Levelling up bill does not include funding needed to make levelling up happen, say MPs Although the House of Commons is not sitting over the summer, MPs still have work to do and some who chair select committees have been sending out letters. Clive Betts, the Labour MP who chairs the levelling up committee, says that when Greg Clark replaced Michael Gove as levelling up secretary in July, he asked Betts to tell him over the summer what the committee thought of the levelling up and regeneration bill. Not much seems to be the answer. Today Betts has released the letter he has sent to Clark on behalf of his committee giving an assessment of the bill and here is the key paragraph. It is the committee’s view that the main tool to achieve levelling up will be through appropriate funding to those areas that need it most. This funding will help in making progress on the levelling up missions related to public transport and local connectivity; transforming digital connectivity; improving education outcomes; increasing the number of adults who complete high quality skills training; and increasing healthy life expectancy. None of the provisions in the bill will directly contribute to making progress towards achieving these missions – other than setting them. There is also no funding for levelling up associated with the bill. Like all select committees, this one has a narrow Conservative majority. And in a statement to journalists Betts said: In its current form, the bill does little to reassure that levelling up will prove to be more than just a slogan and that we will have meaningful change in local communities across the country. In key areas, it is unclear how the government intends to drive change and they are yet to commit to the spending that is necessary to level up the country. Our inquiry has focused on the planning provisions in the bill, which can be described as loosely-connected proposals to tinker with the current system, hopefully achieving some improvement. It has been difficult to conduct scrutiny due to a lot of the detail of the provisions having not yet been published. Afternoon summary Boris Johnson has made a final visit to Kyiv as prime minister, telling the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that the country “can and will win the war”. Rishi Sunak has declined to say he would vote for an emergency budget brought forward by Liz Truss to enact tax cuts, after arguing that it would cause an inflationary spiral and damage the economy. Truss would be “robbing Peter to pay Paul” if she diverted £13bn of funding for the NHS to deal with a Covid backlog in social care, experts have said. The government’s levelling up bill has been criticised by MPs for not including the funding needed to make levelling up happen. (See 2.09pm.) Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, is to back the growing Enough is Enough movement, whose leaders are planning dozens of rallies against the cost of living crisis which they say will result in people dying. As my colleague Robert Booth reports, Burnham, a former Labour health secretary viewed as a centrist, joins a group with a growing network of local activists in more than 70 towns and cities, from Crawley to Blackpool. Its demands include a cut to the energy price cap to the pre-April level of £1,277 a year, a real-terms public sector pay rise, a reverse to the national insurance hike, and a £20-a-week universal credit increase – a programme that could cost more than £100bn a year. Scotland’s spending deficit has hit a record of nearly £2,200 a head, despite a massive increase in tax revenues driven by the global surge in oil prices. Covid-19 testing among NHS and care home staff with no symptoms in England is to be “paused” at the end of August, the Department of Health and Social Care has announced. Officials said that the decision to stop all “asymptomatic testing” comes as cases of the virus continue to fall. Asymptomatic testing will remain in place for people being admitted hospices and for those going into care homes and for immunocompromised patients who are being admitted to hospital, the DHSC says in its news release. Civil service unions have written to the government calling for a cap on pay rises to be lifted in light of the cost of living crisis. In a joint letter to the Cabinet Office, Mike Clancy, the Prospect general secretary, and Dave Penman, the FDA general secretary, said: In the context of high and rising inflation, the 2-3% range set in the guidance is clearly not fit for purpose. The latest predictions suggest inflation could reach 18%, far beyond what was envisaged when the guidance was set for this year. In that context it is clear that cost of living pressures cannot in any way be meaningfully addressed for our members within an envelope of 2-3%. A refusal to recognise this across all grades in the service is both unacceptable and damaging. Clancy and Penman also said they were seeking an “urgent meeting” with the Cabinet Office’s permanent secretary to discuss pay. Burnham backs Sarwar"s call for metro mayors in Scotland Local champions are required across Scotland’s communities in order to deliver important change, Scottish Labour has said. As PA Media reports, Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, made the call alongside Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor and former Labour MP, at the launch of a paper on local government reform in Glasgow. Sarwar suggested that Scotland could “learn the lessons” of the use of local and metro mayors elsewhere in the UK, and that by introducing such a system north of the border, communities would become more empowered. Burnham said introducing regional mayors in Scotland could make a “real difference”, adding that cities risked being left behind if they did not have enough power to do things for themselves. He said: As I look at things today, you know, it’s obviously been good that Scotland’s had devolution to the national level. But at the same time, I think cities potentially could get left behind if cities don’t have more power to do more things for themselves. I’ll give you a practical example. A week on Monday, I’m introducing a cap on bus fares in Greater Manchester, so it’d be a £2 cap on an adult journey, £1 on a child journey, and it’s free for 16-18s. And then it’d be £5 cap on fares in a day, no matter how many buses people take. I would say, well, why shouldn’t Glasgow be able to do exactly the same thing to help people through the cost of living crisis? Johnson pays tribute to "incomparable will of Ukrainians to resist" at news conference in Kyiv Boris Johnson told a news conference in Kyiv that Vladimir Putin had been “insane” to invade Ukraine as he praised the country’s resistance. If we’re paying in our energy bills for the evils of Vladimir Putin, the people of Ukraine are paying in their blood. As PA Media reports, Johnson said “like one of those indomitable Ukrainian boxers” the country “came off the ropes and hit him with an uppercut that sent Putin’s armies reeling from Kyiv and a hook to drive