Why levelling up is now Rishi Sunak's biggest test - Justine Greening

Whatever the wider pressures across Whitehall – partygate, Ukraine, Covid – it is this Government’s ability to deliver on a clear plan for improving the long-term futures of people across Yorkshire and beyond, including communities in places like my home town of Rotherham that ultimately means it gets a thumbs up or not from the electorate.

Levelling up represents an existential challenge for Boris Johnson and his Government.

As Government white papers go, it was a lengthy one at 300 pages. Perhaps few people will have read it cover to cover, and even fewer will read the accompanying technical annex setting out the metrics that the Government will use to track progress.

But in those documents was the basis for optimism that we might finally make some collective progress on achieving equality of opportunity.

Firstly, there was a clear recognition that we need a multi-faceted approach if we’re to tackle the systemic challenge of inequality of opportunity.

As The Yorkshire Post’s readers will know, I have been working with businesses, universities, NHS Trusts and local councils, through the Purpose Coalition and Social Mobility Pledge campaign.

We have been using a Levelling Up Goals framework that breaks down the levelling up challenge into its constituent components.

It’s helping very different organisations in different communities consistently work out plans for what their piece of the levelling up jigsaw should be.

It was welcome to see that same approach so clearly reflected in the White Paper with its 12 Missions spanning across Government departments.

And formally placing local government and Mayors at the heart of tailoring local approaches is also a sensible step recognising different places face different levelling up challenges.

The welcome return of more Opportunity Areas, rebadged as Education Investment Areas, is testament to the hard work of those on the ground in places like Bradford, Doncaster and the North Yorkshire Coast. It also reflects the persistent campaigning of many, including The Yorkshire Post, to rightly put education front and centre of any successful levelling up strategy.

Importantly the White Paper acknowledges that measurement and metrics matter. What gets measured gets done.

The Office for National Statistics chief statistician, Sir Ian Diamond, and his team, are to be congratulated not only on their efforts to identify levelling up metrics to assess progress, but also on their candidness about the data and measurement gaps that still remain. It underlines that even with the Levelling Up White Paper now published, there is more work to be done in key areas.

So what are the next steps now?

One vital area is ensuring the whole Government is aligned behind this plan.

The Treasury Comprehensive Spending Review took place in October 2021. Ideally the Levelling Up White Paper would have been published first because then the Comprehensive Spending Review could then have reflected the investment needed to deliver the White Paper plan. Instead the reverse happened – Treasury decisions on the public finance and investment plan had to be taken months before the full levelling up plan was finalised by Ministers.

As a consequence, there are now mismatches between the Government’s finance plan and its levelling up plan.

The Treasury initially identified five Missions but the Government Levelling Up White Paper has now evolved to identify a fuller 12 Missions.

Of the important 24 ‘headline’ metrics the ONS identified to measure progress on the Levelling Up White Paper, only half of them are in Treasury metrics being used to hold Whitehall departments to account.

No organisation can easily succeed if it has two plans and two sets of metrics. The Government needs one levelling up plan, one set of metrics and Ministries across Government aligned to deliver them.

Mr Johnson cannot afford risking his departments being pulled in different directions by Treasury demands and those of the wider Levelling Up White Paper plan.

Outside of Whitehall, Ministers should continue drawing on the insights and experiences from a wider coalition that is already working tirelessly on social mobility.

There is real goodwill to work in partnership with Parliament on a cross-party basis, particularly on improving metrics and scaling up what is already working on the ground to improve access to opportunities for people.

For employers, better tracking and transparency of employee

socio-economic background can help them understand if they really are open to a wider talent pool.

Talent is spread evenly and we should see that increasingly reflected in careers and progression if we’re succeeding in driving equality of opportunity.

Government doesn’t have all of the levers, so this Levelling Up White Paper can only represent part of the solution.

But for the first time we have a clear sense about how this Government believes achieving equality of opportunity should be tackled, and how it will measure progress.

We have waited a long time, and the electoral clock keeps ticking. The plan is now finally in place. Whatever it takes, Boris Johnson’s government must see it through to be delivered.

Justine Greening is a former Education Secretary. She was born in Rotherham.