‘We’re back to the 1990s

■ ‘Piecemeal approach’ to problem comes under fire from the chief of think-tank ■ Budget ‘was a missed opportunity for the private sector to create new jobs’

THE GOVERNMENT has been accused of turning back the clock to the 1990s in adopting a piecemeal approach to tackling regional economic disparities.

Andrew Carter, the chief executive of the economic think-tank, the Centre for Cities, told The Yorkshire Post that important long-term initiatives such as a White Paper on devolution, the Industrial Strategy and the move towards a net-zero economy had been kicked into the long grass.

Instead, Mr Carter said the Government was favouring short-term policies which he compared to the Conservative and Labour governments of the 1990s and 2000s and said that a comprehensive economic plan would have given the UK business community the confidence to begin investing and creating jobs.

He added that the swift and effective roll-outs of the furlough scheme and Universal Credit topup showed that the Government could quickly enact meaningful reforms.

He said: “You can debate the merits of the individual schemes that were announced, whether it was freeports or the relocation or Town Deals.

“But it really feels like a move away for the Government from a bigger strategic perspective on what needs to be done to rebalance the economy.

“The Industrial Strategy has been sidelined, the Industrial Strategy Council has been sidelined, the devolution White Paper is not near to being published.

“Those bigger instruments for thinking about how we rebalance the economy, I think the Government has really moved away from those, and what we got from the Budget was just a set of initiatives and schemes.

“It felt to me in some respects that we were going back to the 1990s or early Noughties when governments were criticised for ‘initiative-itus’ – a scheme for this and a scheme for that.

“But when you step back, is the totality of this investment going to rebalance the economy? I think probably not.”

Mr Carter also warned that the regions of England were having little or no say in any of the policy decisions made at the Budget and policy making was still too centralised.

“I think it reconfirms the Government in the driving seat,” he said.

Mr Carter said the Budget statement by Chancellor Rishi Sunak last week had been a missed opportunity to signal to the private sector that they should look to create jobs, citing the Government’s netzero carbon target as a prime area in which it could have taken action.

“What was largely absent, other than warm words, is what it is we are going to be doing on net zero. Once the Government is clear, that encourages businesses to invest in technology and skills that will have a huge impact on the labour market up and down the country.”

However, Alexander Stafford, the Conservative MP for Rother Valley, said there was good reason that Mr Sunak’s economic blueprint was pinned as a Budget for the North and he had been expecting a raft of investment in the region.

He welcomed the “hugely significant” first opportunity for the Government to deliver on promises which have been questioned in light of coronavirus spending, as he had been assured the pandemic had only intensified Ministers’ determination to “double down on levelling up”.

“We’ve now got some sort of proof,” Mr Stafford said. “Now this is happening there’s more money in the pot and they are going to care about the northern areas.”

And he added: “There’s a lot more money, a lot more investment, to come.”