LONDON — Boris Johnson is set to finally face the music — on whether his plans to “level up” Britain truly meet the mark.
The blueprint for the British prime minister’s flagship domestic promise was originally expected last summer, and will at last land Wednesday after successive delays. It reveals for the first time 12 “missions” on addressing regional inequalities, including what’s billed as “the biggest shift of power from Whitehall to local leaders in modern times,” according to the government’s trailed release.
The document will seek to address some of the key criticisms aimed at Johnson’s vow to “level up” Britain — namely, that the policy is vague and tends to favor Conservative-voting parts of the country. Johnson even reorganized his government in order to boost it, renaming the housing ministry the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC), and placing Cabinet heavyweight Michael Gove in charge.
With all this time and effort spent on getting the leveling up agenda into shape, the big reveal has a lot to live up to. Here are five things to watch out for.
1. Devolution detail
The white paper ought to add detail to the government’s promise to devolve more powers beyond Westminster — and specifically, to ensure every part of England has a local leader with equivalent powers to London by 2030.
The government has now specified it will be down to county areas to develop proposals for a mayor of the kind already in place in Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region, rather than it being mandated from above. “More mayors for those areas that want one” is the promise.
That still leaves question marks over how areas will be supported to draw up and submit their plans: Schemes such as the “towns fund” in 2020 and “leveling up fund” last year, under which local areas were invited to bid for grants worth millions, caused controversy after many of the chosen towns were in Conservative strongholds while it was unclear why some other, less wealthy places had been left out.
Local authorities could feel snubbed in all of this, as there is scant mention of their role and a risk of doubling up their functions.
While there has been extensive discussion of simplifying local government by replacing district and county councils as part of the white paper, it remains to be seen if this idea has made the final cut.
2. New money
One of the reasons for the hold-up to the white paper has been, according to multiple officials and government advisers, a tussle between Gove and Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Treasury over funding. Sunak has been far more willing to sign off on individual pots of money for specific projects than to make multi-year funding commitments aimed at big ideas such as, say, improving productivity.
Wednesday’s release is set to contain plenty of these big ideas — the 12 “missions” — including reducing gaps across different parts of the U.K. in life expectancy, literacy and numeracy, skills attainment, research and development, and productivity, according to DLUHC. It’s less immediately clear whether any of these missions have investment behind them, with the government referring to money in existing schemes such as brownfield development or community ownership being “diverted” or “reviewed.”
Much mention is made of the “decentralization” of the U.K. Shared Prosperity Fund, but many will be more concerned that it falls £1 billion short of equivalent funding the U.K. used to receive from the EU.
3. Accountability
It’s somewhat uncomfortable timing that on the same day as the launch of the white paper, a report from the U.K.’s spending watchdog takes aim at DLUHC’s “limited understanding of what has worked well in previous local growth programs due to a lack of consistent evaluation or monitoring.”
On the face of it, the government’s newly defined missions should provide a set of clear benchmarks against which progress can be judged — the lack of which has been the main bugbear of leveling up detractors. Gove is expected to take past criticism on the chin as he presents his plan, while pointing to big changes in the way outcomes are measured.
Yet some of the missions appear to be much more specific than others. On research and development, for example, the paper commits to spending 40 percent more outside the southeast by 2030, whereas its commitment on public transport is only that it should be “significantly closer to the standards of London.”
4. Scope
One of the criticisms frequently aimed at the leveling-up strategy is that it seems to mean everything and nothing. The white paper will not do much to remedy that, covering an enormous range of policy areas from education and health to crime and the arts. It promises all departments will be “aligned with the leveling up agenda” and subject to monitoring requirements, without giving much further detail. Whitehall’s wonks will want to know more about which ministries will be answerable to whom under these changes.
5. Who takes the credit (and the blame)?
Johnson had previously been leveler-up-in-chief, delivering the relevant speeches and banging on about it at every available opportunity. After some behind-the-scenes tussles over how it should be launched, Leveling Up Secretary Gove will take the lead, presenting it to parliament and fielding MPs’ questions. This suits Johnson on several levels since he can show he has put a big beast at the helm of the leveling up agenda, while Gove acts as a lightning rod for both its successes and failures.
Conservative MPs belonging to the so-called Northern Research Group will also want some of the credit, having lobbied extensively on the need for greater devolved powers in rural areas. But more broadly, some may feel the fanfare surrounding the white paper falls a bit flat while talks are stalled on a support package for alleviating the cost of living.