Read: How my mother and I invented ‘levelling up’ in 2014 - but Boris Johnson was the only top Tory paying attention

‘Social mobility – it’s helping people who need wheelchairs get around more easily isn’t it?’ It was 2014.

I was talking with my mother about how I was doing more work on social mobility in Cabinet. Her expression steadily told me she didn’t understand the term.

It was the moment I realised I needed a better phrase to describe social mobility and equality of opportunity.

It had to be something instinctive and memorable that could get real cut through. The phrase I came up with was ‘levelling up’.

It described not just what equality of opportunity is about, but also how you deliver it – not taking opportunities away from those with them, but by spreading them to those without.

You level up. At the time I was a Cabinet Minister and my special adviser told me the phrase would never catch on.

I challenged him to come up with something better, but when he couldn’t, we stuck with it and I used it more and more.

Read the full opinion piece with former Education Secretary Justine Greening in The Yorkshire Post.

Justine Greening launched the Levelling Up Goals earlier this year to set out clear objectives for the UK's Levelling Up challenge in the wake of Covid19