How Spending Review levels up Britain – Stephen Barclay

We’ve spent £280bn making sure those who need support have it – whether that’s through our world-leading support schemes, generous grants or extensive loans, helping millions of families in all regions and parts of the UK through the crisis.

The Spending Review announced this week – which builds on the unprecedented action we’ve already provided – confirms an additional £38bn for public services to continue to fight the pandemic this year, and a further £55bn to departments to respond to Covid-19 next year, including £2.6bn for the devolved administrations.

We’ll be using this to enhance testing capacity, purchase vaccines, increase supply of key Covid-19 medicines, and purchase and distribute PPE.

And we’re strengthening public services by paying for new hospitals with investment in new equipment and making sure all buildings are up to date, better education by delivering lifelong learning and making safer streets by recruiting more police officers.

On top of this, we are also investing in the UK’s recovery, with £100bn of capital investment to spread opportunity, create jobs and drive economic growth in every part of the country.

It is a Spending Review that levels up the UK.

That means spreading opportunity and investment so that wherever you are, whether in Hertfordshire or in Northumbria or Carmarthenshire you can succeed in your local area.

Too often we hear about young people having to leave their hometown, where they grew up and where their roots are, because there aren’t enough opportunities for them there.

This may have been the norm for all too long, but that must change. We must spread opportunity far and wide.

The way we’ll do this is through boosting jobs, wages and prospects for all communities so that everybody receives the same opportunities in life.

Over the months and years ahead, that’s what you’ll start to see in your area – more investment in infrastructure, more jobs and prospects, as we continue our mission to level-up the UK as the country recovers from the Covid pandemic.

Our new £4bn Levelling Up Fund will invest in local infrastructure that has a visible impact on your communities, like upgrading town centres and regenerating eyesores, supported by the National Infrastructure Strategy which outlines our long-term vision for infrastructure investment.

This fund will be open to all local areas and we’ll be prioritising projects which have a genuine, clear benefit to the local community and will help local economic growth.

For the first time, this will mean a new UK infrastructure bank with a headquarter in the north of England, to work with the private sector to finance major new investment projects.

As a Lancastrian (something that I realise may count as sacrilege on these pages), I grew up aware of the stories of imbalance in funding between North and South.

This is why I’m particularly proud that we are changing the Green Book – which is how the Government appraises proposals – so that they are properly assessed in terms of whether and how they deliver the Government’s policy aims.

And, when making decisions, we will require the consideration of regional impacts that policies have on places.

But we don’t just want these decisions to be made in London.

By 2030, we want to have 22,000 civil servants working outside of the South-East, to ensure they reflect the diverse communities they serve.

And here in the Treasury, we’re going to lead by example – setting up our own Northern headquarter next year.

2020 has been a very difficult year. Across the country we have all been challenged by the changes this pandemic has brought to our lives in so many different ways.

But in a year when so much has been uncertain, we have stood together and we will continue to get through these times as one.

Stephen Barclay is Chief Secretary to the Treasury and a Conservative MP.

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