Sun a km us tact to close the deadly North- South divide
Official statistics underline the North- South divide. Here in the North, the number of excess deaths hovers around 30 per cent. In London and the South East, the figure is one per cent.
SPARE A thought for the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who will be putting the finishing touches to the spending review he presents to the Commons tomorrow.
None of his predecessors in living memory has faced such a difficult set of circumstances in which to set a course for the year ahead, nor a greater degree of uncertainty.
Doubtless Mr Sunak will try to put the most optimistic spin on his statement, but against the backdrop of massive borrowing to safeguard jobs during the pandemic, nobody is under any illusion about the tough times ahead.
His round of interviews at the weekend braced us all for unpalatable choices – the possibility of public sector pay being frozen, cuts to services and tax rises.
Mr Sunak’s task is an unenviable one, which may yet see him transformed from being the most popular Government figure for his actions to save jobs to the villain who left us all poorer to meet the bill.
But however the sums add up, one thing needs to be at the forefront of the Chancellor’s mind – the absolute necessity of prioritising investment in the North.
The need to right historical injustices in the amount of funding we receive has been beyond argument for years, but never before has it been more pressing. That’s because the pandemic has thrown the plight of parts of our region into the starkest possible focus.
The map of Covid- 19 infections and deaths is also the map of the deprived, the left- behind and the communities who haven’t received their fair share of money from Government for decades.
This horrible disease has stalked these places to deadly effect, its impact aggravated by the poverty it has fed on.
It is not in the least bit surprising that Hull and Bradford are among the worstaffected cities in the country when both feature with depressing regularity in every index of the poorest areas.
The towns of Kirklees, Calderdale and South Yorkshire – like their counterparts in Lancashire and Merseyside – have also suffered grievously high rates of infection. All are far from affluent.
Never before in living memory have the terrible consequences of deprivation and governmental indifference to the point of neglect been so starkly spelled out.
Official statistics tell the story and underline the North- South divide with indisputable clarity. Here in the North, the number of excess deaths hovers around 30 per cent. In London and the South East, the figure is one per cent.
The difference between the North and the South is not one of observance of measures introduced to suppress Covid infections. It is simply one of affluence. Poorer areas have been much harder hit because of the underlying problems that are already embedded by a lack of investment.
We have more chronic illness, more overcrowded or poor housing, more reliance on crowded workplaces and jobs that cannot be done from home, more people who have no option but to use public transport. All make the impact of the pandemic worse and allow its spread more easily.
Even before Covid arrived, residents of wealthy areas in the South were living up to 20 years longer than some in the poorest parts of the North. No responsible Government can countenance a state of affairs in which people are dying and becoming ill in their thousands because of where they live.
Yet, 18 months into his premiership, Boris Johnson’s pledges to level up the economy haven’t translated into investment. In Yorkshire, we have councils that have less to spend than they did when he came to office, schools that are short of funds, a burgeoning crisis in social care, creaking public transport and a lack of opportunities for the young.
These things are all part of the backdrop to Covid’s impact on the North and demand to be addressed. That has to start happening tomorrow, whatever difficulties Mr Sunak faces in balancing the books.
There are some hopeful signs that the Government is taking notice of what needs to be done. Changing the value- formoney rules on big projects to get rid of the institutional bias towards the South is one, and the promise of a £ 100bn national infrastructure plan is another.
But they will take time to have an impact and don’t go far enough. What the pandemic has revealed is that parts of the North have fallen so far behind the South that only the prioritising of massive amounts of investment will do anything to even begin closing the gap between the two.
There is pressure for that to happen already coming from Mr Johnson’s own MPs who captured formerly safe Labour seats at the last election, but it pales beside the moral imperative to make the far- reaching improvements that Covid has revealed to be necessary. And that ramps up the pressure on Mr Sunak to do the right thing by the North tomorrow.