The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)
Committee has today published the Government’s response
[Ctrl+click to follow link to pdf] to the BEIS Committee’s
Levelling up report (which was published on 22nd July
2021, as part of the BEIS Committee’s post-pandemic economic
growth ‘super-inquiry’).
Post-pandemic economic
growth: Levelling up: Government Response to the Committee’s
Third Report Seventh Special Report of Session 2021–22 (HC
924, published on 3 December 2021)
(Please note: In the Government response - the BEIS Committee’s
original report recommendations are in bold
type, the Government response is in plain type.)
Commenting on the Government’s response published today,
, Chair of the Business, Energy
and Industrial Strategy Committee, said: “Ministers
still haven’t made enough progress on defining what levelling up
will mean for people across the country. The Government must take
the opportunity in the upcoming Levelling-Up White Paper to
finally explain how people will experience a positive change in
their lives and in their local communities. Failure to spell out
how levelling-up will deliver meaningful change risks exposing
the whole initiative as nothing more than a campaign slogan.”
Background – BEIS Committee report, Levelling up,
22nd July 2021
The BEIS Committee report (also see
news item) said that a
lack of clarity on what the Government means by ‘levelling up’
and how it translates into coherent and specific initiatives
risked relegating the Government’s flagship agenda to an
‘everything and nothing policy’.
The report stated that a lack of definition on how Government is
going to achieve levelling up, an absence of detail on how
success will be measured, and confusion over who is leading on
delivery raises concerns that the levelling-up agenda will fail
to deliver meaningful change for people across the country.
The report made a series of recommendations to press the
Government to establish clear levelling up priorities and to
develop a set of metrics and regular reporting on progress.
Recognising inequality in the capacity of local areas to bid for
government funds, the report recommends the Government put in
place effective mechanisms to ensure that it is not only the most
well-resourced authorities who are successful in securing
funding.
