Getting the relationships between different actors right is the most important part of the jigsaw, writes the director of research and campaigns at the Centre for Governance & Scrutiny. The Queen’s speech confirmed what we had known informally for a couple of weeks – that the projected devolution and local recovery white paper will in fact be rolled into a levelling up white paper, expected to be produced in advance of a draft bill later this year. This tells us something profound and possibly quite gloomy about the government’s agenda for devolution and local growth. On the one hand – surely this is a good thing? It makes perfect sense that devolution should continue to be anchored to growth, as it has been in recent years. Levelling-up is a flagship policy for the government (and we of course all eagerly await learning what exactly the phrase might mean in practice). It can only be positive that local government and combined authorities are being seen as partners in this initiative.