Levelling up is about good governance as well as growth, according to the LGA’s latest Smith Square debate
Developing successful approaches to levelling up and tackling deeply entrenched problems is going to take long-term commitment and policy stability from government, an audience has heard in the first of a series of new Smith Square debates.
Hosted by the LGA at its Westminster offices, the hybrid event brought together key thinkers looking at the big picture for local government, with a focus on levelling up. It asked whether England has the right systems and funding in place to meet the wide-ranging and systemic challenges facing the country.
Chaired by Guardian journalist Nosheen Iqbal, the panel consisted of Akash Paun, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government (IfG); Nick King, Founder and Managing Director of Henham Strategy; and Philip McCann, Professor of Urban and Regional Economics at Alliance Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester.
Mr Paun, who leads the IfG’s work programme on devolution, said the Levelling Up White Paper published in February set out some fairly sensible principles – longevity, coordination, local empowerment, better use of data and transparency – and were a refreshing alternative to constant policy churn and separate regional initiatives over the past 40 years.
He said levelling up had become part of the discourse, with widespread recognition of what the problem is and a developing consensus that tackling it is going to need sustained cross-government action over the long term, as well as enhanced local leadership, devolution and the necessary resources.
Mr King, who was Chief of Staff to former Communities Secretary Sajid Javid, said the success of the Government’s 12 levelling up missions, as set out in the White Paper, depended on the fundamental role of the private sector in helping to unleash and support growth across the country, together with the absolute need for devolution, which he said should be “much wider, deeper, more consistently offered and applied”.
He cited the Tees Valley Mayoralty and Greater Manchester Combined Authority as examples of levelling up in practice, with partnership at their heart and a sense of shared mission between local and central government.
Mr King added that devolution was currently far too patchwork, and this was harming good governance, as well as the country’s future economic potential; the Government needs to have confidence in local leaders by no longer micromanaging them and leaving them to deliver.
Speaking via Zoom, Prof McCann told the audience that inequalities in the UK are among the largest in the world, with huge underperformance of large urban areas outside of the south of England.
He said data and evidence showed countries that are more devolved grow more evenly internally, as more parts of the country share in and contribute to national productivity and prosperity.
Prof McCann added that our governance system is fragile because it is ill-designed for the challenges we face, with no bottom-up drivers of knowledge – strengthening the case for devolution.
He said “the centre learns nothing from the local because a top-down, pyramid system maximises the degrees of separation between citizens and central government, and causes congestion at the top for influence”, and that levelling up was not just about geography of growth, but also about good governance.