Former head of levelling up task force addresses AMBS

16 Jun 2022

The former head of the UK government’s levelling up task force discussed the subsequent white paper’s ambitious vision during a Vital Topics lecture at Alliance Manchester Business School

Andy Haldane, Chief Executive of the Royal Society for Arts (RSA) and an Honorary Professor at AMBS, explored how the 12 levelling up “missions” in the 332-page Levelling Up White Paper, published in February this year, can now be turned into a reality on the ground in towns and cities across the UK.

Haldane talked candidly about why levelling up was needed, what we mean by levelling up, and how it can now be delivered. In terms of the ‘why’ he said there remained huge variations in economic and social indicators across the UK. “Whether it’s health or wealth, spatial differences across the UK are big. Regional differences are large and long-lived.”

But he stressed that ultimately it was as much up to individuals and society to help deliver levelling up as it was up to government. “The heavy lifting of levelling up will be done by you as much as by central government.”

Haldane, the former Bank of England Chief Economist, was appointed by Boris Johnson last year to head the UK’s levelling-up taskforce as a secondment from his role at the RSA.

You can listen to an audio recording of Andy's lecture on our website.