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Michael Gove has compared the government’s levelling-up policy to a half-built cathedral, urging critics of the flagship agenda to wait another six years before casting judgment on its progress.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the levelling-up secretary described the Conservatives’ plan to narrow regional inequalities as a “work in progress”, which had been severely disrupted by the Covid pandemic and Ukraine war.
“You know, if I’m in the middle of building a cathedral, you might say, ‘well some of it looks great but the rest of it is just a mess’ . . . but that’s because we are still constructing it. You’ve got to dream great if you want to achieve anything,” Gove said.
When asked when would be a fair point to judge the policy, Gove replied: “2030 is the reference point that we used in the white paper, and I think that is the right point.”
Former prime minister Boris Johnson first referred to “levelling-up” in the Conservative’s 2019 manifesto as a policy to boost the prospects of less prosperous parts of the country. But Gove admitted that so far it had only had mixed success.
“I think voters recognise that you can’t secure transformation instantly but they do also recognise how much has been done in significant parts of the country,” he said.
Gove was appointed levelling-up secretary in September 2021 and was responsible for drawing up a white paper in February 2022 setting out the government’s key targets.
A Financial Times analysis of the policy found the UK has struggled to make gains in several target areas, including broadband provision, GCSE results, healthy life expectancy, and the number of first-time buyers, as well as productivity and employment.
At the same time, the government has made progress on making devolution deals to strengthen the powers of local mayors, reducing transport spending inequalities, establishing freeports and decentralising the civil service.
Gove hailed the extension of devolution in England since the last general as “the biggest change to local government since 1880 under the Lord Salisbury government”. There had been a series of “detailed, forensic, town-by-town, city-by-city interventions” that the government could be proud of, he added.
Some experts believe the levelling-up agenda has been partially stymied by a failure of Downing Street to enforce it across all departments. But the minister insisted that was not the case. “Across government, there has been that big buy-in,” he said.
“Critically, the department which is often depicted as being the most sceptical in this area is the Treasury and yet . . . in the Budget it was significant that Jeremy Hunt [chancellor] referenced levelling up throughout,” he added.
Since Johnson announced the levelling-up policy there have been divisions among the cabinet on how best to meet its aims.
Gove himself pitched in the run-up to the 2022 white paper for a cut in council tax for the lowest-band properties, which would have disproportionately helped households in northern England and the Midlands, people familiar with the talks told the Financial Times.
The policy would have been partly funded through a levy on foreign-owned properties. “It was due to be announced as a levelling-up tax cut benefiting 6mn households, three-quarters in the Midlands and North,” but the idea was stymied by the Treasury under then chancellor Rishi Sunak, the people said.
Gove neither denied nor confirmed that claim, saying: “The Treasury might occasionally explain to me how I’m wrong, but I’ve never been thwarted.”
The government has been criticised for setting up pots of money through a Towns Fund and Levelling-Up Fund through which councils had to make competitive bids. The process has been compared to a “Hunger Games” type competition by the opposition Labour party.
Gove acknowledged that mistakes had been made. “With the benefit of hindsight” some funding decisions “might have been taken in a better way”, he said.
A recent study by the House of Commons public accounts committee suggested that only a tenth of the levelling-up funds had yet been spent.