Boris Johnson will make a speech on Thursday on his plans to “level up and unite the country”, something the prime minister has previously described as “the central purpose of his premiership”.
In the Conservatives’ 2019 general election-winning manifesto, the party said its focus would be “levelling up every part of the UK” and the term has since become a key slogan for Mr Johnson’s government.
The term was a key tenet of the Queen’s Speech, the prime minister now has a ‘levelling up adviser’ and Chancellor Rishi Sunak has unveiled a £4.8bn ‘levelling up fund’.
Image: The regeneration of the high street is expected to form a key part of the PM’s speech on Thursday
In the party’s manifesto, the PM said it would involve investing in towns, cities and rural and coastal areas, using apprenticeships to balance out skills, giving areas more control over investment and creating new freeports.
Andy Street, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands – where the PM will be making his speech on Thursday – has said it should mean “a level playing field for the UK’s regions” in terms of opportunities.
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And more recently, the term ‘levelling up’ was heavily referenced in the Hartlepool by-election in May – which saw a Tory MP elected for the first time in the current constituency’s history.
But what does the phrase really mean?
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Levelling up is ‘not just getting a shiny new high street’
Conservative MP Simon Fell, one of the many new party representatives elected in the 2019 snap general election, said placing more decision-making locally and investment in education is key to levelling up.
“I think we are seeing good progress on levelling up with towns deals, the Levelling Up Fund, high street bids, all that sort of stuff,” the MP for Barrow and Furness told Sky News.
“But what I am really interested in seeing is more local decision-making, pushing decisions back closer to people, and I am hoping that we will see with that some of what will deliver long-term levelling up.
“I look at my own patch, some of the real challenges we have are around education and health.
“So how we drive changes there, that we are not just getting a shiny new high street – I would happily take a shiny new high street – but actually giving young people the opportunities both in terms of the skills they can pick up and the education they receive, but also the health outcomes which are just lacking at the moment.”
Image: Conservative MP Sir John Redwood says investment in small business and enterprise is key to levelling up
‘Harnessing public and private sectors to create sustained progress’
Conservative MP Sir John Redwood says levelling up to him is investment in “training, education, support for small business and enterprise”.
“To me, the aim is very clear: it is primarily about more people going on worthwhile personal journeys so that we end up with many more people who are in worthwhile and well-paid work where they find more enjoyment and reward from it in every sense,” the MP for Wokingham told Sky News.
Mr Redwood added that the key to effective levelling up is “harnessing public and private sectors” to create “sustained progress for a community”.
“You are not going to get a sustained recovery or a noticeable levelling up if you just put one or two large public sector projects into a place,” he said.
“It has got to be much more comprehensive than that and a lot of the action is going to be private sector led. “
Image: Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced eight new freeports in England in March.
‘Rebalancing the economy and bringing high-quality, well-paid jobs to the regions’
Conservative MP and former minister Simon Clarke says levelling up is about “creating jobs and opportunity and restoring pride in place”.
“My priority for the future is very clear – delivering more good jobs, growth and investment for the area I was brought up in,” the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland told Sky News.
Mr Clarke added: “Here on Teesside, our new freeport is already bringing the first high-quality, well-paid jobs to our region with huge investors such as GE Renewables choosing Teesside for their new manufacturing operations.
“The Towns Fund, the Future High Streets Fund and the Levelling Up Fund are all enabling our local authorities to deliver investment and kick-start shovel-ready projects to make the improvements that will unlock future investment in our towns and communities.
“The government is rebalancing the economy to give communities which have felt ignored and let down a greater share of investment and greater control over how these investments are made.”
Image: Giles Wilkes, senior fellow at the Institute for Government, said Boris Johnson sees R&D (research and development) as key to his levelling up promise
‘What the state should be doing is what the levelling up debate is all about’
Giles Wilkes, senior fellow at the Institute for Government and former special adviser to Theresa May, says the levelling up debatefor Mr Johnson’s government is about two things – investment and research and development (R&D) spending.
On the latter, he said: “This is the idea that if you try to situate your brainy industries outside of these regions that normally benefit from it, the south east and so on, then you will be able to generate new clusters that will become the Seattles and Bostons of the future.
