Sunday, June 16, 2024
Failing upwards
Nation Cymru reports that new independent research by the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) has concluded that the UK Government’s flagship Levelling Up policy has been a failure.
They say that tThe policy was launched by the Conservative government in 2019 with the claim that it would reduce inequality based on where people live across the UK, but according to NIESR, “there are very few signs of Levelling Up, with disparities in living standards and productivity between various English regions and UK devolved nations remaining unchanged or widening since the last General Election.”:
NIESR’s new research shows that the gap in living standards between London and the South East and the North East has grown, and productivity differences between London and the South East and the West Midlands have also increased. Its projections of living standards and productivity suggest that unless some fundamental change occurs, there will be no significant progress by 2030.
The study concludes that the combination of insufficient central government resources and the slow disbursement of relatively small pots of money has meant that progress on the 12 main Levelling Up missions has been “feeble”.
I suspect that most people in red wall areas already knew this.
