Queen's Speech 2021 - Levelling Up

“My Government’s priority is to deliver a national recovery from the pandemic that makes the United Kingdom stronger, healthier and more prosperous than before.

To achieve this, my Government will level up opportunities across all parts of the United Kingdom, supporting jobs, businesses and economic growth and addressing the impact of the pandemic on public services. ”

Levelling up is at the heart of the Government’s agenda to build back better after the pandemic and was at the centre of the Manifesto on which we promised to deliver for the people of the UK.

It is about improving living standards and growing the private sector, particularly where it is weak. It is about increasing and spreading opportunity, because while talent is evenly distributed, opportunity is not. It is about improving health, education and policing, particularly where they are not good enough. It is also about strengthening community and local leadership, restoring pride in place, and improving quality of life in ways that are not just about the economy.

The Government will publish a landmark Levelling Up White Paper later this year, setting out bold new policy interventions to improve livelihoods and opportunity in all parts of the UK. It will grasp the opportunities of Brexit and set out the next steps in our plan to enable more people to get on in life, without feeling they have to leave their local area.

Levelling up means creating new good jobs, boosting training and growing productivity in places that have seen economic decline and the loss of industry - not through a one-size-fits-all approach, but nurturing different types of economic growth and building on the different strengths that different places have.

The White Paper will build on actions the Government is already taking to level up across the UK.

Local regeneration and town centre improvement

• The new £4.8 billion Levelling Up Fund will invest in infrastructure to improve everyday local life and boost growth and jobs. We will launch the UK Shared Prosperity Fund in 2022 and have already supported places with £220 million through the UK Community Renewal Fund. The £830 million Future High Streets Fund is supporting regeneration in 72 areas across England.

• Through the Towns Fund we are investing £3.6 billion in 101 towns in England towards their own local priorities such as upgrades to high streets and transport, while we are investing £2.9 billion in City and Growth Deals to drive forward local economic priorities in cities across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Enterprise and jobs

• We are boosting jobs, investment and communities post-Brexit by establishing eight Freeports in England and working to establish more in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

• As part of our drive to net zero, we are backing industries of the future through the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a green industrial revolution, mobilising billions in private and public investment to turn the country into the world’s number one centre for green technology and finance, creating 250,000 highly skilled green jobs across the UK.

• We are protecting, supporting and creating jobs across the UK through our Plan for Jobs, which will particularly help areas at risk of unemployment.

• We are backing innovation to create good new jobs across the country with the £400 million “Strength In Places” Fund, which has made investments in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff, Bristol, Liverpool and Kent.

• We are moving more of government out of Whitehall. The new Government economic campus at Darlington (“Treasury North”) will relocate substantial parts of HM Treasury while the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government will create a second headquarters in Wolverhampton. The new UK Infrastructure Bank will be based in Leeds.

  Levelling up public services

• We are investing £3.7 billion to build 40 hospitals and recruiting 50,000 new nurses in England, which will ensure that people have access to the best public services, wherever they live.

• We are recruiting 20,000 new police officers to keep our streets and communities safe across England and Wales.

  Skills and education

• We are helping to close the opportunity gap in England by increasing primary school funding to a minimum of £4,000 per pupil and secondaries to a minimum of £5,000 per pupil and boosting investment in schools by £14 billion through to 2023-23 - an extra £840 per pupil.

• We have introduced the Lifetime Skills Guarantee as part of the £2.5 billion National Skills Fund. Starting this year, 11 million adults are able to gain an A level-equivalent qualification for free. The devolved administrations will receive £500 million through Barnett consequentials as skills is devolved.

• We are rolling out T levels, which means we will be investing £500 million a year in new prestigious technical qualifications featuring more workplace experience.

  Major infrastructure and connectivity

  • To improve infrastructure and better connect people to jobs, we are making the largest ever investment in motorways and A-roads worth over £27 billion. We are also connecting the country with High Speed 2 and setting out our massive programme of rail investment across the North and the Midlands through the Integrated Rail Plan, building on our £4.2 billion investment.

  • We are rolling out fibre across the UK, investing £5 billion in Project Gigabit to target getting to a minimum of 85 per cent gigabit-capable coverage by 2025 and to get us as close to 100 per cent as possible.

  • We are investing £5 billion in buses and cycle routes across England. Our National Bus Strategy will ensure every area has a bus service as good as the capital’s.

    Key facts

• The UK has significant regional disparities, both economic and social:

o The UK’s highest productivity region (London) is nearly 60 per cent more productive than its lowest (Wales).

o 50 per cent of the population in London have graduate-level qualifications, compared to 33 per cent of the population in the North East of England.

o Healthy life expectancy in Glasgow, Dundee, Blackpool and Middlesbrough is ten years shorter than affluent local authorities in the South East.

o People in the most deprived fifth of neighbourhoods in England are about 50 per cent more likely to experience crime and antisocial behaviour than those in the richest fifth.

• Certain types of spending, transport, R&D, housing, culture, are vital to boost productivity. Yet in Britain we have historically spent more on these things in places where productivity is already high:

o Between 2007-08 and 2018-19 capital spending on transport in London was around £6,600 per head, more than twice the average in the rest of England (£2,400).

o Close to half of core research funding in England was spent in just three UK regions and sub-regions containing Oxford, Cambridge, and London.