Thread by @lewis_goodall

Some interesting inclusions in Tier 1 for the government's levelling up fund priority 1 list

Derbyshire Dales (265th most deprived local authority in England)
East Northamptonshire (226th)
Lewes (194th)
Mendip (170th)
Newark (148th)
Richmondshire (251st)
Trafford (209th)

Of course, deprivation isn't the only metric the fund is about or seeking to address.

But we're still waiting for the exact formula.

That's of 315 local authorities in England.

Done some more number crunching on the Levelling Up Fund. Of the 93 English councils included in the first tier, 55 are represented by Tory MPs only, 24 Lab MPs only, 14 represented by a mix. Compared to the make up of English seats that makes Tory seats a bit overrepresented.

Crucially though, the Labour only local authorities are on average significantly more deprived- with an average ranking of 38th, with the Conservative only LAs ranking on average 106th. That begs the question of what's happened to the other Lab local authorities which...

...on a deprivation reading should be on the list.

Of course Treasury will say that this isn't just about deprivation, though as I've said, they still haven't given us the actual formula so it's all a mystery. Without that it isn't surprising accusations of pork arise.

Not least because, looking at the list, 32 of the seats that the Tories won in 2019 in England look set to benefit- ie their councils are in Tier 1- and that represents more than half of their total gains in England.

More on this on Newsnight at 2245- tune in.

I asked Treasury why LUF methodolgy wasn't ready to go alongside the proposal. I haven't received a very good answer. My understanding is that the methodology is being looked after by MHCLG and DfT. But as I say, no-one seems able to explain why it isn't ready to be released now.

The other thing this adverts to is how centralised "levelling up" might be- money being bid for via Whitehall. Much of the north now has decentralised political structures via metro mayors. Argument they're making is why not give them the money and they decide?

Explored all this in piece from me and @jackcevans on last night’s @BBCNewsnight. Take a watch.

https://twitter.com/BBCNewsnight/status/1367861424752652303

Scottish and Welsh governments also unhappy about this point- saying the Chancellor had previously provided assurances that they would be able to direct the spending, rather than Whitehall deciding.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1367857624293769217?s=20

FT picking up on this too. Still no sign of the methodology from HMT or MHCLG. Yesterday when I asked a Treasury official why it wasn’t published along the fund proposal he said he didn’t know. ft.com/content/d485da…

So we have a a multi-billion £ fund for “levelling up” which includes some of the more affluent bits of the country, without any methodology and with no guarantees about when that methodology is to be published. Also no rationale for why devolved authorities have been bypassed.

Have repeatedly asked MHCLG today for the most basic information about the methodology. When will it be published? Why wasn’t it published alongside? Did ministers have any role in drawing up/revising the list? All they’ll say is it’ll be published “in due course.” Extraordinary.

This is alongside the same (repeated) questions to the Treasury on Thursday/Friday which drew similarly few answers.

Another day where I ask MHCLG for an idea when the Levelling Up Fund methodology will be published and for an explanation as to why they haven't already and another day where no answer has been provided.

.@DanJarvisMP asks Boris Johnson how the Levelling up Fund could possibly prioritise Sunak’s Richmond over his Barnsley.

PM replies that govt is “committed to levelling up everywhere.”

Which, surely, is a contradiction in terms. You’re levelling up somewhere to somewhere else.

And if you focus resources on already prosperous areas they just “level up” further out of reach of the rest.

Otherwise all you’re talking about is economic growth everywhere, of which literally every government ever has been in favour.

NEW: Over a week after the Budget, MHCLG has now published the methodology for the Levelling Up Fund. I've been asking for a reason for the delay all week but they haven't provided me with an answer.

gov.uk/government/pub…

OK so now we know one of the reasons that places like Richmondshire/D Dales are being prioritised in the Levelling Up Fund but Barnsley/Salford aren't. They've given tremendous weight to journey time to work by car, much more so than for instance journey time by public transport.

My quick calculations. The biggest overall weighting of all is given to journey time to employment by car (18.8%). No use of the government’s overall deprivation index.

Moreover these are very...specific decimal points.

Note that journey time to employment by public transport is not used for the Scotland and Wales allocations, the government says the data wasn't available. Had it been so, a lot of money would have been going to the Highlands.

Looked through this in more detail

Outstanding Qs

1) Why is driving to work so heavily weighted? Here's a graph I worked up which plots driving to work times vs deprivation for every English local authority. Spoiler: there's no correlation, if anything it's slightly negative.

2) Many would naturally assume that "Levelling Up" is about addressing areas of deprivation. Yet a deprivation index is not used as even one component of the weightings. Why not? One answer is to draw funding away from cities. But it certainly leads to some odd outcomes.

3) MHCLG says that the data wasn't available for driving to work times in Scotland and Wales- that's why it wasn't included in the Scottish and Welsh sections. That seems...odd. That data certainly exists and I'm sure the Scottish and Welsh govts could have provided it.

The net effect is that areas like the Highlands or Gwynedd which on the English weighting almost certainly would be in Priority Group 1, aren't.

There's also no explanation as to why this money simply isn't being allocated by the Scottish/Welsh Parliaments in the first place.

4) Despite asking multiple times, I've still not had any explanation from MHCLG as to why it took over a week to release the methodology.

Circling back, clearly, as I say, the big question mark is having a weighting which favours driving to work times and low productivity (clearly favouring rural areas) but nothing on say crime, health inequalities and income.

This adverts to the bigger question lurking around this. What exactly does the govt mean when they say they want to level up? It's commonly been interpreted as restoring economically depressed towns in the midlands and north. But that's certainly not what this fund appears...

... to primarily be about. Is it even about bringing poorer areas up to the rest? The PM earlier in the week said he wanted to level up "everywhere"- that's surely a contradiction in terms, unless he means everywhere getting richer....

...which as I said earlier in the thread literally every government ever has wanted. So seems to me like the LUF has generated more questions than it's answered about a fundamental (arguably the fundamental) objective of the Johnson government.

NB I should say there is of course the Towns Fund which by definition addresses the towns issue specifically. But of course, that fund is itself not without controversy.