These days everyone seems to be committed to levelling up. Perhaps because so many communities across Yorkshire have been subjected to 50 odd years of levelling down. Readers of Yorkshire Bylines will have little difficulty identifying parts of the region that have been battered by wave after wave of bad economic news and are now a shadow of what they once were. They will be keen to see genuine improvements.
White paper on levelling up
Unfortunately, what we have in the government’s white paper on levelling up is over 300 pages of blather. Over half of the document is taken up with explaining why something needed to be done. We already knew that. The rest consists of muddle, accidental confusion, deliberate confusion and ideas that lack all coherence or integrity.
- We are told that there is to be investment in Northern Powerhouse infrastructure. Weeks after the decision was made to stop work on designing and building a new northern rail link that would have given Bradford powerful new connections to Manchester.
- We are told that there have been too many announcements of bold new government schemes that then fall away and given the alarming statistic that one local council has had to make 61 bids for funding since 2015. Unfortunately, that was made necessary by a deliberate decision of the Conservatives to top slice money from core budgets of local government and use it to fund pet projects in politically convenient locations.
- We are told that generation rent will become generation buy. Then expected to be impressed that billions have been wasted on help to buy schemes that simply put up property prices whilst there remains a total blind spot about any schemes to create new council housing or to seriously improve old housing stock.
- We are reminded nearly 200 pages into the document that there is a climate crisis and a need to reach net zero. The promises to achieve this consist of a lot of noise and fuss about new overpriced nuclear schemes and possibly eventually capturing and storing some of the carbon generated by burning enormous amounts of wood at Drax. We don’t get a coherent plan to build modern zero-carbon zero-plastic industries in a Bradford-based science and technology cluster.
- We are told the government is building a new wellbeing and enterprise centre in Bradford. Very nice I am sure. But woefully short of the kind of transformative initiative the local community needs.
- We are promised that power will be devolved to local councils and that appointing mayors will invigorate their communities. Exactly how central government bullying local authorities to undertake wasteful re-organisations in order to get back top sliced money will achieve that is not explained.
- We are told that educational performance in the inner city will be transformed by wonderful new schemes like 11 new post-16 specialist maths schools, or new technical skills qualifications. We are not told why such continual tinkering with the system has failed so completely in the past, whilst in Germany gradual updating and improvement of their technical education has made it a valued and respected choice for many of their best and the brightest.
- We are promised that our communities will have a meaningful say in planning. Then told local governments are to be instructed to follow new national government rules about what can be included in ‘their’ local plan.
- We are told that the government will sort out the problems uncovered by the Grenfell disaster. Five years after a fire that was caused by regulations being deliberately weakened after building companies donated millions to the Conservative Party. We are not told that builders will no longer be able to hire their own regulators. We are not told exactly how people who live with the consequences of unsafe flats, huge insurance costs and the inability to sell their home are expected to cope with inadequate compensation for problems caused by the government.
In short, what we have got is not a strategy but a rag bag of pet projects and sound bites. We don’t have any new money for localities. We just have new promises.
Michael Gove has a history of stamping down on the North
Those promises are made by Michael Gove. He started out in 1987 stating some bizarre extreme Thatcherite views about happy southerners tramping over the face of the failing north.
He went on to be one of the worst education ministers ever, as he took thousands of schools out of local democratic influence placing some of them under the control of obscure multi academy trusts many of which pay chief executives enormous salaries.
Then he decided that championing Brexit was a great route to power and stood in front of a bus as he made huge promises about more money for the NHS and for regions. Only for money going to regions to be cut after Brexit not increased.
He then told us that Boris Johnson was not fit to be prime minister as he sought the job for himself. Only to tell us now that Johnson is the best person to lead the country, despite being a proven liar who cheated on the lockdown rules.
With a man of Gove’s impeccable quality at the helm, I fear for the future of communities that all of us in Yorkshire care about. Bradford is going to have to rely on its own efforts to level itself up. The government isn’t going to help it. Because it doesn’t contain enough marginal seats for them to give a damn.
