Read: Levelling up on the agenda for the House of Lords
Former Education Secretary Rt Hon Justine Greening appeared in front of the House of Lords Public Services Committee this week to give expert evidence to its inquiry into “levelling up”.
Chaired by Baroness Armstrong, Greening was also joined on the Committee by Professor Michael Kenny from Cambridge University and Jonathan Webb from IPPR North.
Discussion started around what the phrase levelling up means and the role of social infrastructure and reform of public services have in the levelling up agenda.
Justine Greening commented: “To me levelling up means everyone having the same opportunities to get on in life whoever they are, wherever they are, and whatever their circumstances, and it’s absolutely about equality of opportunity. I think the challenge is how we break down the very broad concept of equality of opportunity into its constituent parts, so that it’s something that we can take action on.
“I launched the Levelling Up Goals because during my time in International Development, I’d seen how galvanising the Sustainable Development Goals were - they took a very complex problem of development and broke it down into constituent parts, in a way that enabled very different actors to work collaboratively in partnership together. Whether it was governments investing, whether it was businesses or civil society, they were all able to be part of the push because it was very inclusive.
“The Levelling up Goals are me working with businesses but also universities, who I’ve been campaigning with for some time now, to break down levelling up into what we have adjudged to be 14 key goals that we have to address if we are going to shift the dial. Within that is social infrastructure and investment - the goals show that they are necessary but not sufficient on their own, but they are of course a key part of that. If we are going to succeed in levelling up the country we need very new ways of doing things across the board in all of the 14 levelling up goal areas, not just some of them.
“Levelling up has to be the top of the country’s agenda, it’s no longer acceptable that where you start in life shapes what happens in your future. Due to Covid, now is the time for change, we now have a chance to come at some of these issues completely fresh. We’ve seen so many solutions on the ground over recent years of what businesses are doing, what universities are doing, what community groups are doing. It’s now time to take what works and scale it up to achieve change.”
Justine then answered a question around the importance of having goals to work towards: “Effectively the goals break down into three groups: some are goals in relation to life cycles, during education and the gaps that open up then; some relate to people’s life moving into business, getting the right advice and experience and businesses having fair and open recruitment; and some of them relate to the fact that there are other parts of our life that either help or hinder us, whether it’s good housing, the digital divide or infrastructure.
“The goals really represent an attempt to break down those different aspects of levelling up and I think what they demonstrate is that we need to shift away from an investment style frame of debate, if it was as easy as spending money, politicians would have fixed it a long time ago. What we’ve done in the past isn’t going to work, we need to learn from the models of success that are already there on the ground.”
Summing up Justine said: “The British public took a decision at the last general election that levelling up matters. I think they do have a clear sense that it means equality of opportunity and doing what it takes to deliver that. They now expect the collective political system, both at Westminster and at a local level, to get on and deliver it. That’s what now needs to happen.”
Watch the full session at the House of Lords Public Services Committee.
Today’s appearance comes on the back of the launch of the Levelling Up Goals at the beginning of February. The Goals focus efforts on driving equality of opportunity at key life stages, from early years through to careers, alongside the barriers such as the digital divide, health and infrastructure adulthood and to provide a benchmark to track progress.