Exclusive: Rishi Sunak is putting levelling up at risk, warns ex-minister, as Boris Johnson urged to act over targets

The call comes from Rotherham-born Justine Greening who reveals that there are “mismatches” between the policy targets set out in the newly-published Levelling Up White Paper – and the Treasury’s own objectives.

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

“No organisation can easily succeed if it has two plans and two sets of metrics,” writes Ms Greening in an exclusive column for The Yorkshire Post.

Ms Greening was a Treasury minister in David Cameron’s government before being elevated to the Cabinet and serving as Education Secretary from 2016-18.

Today her warning to Prime Minister Boris Johnson to stop Whitehall departments “being pulled in different directions by Treasury demands and those of the wider Levelling Up White Paper plan” is backed by senior politicians responsible for scutinising Whitehall departments.

“I think Justine Greening is spot on and she has identified a key problem in the Government’s approach to Levelling Up,” said Labour’s Clive Betts who chairs Parliament’s cross-party Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee. “The Treasury and the Levelling Up Department don’t seem to be on the same page.

“If we are going to get greater growth and general improvement in poorer areas, this isn’t going to be achieve by handing out bits of levelling money, but by the budgets of all the major department being increased in the areas where resources are urgently needed and to change the current bias in favour of London and the South East.”

Mr Betts, the Sheffield South East MP, said his committee is due to interview Neil O’Brien, the Huddersfield-born Levelling Up Minister, later this month on the White Paper – and whether its new missions align with the Treasury’s spending priorities.

Meanwhile Tory MP Robert Halfon, chair of Parliament’s Education Committee, described the levelling up blueprint as a “huge statement of intent”.

But he told this newspaper: “I do believe that more work is needed for the education and skills elements and would like to see the Government establish a long-term plan for education accompanied by a secure funding settlement.

“The commitments to infrastructure are great with more new hospitals, roads and railways planned and I welcome the funding commitments from the Treasury. However, it is crucial that these ambitions are realised, built, and are fully backed up by funding.

“It is also vital that the Government makes the shift towards affordable housing. It is time the Prime Minister faced down the NIMBYs to build hundreds of thousands of genuinely affordable homes. By delivering these ambitions, the Government can get back on track, and in time, the public might just get back on side.”

Last night, The Yorkshire Post was still awaiting a response from the Treasury.

But Lisa Nandy, Labour’s Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, said the disparities set out by Ms Greening do “make a mockery” of levelling up.

She added: “Yorkshire is the region most affected by the loss of good jobs, young people and working age populations. The Government appears to think we are fools. We need a serious plan to invest in jobs in our coastal and industrial towns and make, buy and sell more in Britain.”

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