Civil servants should move North if Boris Johnson is serious about levelling up economy - Andrew Vine

A senior civil servant told me last week how perturbed he is that many of his colleagues have become even more London-centric as a result of working from home. It’s become all about the capital for too many of them, he said. Questions about what central London is going to feel like, and how ministries will work in an age of social distancing, and in the shadow of a potential second wave of Covid, are uppermost in their minds.

The challenges facing the North – and all the other regions – feel very distant currently and that’s worrying my friend, who knows it’s going to take time for the machinery of government to adjust, during which there is the danger of issues requiring close attention not getting it.

Such a mindset is understandable – the enforced focus for all of us on sticking close to home, even with the easing of restrictions, is bound to make everyone that bit more insular and concerned with their own surroundings and the people in them. But if that outlook is at risk of influencing how decisions are made about vast swathes of the country, it needs to be stamped out by ministers as well as those who run the civil service.

There’s a whole other world outside the M25, and one key way of helping Britain recover from the damage wrought by coronavirus is to get more of the machinery of government out into it, particularly here in the North, where getting on for a quarter of Britain’s people live.

When Boris Johnson returns from his two-week holiday, and Parliament from the summer recess, it is imperative that there is a drive to boost the regions by forging much closer links with the officials responsible for delivering Government policy. That means relocating significant parts of ministries outside London.

Before the last election, Labour’s then shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, put forward the idea of moving the Treasury to Manchester, an idea widely derided by his political opponents. Although his suggestion did nothing to boost Labour’s abysmal showing at the polls, time has caught up with Mr McDonnell’s plan.

In truth, it probably wouldn’t be practical or wise to move the entire Treasury away from the seat of government, but there is every reason to relocate key officials, so they can develop a real understanding of regional needs. That would achieve much more than any move to York for the House of Lords.

Peers from Yorkshire would not speak up any more eloquently for our region in York than they are able to in London, and to suggest otherwise is unfair to them. But establishing government offices with real power and influence on central decision-making and delivery of policy would be a game-changer.

Proximity to elected mayors, as well as councils and the business community, on a day-to-day basis would foster understanding and engagement with our towns, cities and countryside.

There is no substitute for being part of a region, and its communities, for getting to know what it needs to prosper.

That, after all, is the rationale behind devolution, the acknowledgement that those who live and work in any particular place know what is best for it.

Exactly the same rationale should be applied to the ministries that run so much of our national life, whether it be health, work and pensions, or crime and justice.

Civil servants with the same stake in Yorkshire as millions of others, with careers and homes here, perhaps children at school, are surely the way forward if the Prime Minister is serious about levelling up the economy and closing the north-south divide that remains so damaging.

A white paper on devolution is due next month, which will hopefully be good news for Yorkshire’s desire to chart its own course for the future.

But Mr Johnson needs to go farther and embrace the merits of giving the North Government officials with real clout to back up regional ambitions.

By doing so, he would demonstrate his Government understands that regional prosperity is key to Britain’s success, which is especially crucial now as the country faces what could be the most severe recession in living memory.

Leading businesses and parts of the media are already proving that basing themselves in the north is a pathway to success – witness Siemens in Hull, Channel 4 in Leeds and the BBC in Salford. There is every reason for the Government to follow the same route. Running the country solely from London is an outdated concept that no longer makes any sense.

It’s time for many more civil servants to view the M25 not as a boundary, but receding in their rear-view mirrors as they head north.

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