"LEVELLING UP" WHITE PAPER IS A LET DOWN!

The Government claims that it has a “defining mission” to “level up” by “tackling the regional and local inequalities that unfairly hold back” so many parts of the UK. The long-awaited devolution White Paper – re-engineered as a “levelling up” policy document – was published last Wednesday. It is massively, predictably, disappointing.

The Guardian newspaper described the White Paper as “anaemic and inadequate,” the Economist magazine said it “falls short” and “fails to devolve enough power and money,” while the Independent news website called it a “plan that’s big on problems – but not on how to fix them.”

A prominent member of the SNP has meanwhile branded it as “underwhelming” and a “damp squib,” adding that the UK needs “policies of substance” rather than “glib soundbites and photo opportunities for ministers in hard hats and hi-viz vests.”

Launching the White Paper in the House of Commons, Michael Gove started by outlining the need to “tackle and reverse the inequality that is limiting so many horizons,” while closing the “gap between much of the South-East and the rest of the country in productivity, in health outcomes, in wages, in school results and in job opportunities ...”

He somewhat ridiculously went on to add that “this is not about slowing down London or the South-East … but rather about turbocharging the potential of every part of the UK.” But how do you level up without properly addressing the dominance of the over-heating South-East?

One of the key criticisms of the While Paper is that there is little “new money.” I agree with Faisal Islam, the BBC’s economics editor. He has noted that where “levelling up” has actually been a success, as in “post-unification Germany,” there have been “massive fiscal transfers from rich regions to poor ones” and “entrenched patterns of economic geography” cannot really be changed “without footing a very significant bill.” The White Paper doesn’t even come close!

The document largely lists projects and funding that have already been announced, though it is admittedly good to see the Government reaffirm its pledge to “match EU Structural Fund receipts” in future funding for Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.” The principal new announcement for Cornwall is an Education Investment Area.

Worryingly for Cornwall, Michael Gove’s parliamentary speech was very political and geared towards the protection of new “red wall” seats in the north. He name-checked Bishop Auckland, Bury, Derbyshire, Durham, Manchester, Stoke-on-Trent and Warrington, and spoke about “20 new urban regeneration projects, starting in Wolverhampton and Sheffield, and spreading across the Midlands and the North.”

Cornwall needs so much more out of these levelling up proposals.

[This is my article in this week's Cornish Guardian].