him from Kharkiv”. He added: Out of the ashes of your towns and cities, out of the monstrous scares that are being left by Putin’s missiles, something beautiful is blooming and it is a flower that the whole world can see and admire, and that is the incomparable will of the Ukrainians to resist. According to the polling firm Ipsos UK, three-quarters of all voters, and two-thirds of people who voted Conservative in 2019, think the privileges committee inquiry into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs about Partygate is justified. This is from Kelly Beaver, the company’s chief executive. This is bad news for the Mail newspapers which have been running news articles and opinion pieces clearly designed to kill the inquiry. The Mail group is still very supportive of Johnson and at the weekend it carried a news story based on a briefing circulating among MPs arguing, in effect, that it would be bad for MPs to insist that ministers in the Commons tell them the truth. There was also an opinion piece saying the inquiry was akin to a show trial from Stalin’s Russia – written by someone who had clearly forgotten what actually happened to the victims of Stalin’s show trials. Boris Johnson has been doing a walkabout in Kyiv with President Zelenskiy. The Kyiv Independent has some pictures. And Visegrád 24 has some video footage. UK to provide Ukraine with £54m package of drones and missiles Boris Johnson has announced a further package of military support for Ukraine on his visit. The UK is contributing a £54m package of drones and “loitering munitions”, missiles that stay airborne until they identify a target to attack. In its news release about the package, No 10 said: This package of unmanned air systems will be a step up in the Ukrainian’s current capability, improving their long range surveillance and defensive targeting ability. It includes 850 hand-launched Black Hornet micro-drones, which are specifically designed for use in towns and villages, and are deployed to detect approaching enemy forces. Military personnel can be trained to fly the helicopter drones, which are smaller than a mobile phone, in under 20 minutes. Each drone feeds back live video and still images to allow forces on the ground to defend urban areas safely. In a statement Johnson said: Today’s package of support will give the brave and resilient Ukrainian armed forces another boost in capability, allowing them to continue to push back Russian forces and fight for their freedom. What happens in Ukraine matters to us all, which is why I am here today to deliver the message that the United Kingdom is with you and will be with you for the days and months ahead, and you can and will win. This is Johnson’s third visit to Kyiv since the Russian invasion in February. To mark his support for Ukraine, Johnson was awarded the order of liberty, the country’s highest award for foreign nationals. Johnson visits to Kyiv to confirm UK backing for Ukraine Boris Johnson has revealed that he is in Kyiv for what will almost certainly be his final meeting as PM with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president. Levelling up bill does not include funding needed to make levelling up happen, say MPs Although the House of Commons is not sitting over the summer, MPs still have work to do and some who chair select committees have been sending out letters. Clive Betts, the Labour MP who chairs the levelling up committee, says that when Greg Clark replaced Michael Gove as levelling up secretary in July, he asked Betts to tell him over the summer what the committee thought of the levelling up and regeneration bill. Not much seems to be the answer. Today Betts has released the letter he has sent to Clark on behalf of his committee giving an assessment of the bill and here is the key paragraph. It is the committee’s view that the main tool to achieve levelling up will be through appropriate funding to those areas that need it most. This funding will help in making progress on the levelling up missions related to public transport and local connectivity; transforming digital connectivity; improving education outcomes; increasing the number of adults who complete high quality skills training; and increasing healthy life expectancy. None of the provisions in the bill will directly contribute to making progress towards achieving these missions – other than setting them. There is also no funding for levelling up associated with the bill. Like all select committees, this one has a narrow Conservative majority. And in a statement to journalists Betts said: In its current form, the bill does little to reassure that levelling up will prove to be more than just a slogan and that we will have meaningful change in local communities across the country. In key areas, it is unclear how the government intends to drive change and they are yet to commit to the spending that is necessary to level up the country. Our inquiry has focused on the planning provisions in the bill, which can be described as loosely-connected proposals to tinker with the current system, hopefully achieving some improvement. It has been difficult to conduct scrutiny due to a lot of the detail of the provisions having not yet been published. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank has published its own assessment of the significance of today’s Government Expenditure and Revenue Scotland (GERS) report for 2021-22. (See 12.02pm.) It says the underlying public finances are improving in Scotland because of oil and gas revenues, but that long-term challenges remain. Summarising the IFS analysis, David Phillips, an associate director at the thinktank, says: Today’s GERS figures are a tale of two stories. The headline numbers show Scotland’s deficit falling by more relative to GDP than the UK as a whole, driven by a rebound in oil and gas revenues, and a recovery in GDP from a bigger decline during the height of the pandemic. However, digging deeper shows that onshore revenues grew less quickly than the UK as a whole: they are now £800 lower per person, compared to around £500 lower over the previous five years, and broadly similar to the UK average in the early 2010s. Government spending also fell by less in Scotland last year than in the UK as a whole. Figures for the current financial year, 2022-23, will come just before the date the Scottish government hopes to hold a referendum on independence. That timing could be fortuitous for the ‘yes’ camp as further increases in oil and gas prices, together with the windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas producers, mean Scotland’s headline overall deficit could be at a similar or even lower level than the UK as a whole for the first time in over 10 years. But, the long-term decline in North Sea output means that even if these higher prices are sustained, at best they would buy the government of an independent Scotland more time to boost onshore economic growth and revenues. Without this, an independent Scotland would still likely face bigger tax rises or spending cuts in the decades ahead.