The Conservatives’ flagship policy to close the gap between the north and the south has been blasted as “smoke and mirrors” as the government struggled to shift attention away from Boris Johnson’s future.
Michael Gove today unveiled the long-awaited levelling up white paper, calling it the “biggest shift of power from Whitehall to local leaders in modern times”.
But it was criticised by opposition parties as lacking in ambition and detail, while business leaders and think tanks warned it could be scuppered by a lack of funding.
Boris Johnson made levelling up a key plank of the Tories’ election-winning manifesto in 2019, but the plans have been hit by delays.
At the forefront of the white paper was the promise of “London style” powers and mayors for the rest of the country, as well as “12 big missions” around areas such as the economy, housing, education and transport that the government wants to achieve by 2030.
Gove said “overlooked and undervalued” communities needed to be allowed to “take back control” of their communities and that his plan “lays out a long-term economic and social plan to make opportunity more equal”.
“It shifts power and opportunity towards the North and Midlands, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland,” he told MPs.
“It guarantees increased investment in overlooked and undervalued communities.
“In research and development, in education and skills, in transport and broadband, in urban parks and decent homes, in grass roots sports and local culture and in fighting crime and tackling antisocial behaviour.”
He added: “It demonstrates that this people’s government is keeping faith with the working people of this country by allowing them to take back control of their lives, their communities and their futures.”
Bizarrely, the 332-page document also contained a section on the Roman Empire and the establishment of Londinium in AD 47-50.
Responding at the despatch box, shadow levelling up secretary Lisa Nandy said: “Seriously, is this it?”
“The sum total of our ambition for our coastal and industrial towns, our villages and our great cities, is a history on the rise of the Roman Empire and ministers scurrying around Whitehall shuffling the deckchairs, cobbling together a shopping list of recycled policies and fiddling the figures — is this really it?”
“This was meant to be the prime minister’s defining mission of government,” she continued.
“I’m not surprised he was too embarrassed to come here today and to defend it himself, it’s so bad that even the secretary of state has privately been saying that it’s rubbish.”
Referring to the Treasury’s decision to write off £4.3 billion of Covid loans, Nandy said: “They have given more to fraudsters than they’ve given to the north.”
Among the 12 missions — which Gove said the government would be held to account for — are that pay, employment and productivity will rise in every part of the UK, that the number of people successfully completing high-quality skills training will have “significantly increased” by 200,000 per year and that by 2035 life expectancy will rise by five years.
He also unveiled 20 new urban regeneration projects, starting in Wolverhampton and Sheffield but later extending across the Midlands and northern England, with £1.8 billion in new housing projects.
However, there were doubts over how much new money would be committed to the schemes contained in the plans.
The white paper was well-received by Tory MPs and mayors, but received a muted response from businesses and leaders across the north of England.
Former northern powerhouse minister Jake Berry said he welcomed the paper but called for more direct investment in the north of England, while Andy Street, the Conservative West Midlands mayor, said it would “finally address the imbalance of opportunities across the UK”.
Katie Schmuecker, deputy director of policy and partnerships at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said the ”proof will be in the delivery”.
“The lack of new funding announced today, and an approach to devolution that appears to be quite centrally controlled, suggest more needs to be done before the reality of these plans meets the rhetoric.”
Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, welcomed the fact that “devolution is back on the agenda”, but added: “Much of its impact will be undermined through a lack of funding.”
“We remain concerned that the north could be at risk of losing up to £300 million a year in regional economic development funding post-Brexit, with areas such as the Tees Valley bearing the brunt of the cuts.”
Meanwhile, Frances Grady, head of the TUC, said the government had “failed to provide a serious plan to deliver decent well-paid jobs, in the parts of the UK that need them most”.
“With the country facing a cost-of-living crisis, working families need action now to improve jobs and boost pay packets – especially after more than a decade of lost pay,” she said.