Clive Betts, chair of the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, talks to Mike Thatcher about lack of progress on levelling up, pork-barrel politics and why local government finance cannot be reformed until social care funding is sorted.
Is levelling up yesterday’s priority? With the cost-of-living crisis dominating the political agenda and the main levelling up evangelists – Boris Johnson and Michael Gove – going or gone, there’s certainly a feeling of old news about the phrase.
Johnson described levelling up as the “defining mission” of his government, while Gove, as levelling up secretary, set out in the levelling up white paper how undervalued communi
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