efore the coronavirus crisis, Britain already had a longstanding challenge on social mobility. Ours is a country where background and circumstance shape a person’s life instead of talent, hard work and potential. For too long Britain has functioned on connections over competence. But coronavirus and its economic impact is now making that opportunity gap significantly wider. Research by the Social Mobility Pledge has identified emerging opportunity gaps in communities across the country where people are being left behind. The analysis shows places such as Corby, Wellingborough and Norwich are all facing an economic double hit from existing poor social mobility made worse by the impact of the economic crisis of coronavirus. It’s now urgent that ministers set out their strategy for “levelling up” our country, in the government’s own words, including helping these communities hit hardest by the economic impact of coronavirus. Boris Johnson’s government risks presiding over a levelled-down Britain. The prime minister was right to make levelling up a key objective for his government. Yet nearly a year after coming into office last July, ministers have still not set out a comprehensive strategy on how the government proposes to achieve it – even as it becomes more crucial. Levelling up must be a strategy that cuts across government and is the foundation stone that all other policy must sit on. Weak social mobility is a systemic problem for Britain, so every department will need to set out its own part of this strategy. Unless action is joined up across government, it will fail, and it needs the sort of ambition that has not been seen previously. Levelling up is about far more thana roads and rail programme and a pothole fund. In the meantime, the risk of going backwards is obvious. There is a lack of any overarching longer-term plan beyond the summer to deal with the economic fallout of coronavirus – whether in education and careers for young people, or retraining for those who will lose their jobs. It’s also clear that some communities facing the worst job losses will need more targeted action to support them over the coming months and years. Again, there is little sign of this from ministers. There are lessons to be learnt from other recessions too. In the 1980s recession, my father lost his job in the steel industry but was offered retraining as a welder – even as welders were also being made redundant. Poor advice and poor retraining meant he was unemployed for over a year. We should not repeat those mistakes but, as things stand today, there is no plan of the breadth and scale that will be needed to help newly unemployed people transition into new green jobs such as those in carbon capture and storage. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, said he would do “whatever it takes” to help businesses and households get through the coronavirus health crisis. Now he must do whatever it takes to support these children, young people and communities to level up. Yet the reports of road building, VAT or stamp duty relief and “cash for clunkers” car schemes are just the same old Treasury proposals that were made to the incoming Treasury team I was part of in 2010. I know, I saw them come across my desk. A decade on, new ideas and solutions are needed. It’s as if Treasury officials have just searched back in old files and then presented them to a new set of ministers. A budget initially mooted for mid-July has now been downgraded to some announcements on spending. If a full budget is now not planned until the autumn, that could be too late for millions of people affected by the economic fallout of coronavirus. Boris Johnson must bring some more immediate vision to where he takes our country as we emerge from the health crisis – now could be the moment for him to set out how we reskill Britain to deliver a green economy. It could be the opportunity for the government to support a wholesale shift on homeworking to allow unwanted office space to convert to the extra housing that many families and young people so badly need. Much smaller class sizes, with the right teaching and investment, could be the chance for our hard-pressed education system to finally fulfil its promise of being the great leveller for less advantaged children. But without decisive action and ambition, this moment will pass him by. The public don’t want piecemeal initiatives and empty rhetoric from ministers. Instead they need clear-cut, long-term plans. Last summer, I urged Johnson’s incoming government to set an emergency budget for social mobility and levelling up. I believed it was vital – but that opportunity was missed. Nearly a year later, as the weeks pass by, and with coronavirus still in our midst, for young people and left-behind communities, it’s more important than ever. A country is waiting. •Justine Greening is the former education secretary and founder of the Social Mobility Pledge