Week Ahead: Dan Jarvis' Westminster debate on 'levelling up', the Booker Prize and Liberal Democrat conference

Level playing field?

Barnsley Central MP and the Mayor of the Sheffield City Region, Dan Jarvis, will lead a Parliamentary debate about the Government’s so-called ‘levelling-up’ agenda.

The Labour member’s Westminster Hall debate will take place on Wednesday afternoon amid scepticism about Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s commitment to the North of England following more rumours that the Eastern leg of HS2, which is planned to connect to Leeds, could be shelved.

It also comes after a report by the Northern Health Science Alliance showed that analysis of official figures revealed Northerners were more likely to die from Covid-19, spent almost six weeks longer in lockdowns and were made poorer than the rest of England during the first year of the pandemic.

Earlier this year, Mr Jarvis wrote in The Yorkshire Post that the North needs a New Deal if levelling up – a byword for the Government’s stated aim of ensuring economic parity with the South –is to be delivered.

In June, he wrote: “Although some parts of the North can match the best in the world for innovation and business, there are too many that continue to struggle with high levels of deprivation and worklessness.

“If you live in Barnsley, you’re much more likely to be hungrier, poorer

and sicker than someone living in Belgravia. This deep-seated inequality is a moral disgrace, and it’s holding the whole of our country back.

“Few would disagree that levelling up is long overdue. It was an integral part of the Conservatives’ 2019 manifesto — and why voters in the North put their faith in this Government, many for the first time.

“The Prime Minister and I agree about the need to level up the North, but where we differ is how to deliver that transformation to benefit our Northern communities.”

Booker Prize

The shortlist for this year’s Booker Prize will be announced on Tuesday.

Sir Kazuo Ishiguro could win his second Booker Prize for fiction with his eighth novel, Klara And The Sun, which features among 13 books on this year’s longlist.

The lists are chosen from 158 novels published by writers of any nationality in the UK or Ireland.

Japanese-born British novelist Sir Kazuo, 66, won the award in 1989 with The Remains Of The Day and has also been shortlisted three times previously – in 2005 for Never Let Me Go, in 2000 for When We Were Orphans, and in 1986 for An Artist Of The Floating World.

The judging panel is chaired by historian Maya Jasanoff and features former archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.

The shortlist will narrow the competitors down to six books, with their authors each receiving £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their own book.

The winning novel receives £50,000 and will be announced on Wednesday November 3 in an award ceremony held in partnership with the BBC at Broadcasting House’s Radio Theatre.

Douglas Stuart’s debut novel Shuggie Bain, which is about a boy growing up amid poverty and addiction in 1980s Glasgow, won the 2020 prize.

Lib Dem conference

The Liberal Democrat autumn party conference will take place online from Friday.

Main events at the conference include a question and answer session with leader Sir Ed Davey on Saturday, followed by his speech to party members on Sunday.

Other items on the agenda include a policy motion on banning conversion therapy, one on the alleged genocide of Uyghurs in China and a speech by the party’s deputy leader Daisy Cooper MP.

The conference continues into the following next week.

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