier for farming and fishing industries” and “creating up to 10 freeports to help deprived communities” were also listed as key priorities, the BBC reported.

But the government may face a tough, uphill battle, with research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) finding that “on a wide variety of measures, regional disparities in the UK are greater than in most comparable countries”.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, led by cabinet minister Michael Gove, will be tasked with putting “meat on the bones" of the plans.

A report by the Institute for Government said: “The rebranding of the department, as well as the appointment of some of Johnson’s most capable ministers, suggests that the prime minister is keen to advance the levelling up agenda.”

But “the meaning of the slogan is not clear”, it added, with ministers mentioning “many different – and sometimes conflicting – objectives in the levelling up agenda”.

What does the public expect?

According to IPSOS Mori polling, the public thinks that education and training for young people should be the top priority when it comes to “levelling up” the regions.

Increasing support for work placements, apprenticeships and training opportunities for 16-24 year olds was the most cited priority in a poll of 9,877 respondents, followed by increasing funding for schools and increasing investment in green industries and technology.

In a separate The State of the State report, the pollster found “enthusiastic support” for the agenda among “public sector leaders”, but added that the “government now needs to bring clarity to its scope”.

IPSOS Mori suggested that “a single levelling up plan should draw together government’s existing programmes for infrastructure spending, skills, devolution, a net zero strategy, industrial strategy and more” calling for a “cohesive, cross-departmental programme”.

That approach should be “linked to a range of trackable indicators” to ensure it is working, it added, “based on both people and place, to monitor and guide progress”.

What do the experts say?

According to the IFS, the agenda must focus its attention on addressing “regional inequalities” that “are deep-rooted and complex”, adding: “Even well-designed policies could take years or even decades to have meaningful effects.”

Arguing that there “is no single set of factors that characterise a ‘left-behind’ place”, the think tank said areas that require greater support “are particularly concentrated in large towns and cities outside of London and the South East, in former industrial regions, and in coastal and isolated rural areas”.

Policies that could begin to address such inequalities include increasing transport and research and development spending, as these areas of public spending are currently “heavily concentrated in London and the South East”.

However, the IFS warned that “Brexit could make ‘levelling up’ more difficult”, because the economic impact “remains highly uncertain” but is “likely to impose a particularly high economic cost” on groups such as “less-educated male workers in blue-collar jobs”.

The Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge said that there is “no single approach” to the government’s long-promised plans, adding that “the idea of levelling up has caught the attention of the political establishment and voters”.

“Levelling up is viewed differently in different parts of England”, with answers ranging widely between the north and south of the country. But the policy “also presents an opportunity to engage people in thinking about the future of the places where they live”.

“This is vital”, the think tank said, and could restore “a sense of pride in place and feelings of agency in communities”.

If ministers are seeking a blueprint for the plans, they could do worse than to “look to modern Germany”, said Andrew Carter, chief executive of the Centre for Cities.

In an opinion piece for politics.co.uk, Carter pointed out that “post-reunification Germany was an economically divided country”, but that “a thirty year-long levelling up programme” has “narrowed the gap”.

“Given the success of Germany’s levelling up programme, people in Whitehall should look to what their counterparts in Berlin did over three decades,” he added.

“Unfortunately, the adversarial nature of UK politics means that no government can be confident that the foundations it lays won’t be dug up by its successors.”