Reasons to be hopeful at end of Covid tunnel – Justine Greening

But beyond the terrible events we are experiencing and read about in the papers every day, I firmly believe we can still shape the sort of Britain we want for tomorrow. It might not feel like it now, but we can build back better. There is a route through.

This Government isn’t just struggling with Covid, it’s struggling to deliver its manifesto promise to level up Britain too. But the reality is that a major part of levelling up happens outside of Westminster and politics anyway. It happens in our universities and businesses through the decisions they take on how they operate – the opportunities they provide, the chances they give to progress careers, and how they work with local communities.

When it comes to the levelling up agenda, we’re not remotely starting from scratch, especially here in Yorkshire. Many businesses already take an increasingly targeted approach to working with communities that can benefit the most from new opportunities.

For example, the new PwC office in Bradford has tapped into the huge talent pool the city has, with potential to grow beyond the current 100-strong workforce.

New green energy careers are being created by companies like Northern Gas Networks and Drax as they invest to help Britain achieve its goal of net zero emissions by 2050.

Persimmon Homes has 800 apprentices within its business, a huge number, even for a house builder, finding great young people from the region by partnering with the Leeds College of Building. This is what businesses can achieve on spreading opportunity when they have a clear mission and purpose.

And universities can play a key role too. This week I visited the University of York, which amongst much other work on social mobility, has begun a pioneering programme with the Young Offenders Institution at Wetherby.

It helps ensure that, having paid whatever penalty for their past mistakes, those young men can still find out about building their future. 

York students involved with the project told us that some of the young men they met felt they’d got no prospects ahead of them at all, that somehow they’d finished anything that was possible in their lives before they’d even really begun.

A significant proportion had spent time in care, with far less access to the sort of support than most of us draw on in younger years to work out where to go next in life. York University’s work matters – support to make right choices in the future isn’t just worth it for them, it’s worth it for all of us if it puts them on the right track.

Too much of success in life is about getting a lucky break. That’s always going to be part of life.

Of that there’s no doubt, but the more strategic these businesses and universities 
can be, the more we can build 
a version of Britain where success is much more about rewarding potential and the willingness to develop and apply talent and much less about having to just hope for a lucky break.

The businesses I meet are finding talent wherever it is. They are working out how to build up their links with communities and especially those people the furthest away from opportunity, not just because talented people are crucial to these organisations’ own success, but because they recognise that levelling up as well as tackling Covid requires a national effort, and it involves them too.

Amid all the Covid gloom, many businesses are quietly but effectively working on the grass roots levelling up of our country with work that can have a long-lasting and profound impact on Britain’s prospects. 

Government does have a major role to play driving levelling up. We need to see a comprehensive, cross-departmental plan from Boris Johnson’s administration sooner rather than later – there’s no time to waste. 

Important campaigns, like The Yorkshire Post’s for a wave of new Opportunity Areas across the region, coupled with ever more businesses working on the ground, primed and better capable of reaching a wider talent pool, give me hope.

This can form the basis of a plan to make a real long-term difference for a fairer Britain.

I understand some people may be reading this article, feeling all we have ahead of us are bleak days. But we’ll get through it by having the sheer bloody-mindedness to never give up on making things better.

For our children’s generation, for whom some much potential exists on the other side of Covid, we mustn’t give up on building their futures. I’m putting my time into doing the hard yards to have as many doors fully open for them as possible.

Equality of opportunity is 
the only way that our country 
can ever sustainably build 
back better. The worse Covid gets, the bigger the challenge becomes, but the harder I’m motivated to succeed in this mission.

Justine Greening is a former Education Secretary and head of the Social Mobilty Pledge. She was born in Rotherham.

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James Mitchinson