Using rapid learning to accelerate growth – before it’s too late
Originally published in Local Government Chronicle – 19/08/2024
Rapid learning – before it’s too late
A recent dip into the digital majesty which is the Localis content management system brought the dread realisation that the website’s architecture is structured on a now obsolete ‘levelling up’ category that will involve a small bit of digital faff at a busy time of the year.
For think tanks and policy wonks it was the gift that kept on giving while it lasted. Localis along sought to level up everything from the nation’s social fabric, its pubs, Oxford, East London and the entire South East of England. But now the party is well and truly over. May a department of state never be named after a hubristic policy slogan again.
Reenter the resuscitated Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. As a civil service department, this brand first saw light of day in Churchill’s 1951 administration – the one which led by Harold MacMillan did make good on the mythical 300,000 new homes target. In the modern hyperreal era of politics, its unexpected recent revival came in 2018 when Theresa May brought Sajid Javid back into the fold and Rishi Sunak was given his first try out in government with the local government finance brief.
Naming is a creative act. The shift in nomenclature from ‘department’ to ‘ministry’ – a title first adopted by Whitehall for the creation of the Ministry of Munitions, headed by Lloyd George to defuse the World War One military-political shells crisis in 1915 – suggests overtones of pious quasi-religious service, perhaps betokening a greater sense of frontline mission. Which obviously bodes well for the looming era of mission led government.
Which takes us back to the present. During the election campaign just gone, commentators were keen to predict that even with a supermajority, Sir Keir Starmer would only enjoy the briefest of political honeymoons before the hitlist of stored up problems brought the hard realities of government crashing down to earth.
Reflections on the recent disturbances has brought an early and urgent renewed focus to the poor state of social fabric and economic outcome across England. Outbreaks of dissent have been seen to map neatly over what we already know about seven of our top ten our left behind places. Outside of London, the rest of England has lower GDP per capita than Mississippi the poorest state in America and across our continent Sir Keir Starmer claimed last year that Poland is set to overtake the UK economically by 2030 if growth trends continued – although this is disputable.
So, while Levelling Up exits like the Cheshire Cat, leaving only a fast-disappearing grin, the problems of entrenched economic geographic disparity it aimed to address but failed to grasp take on a starker and uglier complexion.
Social cohesion will depend on economic renewal The priority should be to heal the division in our societies by bringing some justice to the left behind. And it is not as if we are blessed with much time, money or answers.
In his recent book ‘Left Behind – a new economics for neglected places’ Paul Collier, Blavatnik professor of public policy, and former levelling up committee adviser, gives some suggestions from here and around the world as to how we can break the cycle.
He makes the point that post-unification, German chancellor Helmut Kohl, a regional leader before becoming national leader, successfully made the moral case for gargantuan redistribution back to the former east – the equivalent of£70bn a year for three decades. Ahead of the spending review, Rachel Reeves has made pretty darn clear the Exchequer has nothing like this in the kitty. In the poor regions of over centralized Britain, Collier argues the appropriate switch would be from national to local taxation matched by fiscal redistributions that leaves poor regions with local control of revenues – and better off. But, unless forthcoming fiscal events are to truly astound us, this is off the menu.
Which leaves us as ever with ideas and the human energies that can transform the future of every left behind place. If the government is to achieve a necessary dramatic improvement in central/local relations, the culture shift to the power of local leadership against overcentralised Whitehall control should be vested with full constitutional heft in the English Devolution Act. The future of devolution and local public service reform can’t be left to the daydream nation, or what Collier derides as among many ‘sham gestures of action’ across Whitehall such as net zero commitments which lack any enforcement.
For Collier, the gadget that accelerates growth once it is underway is rapid learning – the ability of states and communities to swallow pride and learn from others. He himself doubts whether the Treasury mind has the humility or the gumption to absorb necessary lessons given its operating model of incessant micromanagement over local economic growth calls overseen by callow 25-year-old Oxbridge graduates. Perhaps a trite unfair. Localis has previously argued for a universal standard for understanding throughout Whitehall – not just DLUHC – as a prerequisite for improving place-based public services across the board.
On the basis we don’t have much time and less money let’s stick to the ideas and human energy of place leadership. When it comes to delivering on the imperative of accelerating housing, delivering inclusive growth and keeping the local public service show on the road, we could do far worse than promote as necessary virtues lessons in strong local leadership from our successful place leaders and learn what they did to drive success.
For example, why not beat a path to the outgoing leader of Barking and Dagenham Darren Rodwell, under whose supervision the council built one fifth of the capital’s affordable housing stock? If the overriding question is how can local government use the gadget of rapid learning to accelerate growth and promote social cohesion, we should be answering it now, before it’s too late.