Tory MPs are demanding urgent explanations from ministers over the levelling up agenda after an official report said plans to move thousands more civil service jobs from London to Birmingham and Newcastle had been scrapped.
The Government Property Agency (GPA), which falls under the Cabinet Office, said in a brief reference in its recent annual report and accounts that a decision had been “made by ministers” to axe the proposals after “a review identified that they no longer aligned with strategic requirements”.
This was despite the fact that more than £1m had been spent on the two projects as part of the flagship government drive to spread the civil service out of Whitehall and boost growth in the regions.
Amid signs of Cabinet Office panic over a gathering backlash, the Tory MP John Stevenson, who chairs the Northern Research Group (NRG) of Conservative MPs from “red wall” seats, described the move as a “step backwards”. He added: “I expect a full explanation on parliament’s return and alternative policy initiatives to ensure that the movement of civil servants does proceed. I will also be asking the public administration and constitutional affairs committee to look at this issue.”
Many Tory MPs in the north and Midlands are becoming increasingly nervous that failure to deliver on levelling up will put them in increasing danger of losing their seats at the next general election.
The government has a longstanding commitment to move 22,000 civil service posts out of Whitehall by 2030. Several thousand have already moved to towns and cities including Glasgow, Darlington, Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Newcastle.
But the decision to axe the latest phase affecting Birmingham and Newcastle has raised questions about the level of commitment to completing the task, with government insiders citing the short-term cost implications as a brake on progress. The Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, has said the project in Birmingham has fallen victim to the trend toward working from home.
Last month, the cross-party public administration and constitutional affairs committee was highly critical of the way the government was carrying out the project. While noting that the government said in March that it had already relocated 11,000 posts from London, it added that “a lack of clear information published by the Cabinet Office makes it difficult to judge how substantial its achievements are” for a variety of reasons.
It accused the government of “adopting a boosterish approach to reporting progress, which is likely to give an exaggerated picture of its achievements”. It also criticised the government for failing to publish any underlying research that supported its “high-profile statements about the economic benefits to be delivered by moving posts to new regional offices”.
The NRG is expected to raise the issue again when it tables its manifesto for the north at the Tory party conference in Manchester.
The government’s current commitment to relocating large numbers of civil service posts out of London dates back to the Conservative party’s 2017 general election manifesto. In the 2020 budget, the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, translated this commitment into the specific target to move “22,000 civil service roles out of central London by the end of this decade [ie 2030]”.
In the 2022 levelling up white paper, the government further stated that the 22,000 posts would be moved out of Greater London, and that the first 15,000 of these would be relocated by 2025.
This weekend, a government spokesperson suggested that what had been written in the GPA report had been “misinterpreted” and that the plans were, in fact, still all firmly on track.
“We are committed to launching new government hubs in Birmingham and Newcastle,” the spokesperson said. Officials said that 1,150 roles would be relocated to Birmingham from London by March 2025 and that 850 had already moved. In addition, 350 more jobs would be relocated to Tyneside by 2025 on top of the 400 already relocated.
