Michael Gove is chairing a new weekly cabinet committee on levelling up, to bang heads together across Whitehall, as the government struggles to repair the damage caused by the past three weeks and shows it is serious about tackling economic inequality.
After a tumultuous period that culminated in the prime minister's fumbled speech to the CBI on Monday, the forthcoming levelling-up white paper, expected to be published in mid-December, is regarded as a key moment to demonstrate the government's seriousness.
Gove had argued for a new committee structure to ensure levelling up is implemented across government, and he has won the backing of the prime minister for that approach.
He was given the levelling-up brief in Boris Johnson's September reshuffle in September, a move widely regarded as underlining the importance placed on it by the prime minister.
After the scaling-back of the integrated rail plan and the introduction of the social care cap, Labour s deputy leader Angela Rayner will accuse the government of selling out the north on Saturday, she will call it a dementia tax on working-class people and a dementia tax on the north. She will criticise rail plans, which also disappointed many Conservative MPs. She will tell Labour's North West conference that the government's rail plan is a betrayal of trust, a betrayal of promises made to our communities and a betrayal of the north.
Only the Conservatives would call a train line that stops on this side of the Pennines a trans-Pennine rail line. It's like the Eurostar stops in Dover and then you get on a Pacer train across the Channel. Government sources rejected Friday reports that the Treasury had blocked funding for levelling up and there had been no additional bid from Gove's department since then, pointing out that the three-year spending review was only delivered last month.
The Treasury has been frustrated with a series of botched announcements of major policy decisions due to the tensions between the chancellor, Rishi Sunak and No 10 in recent days.
Scores of conservative backbenchers refused to back detailed plans for the social care cap on Monday, fearing that they will penalise families with modest assets.
The levelling-up white paper is seen as a potential reset moment for the government. Gove said the policy was intended to help young people stay local by creating more opportunities outside London and the south-east.
It was drawn up with detailed input from Neil O Brien, formerly the prime minister's levelling-up adviser and now a minister in Gove's department, and former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane.
It is expected to set out new proposals for devolution, including powerful county mayors, and a shake-up of the boundaries of existing mayoralties.
Gove told the levelling-up select committee in a hearing on November 8: Without wanting to pre-empt the white paper in detail, we will be looking at mayoral combined authorities. There are concerns in the government that some mayoralties, including those in Bristol and North Tyne, do not match the local economic geography, making them less effective than some other models of devolution. The policy document would set out a framework for more devolution, with final details only to be agreed in consultation with local leaders, according to government insiders.
Skills, transport and investment are likely to include but not planning, with the proposed reforms to the planning system on pause as they are reconsidered in light of the Conservatives' defeat of the Chesham and Amersham byelection. The Guardian understands that revised proposals are not expected to be published until the new year.
Johnson suggested that levelling up is the central idea of his government, but he was criticised for a keynote speech on the issue in July that contained little new policy.
The cabinet committee, which has been sitting twice, is a subcommittee of the government's domestic and economic strategy committee, which it is understood to have already met twice.
The deputy chair of the Treasury, Simon Clarke, is the chief secretary, and ministers from across government will be asked to attend where their department's work is relevant to the issue of levelling up being discussed.