Recommendation 6

Accountability for levelling up outcomes remains unsatisfactory. This Committee has reported before that government’s accountability arrangements had failed to keep pace with increasingly complex ways of delivering policies and services. and that this had weakened accountability to Parliament for the use of public funds. The cross-government nature of the levelling up ambition makes accountability more complicated, and the Levelling Up outcomes (or ‘missions’) in the White Paper relating to pay, productivity, and employment are inherently cross-cutting. While accountabilities for the Levelling Up fund and UK Shared Prosperity fund are clear, the Department told us that those for the 12 Levelling Up missions are still being worked through. Recommendation: HM Treasury and the Department should write to the committee alongside the Treasury Minute response to clarify departmental accountabilities for levelling up outcomes and in particular for cross-cutting missions.