Day: July 9, 2024

Labour has a historic opportunity to combat regional inequality. Empowering regional mayors is the place to start

• Michael Heseltine is a former Conservative deputy prime minister

The importance of levelling up is now understood across the political spectrum, and its inclusion in the responsibilities of Angela Rayner (despite it reportedly being dropped from the department name), the new deputy prime minister, ensures that the government will be judged on its delivery. Rachel Reeves, the new chancellor, is right about the lack of money. But there are easy wins for the Labour government if it is serious about its commitment to urban renewal.

I have spent much of my life involved in various versions of levelling up. In 1969 the then Labour government published the Redcliffe-Maud report on the structure of local government in England, which proposed to sweep away 1,300 councils and replace them with 61 unitary authorities. Over the next 15 years I was involved in reforms that reduced the number of councils to 300, based on a two-tier model including conurbation-wide councils in the big cities. Quite wrongly I bowed to popular pressure and abolished these conurbation-wide councils in the early Thatcher years.

Michael Heseltine is a former Conservative deputy prime minister

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