Nobody needs levelling up more than Yorkshire's young people - Action for Children's Imran Hussain

Nobody needs levelling up to work more than the children in Yorkshire. Their childhoods and life chances depend on it. In setting out 12 levelling up missions for the country – its priority areas – the Government is putting forward a plan that deserves to be considered carefully, that should earn praise for highlighting education attainment but risks failure because it ignores child poverty.

The plan had originally been expected in November, but it’s been overdue for a decade. David Cameron talked about life chances and Theresa May raged at society’s burning injustices, but neither published a serious plan of action. Every Prime Minister wants to articulate an opportunity agenda, where he or she can talk positively about building a better country for the future. So Michael Gove deserves credit for putting policy meat on the slogans of Boris Johnson’s agenda. And doing it in a way that has some coherence – tackling geographical inequalities.

It’s good to see that one of the missions is firmly focused on improving the literacy and numeracy levels for children at primary school. Children were largely overlooked in the Government’s pandemic response – so much so, that the Government’s school catch-up tsar resigned because Ministers weren’t willing to fund what needed to be done.

If we’re going to improve the educational attainment of primary school children, then we need to do far more to ensure children are school ready at reception year stage. So we are really pleased to see that one of the ways government will be judging whether it’s on track with this mission will be looking at the percentage of five-year-olds achieving the ‘expected level’ on literacy, communications and maths early learning goals. It’s an issue Action for Children raised directly with officials so we’re pleased that it looks like they have taken it on board.

Levelling up must involve giving children the best start to their lives, including to their school life. As we get more detail in the weeks and months ahead, we’d like to hear what levelling up will do for vulnerable children. The Government’s own figures point to a growing mental health crisis among children, with one in six children now estimated to have a mental health problem. It was one in nine in 2017. We need to act before this surge in prevalence overwhelms NHS mental health services. The best way to do that is through early mental health support to build resilience and stop problems getting worse.

In fact, prioritising early help should be a guiding principle for levelling up. For example, the Government’s own guidance on protecting vulnerable children opens by saying that “providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later”. Yet, both central government funding and local authority spending on early intervention services has fallen over the past decade, while spending on late intervention has grown. Since 2010 spending on early intervention children’s services has almost halved.By missing out on opportunities to help children before their problems escalate, we’re probably leading to more children needing to go into care. Now, the big problem is that child poverty is the missing mission of this White Paper. Despite the mountains of evidence on the devastating impact it has on childhoods and life chances and despite the Government’s own manifesto pledge to reduce it, child poverty is not mentioned in the plans.

The section on living standards prioritises pay, employment and productivity. These are all good things, and all will help lift overall living standards. But unless Ministers focus on poverty, we will continue to have millions of children whose living standards are far below those of everyone else because they live in households with low incomes.

As the White Paper stands, Ministers can declare ‘mission accomplished’ even if child poverty rises. We cannot say we have levelled up the country if nine children in every classroom are in poverty. It simply would not be credible.

Turning a blind eye to poverty will also undermine the other missions. Action on poverty will be needed to make progress on the missions on health, education and housing. The Levelling Up White Paper is a rare opportunity to reset government thinking and spending priorities. We must not waste it.

Nobody needs levelling up to happen as much as children. Everybody benefits if we do it right.