Latest updates: Labour attacks ‘levelling up’ missions as being ideas taken from Theresa May’s industrial strategy that Johnson abandoned
- Some wealthy areas to see 10 times more funding than poorest
- Gove calls time on ‘postcode lottery’ as levelling-up strategy launched
- The UK government’s 12 ‘levelling up’ missions – key points
- Global coronavirus updates – live
Sadiq Khan, the Labour mayor of London, has welcomed the publication of a white paper on levelling up. “When London succeeds our whole country benefits – and vice-versa,” he said in a statement. But he also said that “levelling up the UK must not be about levelling down London” and he urged the government to fund Transport for London properly, and to give City Hall more financial freedom. He said:
London has less control over the tax we generate than any other global city. If ministers truly wanted to level up it would give cities such as ours greater control over revenues to deliver economic growth and lasting social change for the benefit of the whole country.
The white paper’s recommended steps to devolve power to regions and cities, establish new mayors, improve transparency and performance management of local government, are all well-founded and will have significant impact.
However, we are disappointed that the core of the white paper’s proposals amount to levelling down London. By forcing investment in areas like R&D, education spending, and cultural grants away from London, as this white paper recommends, the government is choosing to cut London out of productive investment for the sake of optics and for political gain.