“All I can say about this is that it is extremely difficult.
“The agglomeration benefits of being around where the existing clever people are is incredibly powerful and there is a long list, perhaps 100 long, on Wikipedia of places that decided to call themselves Silicon something-or-other and failed – because there is only one Silicon Valley.”
Federal Reserve Board of Governors member Adriana Kugler announced her resignation on Aug. 1, paving the way for a Trump nominee at the US central bank.
The chancellor has declined to rule out raising taxes on gambling after a thinktank said the move could raise £3.2bn for the public coffers and cover the cost of lifting 500,000 children out of poverty.
According to the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), hiking taxes on online casinos and slot machines could raise enough revenue to fund scrapping the two-child benefit cap, with the organisation arguing that there is “no other measure which provides comparable headline child poverty reduction per pound spent”.
The proposals have been backed by former prime minister Gordon Brown, but the Betting and Gaming Council says they are “economically reckless” and could drive punters towards the black market.
The chancellor has not ruled out taking forward the proposals, telling broadcasters that a review into gambling taxes is under way, and policies will be set out at the budget in the autumn.
The IPPR says in its report that the chancellor should consider increasing taxes on online casinos from 21% to 50% and raising those on slots and gaming machines from 20% to 50%, as well as raising general betting duty on non-racing bets from 15% to 25% which it said would bring other sports in line with the rates paid by horse racing.
These measures could bring in £3.2bn for the Treasury, which would cover the cost of lifting the two-child benefit cap.
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Image: Former prime minister Gordon Brown is backing the proposals. Pic: PA
The cap was introduced by the Conservative government in April 2017, and it restricts universal credit and child tax credits to the first two children in a family, where the third or subsequent children are born after this date.
According to the thinktank’s analysis of data from the Department for Work and Pensions, 115,000 families are affected, with an average financial impact of £60 per week.
Overall, the policy is keeping over 450,000 in poverty currently, which is set to rise to 550,000 by the end of the decade, it adds.
The IPPR says raising these taxes is unlikely to reduce overall revenue for the Exchequer because firms are likely to “seek to protect their bottom lines by worsening odds”, which means a “strong possibility of higher government revenue” than their forecasts expect.
‘An investment in our children’s future’
Henry Parkes, principal economist and head of quantitative research at IPPR, said in a statement: “The gambling industry is highly profitable, yet is exempt from paying VAT and often pays no corporation tax, with many online firms based offshore. It is also inescapable that gambling causes serious harm, especially in its most high-stakes forms.
“Set against a context of stark and rising levels of child poverty, it only feels fair to ask this industry to contribute a little more.”
Progressive campaign group 38 Degrees has started a petition calling on the government to implement the proposals, and former prime minister Gordon Brown said in a statement: “Gambling will not build a brighter future for our children. But taxing it properly might just get them properly nourished. Decent clothes. A warm bed. And the full stomachs that let them fill their brains in school.
“Taxing the betting industry to support our children won’t be a gamble. It will be an investment in their future. One where everyone wins.”
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Proposals ‘would do more harm than good’
The government has long been facing calls from its own backbenches to scrap the two-child benefit cap, and has not ruled it out doing so as part of a broader package of measures to tackle child poverty, due to be published in the autumn.
Speaking to broadcasters this afternoon, Chancellor Rachel Reeves said she speaks to the former premier “regularly”, and, like him, is “deeply concerned around the levels of child poverty in Britain”.
She continued: “We’re a Labour government. Of course we care about child poverty. That’s why one of the first things we did as a government was to set up a child poverty taskforce that will be reporting in the autumn and respond to it then.
“And on gambling taxes, we’ve already launched a review into gambling taxes. We’re taking evidence on that at the moment and, again, we’ll set out our policies in the normal way, in our budget later this year.”
But the Betting and Gaming Council says raising taxes on its members is not a sound way of funding measures to reduce poverty, with a spokesperson saying the proposals are “economically reckless, factually misleading, and risk driving huge numbers to the growing, unsafe, unregulated gambling black market, which doesn’t protect consumers and contributes zero tax”.
They added: “Further tax rises, fresh off the back of government reforms which cost the sector over a billion in lost revenue, would do more harm than good – for punters, jobs, growth and public finances.”