MPs questioned today the “haphazard” plans by the government for moving civil servants out of Whitehall and said its success under the Tory levelling up policy has been exaggerated.

The cross-party public administration and constitutional affairs committee said that key announcements on the programme were made in a “somewhat piecemeal fashion” without accompanying details of the policy’s rationale, targets, costs and benefits.

This “striking” lack of published information on the relocation policy hinders scrutiny of its “design and progress” and makes it hard to assess whether the relocation target is “sufficiently ambitious, or indeed realistic,” the committee concluded.