Source · Select Committees · Treasury Committee
Recommendation 16
16
Paragraph: 133
In order to prevent “levelling up” becoming an empty slogan, the Government should produce a...
Recommendation
In order to prevent “levelling up” becoming an empty slogan, the Government should produce a strategy underpinning it that defines clear objectives and includes the indicators it will use to gauge success at the next fiscal event. The Government needs to clarify whether it is planning to close the productivity gap, the income gap, the gap in health outcomes, the gap in educational outcomes or all of these. It also needs to define the strategies it will use to close different imbalances: strategies to close productivity gaps may well be different to those aimed to close income gaps or those gaps in health outcomes.
Paragraph Reference:
133
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
With regards to your recommendation on levelling up, the government is committed to levelling up opportunity in every region and nation of the UK and levelling up represents a common priority across departments, both in what they do and how they do it. For example, the government intends to establish a new approach to link departments’ spending proposals to the outcomes they intend to achieve as part of a new Public Value Framework (PVF). HMT announced at Budget 2020 that the government is currently developing the medium- to long-term priority outcomes that it is seeking to deliver for priorities such as levelling-up, as well as the metrics that will be used to measure and improve performance against these outcomes. The government also intends to make decisions differently: for example, we are currently undertaking a review of the Green Book, and at Budget 2020, the Government committed to relocating 22,000 civil service roles from London and the Southeast to the rest of the UK by 2030.