The Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill will do little to make levelling up happen, MPs have said.
The chair of the House of Commons’ levelling up committee, Clive Betts, has written a scathing letter to the levelling up secretary, Greg Clarke, after conducting a review of the legislation.
Betts wrote: “In its current form, the Bill does little to reassure that levelling up will prove to be more than just a slogan and that we will have meaningful change in local communities across the country.”
He continued: “In key areas, it is unclear how the government intends to drive change and they are yet to commit to the spending that is necessary to level up the country.”
Without additional spending committment, Betts added, the Bill was reduced to simply stating what the levelling up missions would be, not delivering them. “The main tool to achieve levelling up will be through appropriate funding to those areas that need it most,” the letter states. “None of the provisions in the Bill will directly contribute to making progress towards achieving these missions – other than setting them. There is also no funding for levelling up associated with the Bill.”
In the letter, the committee also expresses concern about the lack of detail on planning provisions, amid fears of a move to a more centralised approach to planning decisions. However, as much of the detail will come in secondary legislation or after further consultation, the Bill had left “people guessing as to the direction of the government’s planning agenda”.
Betts added that the planning provisions in the Bill could be described as “loosely connected proposals to tinker with the current system, hopefully achieving some improvement”.
Although Betts, the chair of the committee, is a Labour MP, it is notable that the majority of the committee’s members are Conservatives.
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