Budget 2021: What Rishi Sunak must deliver for North – The Yorkshire Post says

What the Richmond MP has not set out is how he intends to measure progress on ‘levelling up’, this Government’s defining mission, so his policies do transform our towns and boost social mobility.

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And this is why today’s pre-Budget warning by former Downing Street aide Rachel Wolf that levelling up “risks meaning everything and nothing” is one which the Chancellor cannot afford to ignore.

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After all, Ms Wolf’s background adds credence to her intervention in today’s edition. Co-author of the Tory party’s 2019 ‘levelling up’ manifesto, she was previously Boris Johnson’s education and innovation adviser.

Budget 2021: Stop talking and now deliver levelling up – Rachel Wolf

She knows how Whitehall works – or does not. And in calling for longer-term measures to help firms to invest in Yorkshire, she also senses a loss of public support unless the Government becomes “ultra serious about delivery”.

As she writes: “Every Budget contains funding packets, promises, and yet somehow they often dissipate into the same services at the same quality. The people of Yorkshire need their towns and cities to feel improved – that is the real test.”

Timely words, they echo Mr Sunak’s own sentiments to The Yorkshire Post in June last year when he set out his worry that funding schemes became so bogged down by bureaucracy that they did not fulfil their potential or provide taxpayers with sufficient value for money.

With Jake Berry, the former Northern Powerhouse Minister, also demanding “a skills revolution”, Mr Sunak must be clear on how he expects his Budget measures to be delivered. First, however, it means answering this imponderable – what is his definition of levelling up?

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