Levelling up or levelling down?

Lack of trust and policy detail

WITHOUT THE agendasetting One North and Power Up The North campaigns spearheaded by The Yorkshire Post and the region’s newspapers in an unprecedented united front, Boris Johnson’s London Government would not have acted on levelling up.

The frustration is that it has taken several years for Ministers to finesse plans to tackle regional inequalities and 12 policy objectives on which Ministers are prepared to be judged.

Yet the phraseology is still opaque – some might say an exercise in futility – and the Treasury’s support appears lukewarm given the absence of new funding.

This is reflected by a desire to devolve policy powers – as distinct from powers and pence – to elected mayors and how the 55 ‘Education Investment Areas’ are a repackaging of the Opportunity Areas launched by Theresa May and Justine Greening when in office.

They also lack the national ambition that is needed if levelling up is to be a success – it is widely accepted that education, skills and training hold the key to improving the future prospects of young people across the country.

And then the issue of trust – how can Ministers be believed when they have a record of over-promising and under-delivering exemplified by the decision to downgrade Northern Powerhouse Rail, and scrap the eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds, when one of the levelling up ‘missions’ is “public transport connectivity” being “significantly closer to the standards of London” by the end of the decade?

For, while Ministers were unveiling their plan in the Commons, political rivals from Lord McLoughlin, a former Transport Secretary, to Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, had been among those warning Parliament’s transport committee that the North risks having “second-best” train services for 200 years due to the Integrated Rail Plan. The irony...