Question

To ask the Minister for Women and Equalities, what steps her Department is taking to tackle geographic inequality of opportunity.

Levelling up is at the heart of the Government’s agenda to build back better after the pandemic. The Government will publish a landmark Levelling Up White Paper later this year, setting out bold new policy interventions to improve livelihoods and opportunity in all parts of the UK.

To support this, the Minister for Women and Equalities announced the Equality Data Programme in December, to ensure that geographic and socio-economic inequality is taken into account, alongside other factors, when identifying barriers to opportunity.

We also moved the sponsorship of the Social Mobility Commission across to the Equality Hub in April, so that it can play a crucial role in tackling regional inequalities.