Levelling up the UK: is the government serious about reducing regional inequalities in health?
This is my “long read” tip. There is some really interesting stuff to reflect on here, particularly in relation to the issues around levelling up being wider and with more dimensions than just simply north vs south. Try rural vs urban!
The Levelling Up white paper, released in February 2022 after major delay, outlines the UK government’s much anticipated strategy for tackling regional inequality. The centrepiece of the government’s reform agenda, “levelling up” is presented as a solution to the UK’s longstanding and serious geographical inequalities (box 1). Although levelling up is already permeating political and media discourse,10 the white paper is the first attempt to translate this broad idea into specific policy commitments to tackle place based inequalities: white papers set out proposals for future legislation.