Levelling Up: Helping Britain’s regions to catch up with London
In this lecture, Sir Paul Collier will talk about what we can do to make Levelling Up a reality. He will argue that Levelling Up is feasible but not if we leave it to Whitehall or local authorities gutted of talent and power/or resources.
Despite forty years of ‘regional policies’, Britain now faces by far the most severe regional inequalities in the whole of the OECD. Once a region falls behind, it becomes trapped in a syndrome of interdependent economic and social problems. For example, when the workforce becomes deskilled, knowledge-intensive firms don’t want to operate there. Yet, people don’t want to invest in new skills because there are no local job opportunities. Social problems then arise when welfare agencies are inclined to social dumping, as people on benefits are encouraged to settle in the poorest places due to cheaper accommodation.
The social and economic problems underpinning regional inequalities have resulted in angry protests such as the Brexit vote and its bitter divisions. We urgently need to start reversing this divergence, and there is at last a political opportunity reflected in the Government’s commitment to ‘Levelling Up’. If we miss this chance, we may wait for a long time. But Whitehall alone cannot achieve ‘levelling up’ even if it had some strategy behind the rhetoric.
Sir Paul coordinates a world-class team of expertise and experience, who for the past year, below the radar screen, have been advising some of the regional authorities on how local businesses and mayors can work together. The goal is context-appropriate strategies for renewal that address all the bottlenecks together. In parallel, they advise Whitehall on how it can play a much more supportive role in place of the past Whitehall-designed initiatives.
A key part of their effort is Home Win which aims to tap into the diaspora of people who grew up in places that have fallen behind but left them and have become highly successful. Like other diasporas, such as the Irish in America, they still feel attachments to their home town and want to help in some way. The Irish diaspora has been astoundingly successful in renewing Ireland, but to date, the diaspora of Britain’s regions has remained an untapped resource. Home Win aims to find them and integrate them as a key part of a renewal strategy. As Sir Collier will show, their contribution can be highly geared to catalyse change.