LEVELLING UP? NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE ‘HAS GOT WORSE’
NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE HAS GOT WORSE DURING ‘LEVELLING UP’ SCHEME, SAYS REPORT
THE government’s ‘levelling up’ policy lacks any plan after a year that has seen divides widen further due to Covid-19, a report has warned.
The annual ‘State of the North’ report points to ingrained gaps in wages, productivity and health between the region and the English average that will make recovery to an acceptable level that much harder. But on top of that Covid itself has had ‘an uneven impact across England’, says the research by thinktank IPPR, pointing to the extra restrictions that have hit places such as Greater Manchester since the first lockdown.
“It has created new regional inequalities, and deepened old ones,” it finds.
At the same time it warns the pandemic ‘has powerfully demonstrated the weaknesses and cost’ of dictating too much from London, underlining the ‘reluctance of the centre to cede control’ to those at local level. One year after the general election, it concludes the ‘levelling up’ agenda is still ‘most striking for its lack of detail’ – a claim the Treasury has denied.
IPPR’s annual assessment of the northern experience highlights a raft of familiar areas in which the region lagged behind England as a whole long before Covid, from average wages to economic productivity, child poverty to healthy life expectancy. Many people in the north ‘already live in a low-wage economy, which is not delivering good outcomes in income, health, or routes out of poverty’, it says.
Not only are people in the north west paid 80p an hour less than the English average, but there are fewer job opportunities per working age person across northern England than the country as a whole, it finds. Wages in Rochdale have fallen 6 per cent in the last decade. Citing the Marmot report, published in February, it notes most northern areas already had healthy life expectancies below the English average before Covid hit, while 60pc of them have seen that measure decline for women in the past decade.
By October, unemployment in the north was at its highest point since 1994, it finds, using employment benefit claimants as a measure. That is having a particular impact in cities and places such as Blackpool, Hull and Middlesbrough, many of them areas that have been under the highest lockdown restrictions either currently or over a longer period.
The connection between health and wealth is fundamental, it says, adding that ‘if the northern economy is to work for people, it needs to support good health in the northern population’. Covid-19 has now thrown all the long-term inequalities within England ‘into a stark spotlight’, it says, adding that any recovery that ‘simply restores the old order’ would be ‘unsustainable and – for many – unacceptable’.
“Parts of the north of England have seen especially high rates of infection and have been subject to more severe ‘local lockdown’ measures than many other parts of the country.”
Yet so far, IPPR warns it has seen little evidence the government has a plan for ‘levelling up’, a key promise in last December’s general election, or of any willingness to devolve power.
“Some attempts to deal with England’s regional divides can seem highly politicised, designed with an eye to electoral outcomes, particularly in marginal seats,” it says.
“Successive governments have been keen to be seen to take action and to claim credit for any change.
“This has created an unhealthy situation where efforts to tackle regional inequalities and implement devolution have been constrained by an overly controlling hand in Westminster. Covid-19 has powerfully demonstrated the weaknesses and cost of this approach and the reluctance of the centre to cede control to elected leaders in combined and local authorities.”
Noting ‘levelling up’ is ‘the latest in a long history of initiatives’ along similar lines, from the City Challenge of the 1990s to the Northern Powerhouse, it adds: “To date, however, it is also one of the most striking for its lack of detail on how rebalancing is to be achieved.”
Progress on English devolution has also been ‘disappointing’ during the government’s first year in office, the report concludes, pointing to ways in which the pandemic strategy has run in the opposite direction. A promised paper outlining the government’s strategy has yet to be published, even though ‘the case for real and significant devolution has never been greater’.
“The pandemic has demonstrated the deep inadequacies of the UK’s
centralised system of government to deal with a crisis like Covid-19 – particularly when the impacts are sharply differentiated and localised.
“The establishment of a highly centralised and outsourced system of ‘track and trace’, which has repeatedly failed to deliver, has been a prime example of where Whitehall has overlooked local expertise and capacity.”
The paper also criticises the loss of a minister devoted to the Northern Powerhouse in February’s cabinet reshuffle, at which point the brief was wrapped into the transport secretary’s role.
It notes there are not yet ‘boots on the ground’ where Northern Powerhouse Rail is concerned, one year after the election, while a £4bn ‘levelling up’ infrastructure fund announced in the spending review last month ‘will be a centrally administered fund, thereby missing an opportunity to strengthen devolution built on the local knowledge’.
But any recovery strategy must not repeat previous incorrect assumptions and recognise that increased productivity – and investment in infrastructure – alone will not be the answer to rebalancing England, argues IPPR.
People don’t automatically feel the benefit when the economy in their area grows, but instead need decent work and wages, it stresses, as well as a sense of progression. So government must not pursue a ‘Singaporean’ strategy of low-regulation, low-wage, low-productivity recovery post-Brexit, noting that many people in the north already live in a low-wage economy that is doing little for their health or wealth.
Sarah Longlands, director of IPPR North, said the government ‘was elected on a promise to level up places like the north’.
“But one year on, they don’t have a plan to reduce inequalities between and within regions in England, and the inadequate, centrally controlled, competitive ‘levelling up fund’ announced
in the spending review simply won’t cut it.
”Our regional divides are severe and growing, we face a climate emergency, and Brexit is just around the corner, so a recovery from Covid-19 that simply restores the status-quo – which has failed so many northerners – would be unacceptable.
“We need to challenge old, reductive assumptions about our economy because they’ve failed to create the conditions for a good life for everyone in the north.
“In particular, we have to stop assuming that the centre knows best and commit once and for all to a clear programme of regional devolution in England. We cannot afford to repeat the mistakes of the past.
“If we are to build a better future, we need to focus on people, asking ‘who benefits?’ from policy decisions. From our research we can see that many people, particularly those in work and children, are not benefitting from them. Here in the north we can and will power up, level up, rise up togetherbut every moment that we don’t have the power and resources we need to do this, peoples’ lives are affected.
“This is a wake-up call. Is the government listening?”