Boris must decide what his ‘levelling up’ policy aims to achieve
A people-centred policy may focus on facilitating her move, through planning reform to reduce housing costs in Cambridge, Oxford, or the South East as a whole. A regional regeneration agenda, in contrast, might instead try to create the conditions to bring the relevant jobs to her town – a much costlier and uncertain exercise.
Economists tend to think people and markets, rather than governments, are better placed to determine where economic activity occurs. But supporters of “levelling up” reject people-based approaches. Will Tanner, director of the Mayite think tank Onward, has said: “We need to give people good schools and well paid jobs in their place, not hundreds of miles away from home.”
Does the Government agree? In an astute article back in January, pro-rebalancing Conservative MP Neil O’Brien hedged his bets, outlining a range of potential “levelling up” objectives – from more regional income equality, to more balanced employment opportunities, or falling gaps in subjective well-being.
O’Brien has founded a “Levelling Up Taskforce” with 40 other Conservative MPs to develop these measures and suggest policy responses. Acknowledging that places face very different challenges, his ideas for meeting them range from altering tax provisions for expensing investment in factories and machines, right through to very specific infrastructure proposals.
For all his backbench endeavour, however, there’s been little government clarity in objectives so far.
While the pandemic has understandably sucked oxygen from everything else, the lack of joined-up thinking even related to Covid-19 is telling. The Government has invested vast political capital and taxpayer funds protecting the February 2020 economy, for example, despite it being deemed dangerously unbalanced in its old form.
To achieve any meaningful “levelling up” that brings net economic benefits during this Parliament, Johnson’s Cabinet needs to answer the why, where and how questions. And soon.
Ryan Bourne holds the R Evan Scharf chair for the public understanding of economics at the Cato Institute
