BUMPER EDITION - It's Think Tank Report Season!
Feat. IPPR, Centre for Cities, the Foundations Resolution and the Joseph Rowntree
PSA - Voter ID
To vote in UK elections, you now need photo ID - as this is an election year, and I think everyone should vote, people need to get sorted if they want to vote in May’s mayoral and local elections, and the General Election later in the year.
You can visit the Electoral Commission website to find out what counts as valid ID, and how to get a Voter ID Certificate if you don’t have anything suitable.
I know anyone reading this newsletter will be fine, but tell your younger family members who might not have a passport or driving license, and your older relatives who might not have a bus pass.
Last night Sir Simon Clarke called for the Prime Minister to resign so the Conservative party could change leader and give “our country and party a fighting chance”.
Now, I’ve chosen to do what you (and Rishi Sunak) should always do with Simon Clarke and completely ignore him.
Instead, I’ve got the findings of four think tank reports, which - unlike Sir Simon - are based quite relentlessly in the real world.
Cities Outlook 2024 - Centre for Cities
First up, Centre for Cities, who have published their annual Cities Outlook this week.
They’ve set the report up as a comparison with 2010, to see whether we’ve made any progress against the big challenges from back then, and whether those challenges themselves remain in 2024.
They find that the UK’s large cities are underperforming, productivity is lagging, wages are low, and skills are a problem.
They argue there’s a need to focus levelling up on improving the performance of the largest cities outside of London - Newcastle included - and that we need to push on with greater devolution (mentioning the Greater Manchester and West Midlands ‘trailblazer’ deals where a big block of cash is handed over and mayors decide how to spend it) and planning reform.
Their deeper analysis finds in the twelve years from 2010-22 that the gap between the Greater South East (shown in purple) and the rest of the country (green) has widened. The usual suspects performed best on job and productivity growth, while even the regional powerhouse that is Newcastle fared just below UK average on each measure.
For jobs growth, Newcastle put on 8.1% compared to 8.5% across the UK, Middlesbrough 0.8% and Sunderland just 0.1%.
For productivity, nationally we were up 1.5% between 2010 and 2021, Newcastle was 1.3%, Sunderland 0.5% and Boro 0.2%.
Every city outside of London saw its disposable income grow more slowly between 2010-21 than the national average for 1998-2010.
That’s meant more and deeper poverty, including a big jump in in-work poverty - up 10.9% in Middlesbrough, 10.8% in Newcastle and 10.”% in Sunderland between 2014-21.
There’s loads more in the full report, it’s worth looking through.
UK Poverty 2024 - Joseph Rowntree Foundation
The headline for us from this JRF report, out yesterday, is that one in four people (25%) in the North East are in poverty, that’s about 700,000 people. As a proportion, that’s tied with London, and narrowly edged out by the West Midlands for top spot with 27%.
Now, measures of poverty tend to be linked to national averages on income, so the nature of them is people will always be in poverty. But, it doesn’t have to be the North East and it certainly doesn’t have to be the case that every local authority in the North East has a higher child poverty rate than the national average, as the report goes on to say.
The overall conclusions of the report are that poverty is deepening - especially since the end of the Coronavirus support packages, when middle-class incomes have recovered and those below that haven’t.
It also concludes that overall poverty rates have barely changed since the Conservative-led government first came to power in 2010, and that the first half of the last Labour government was the last time there was a concerted downward trend in poverty rates.
That red line above, showing pension poverty nearly halving from almost 30% to just above 15%, is one of the great successes of the last Labour government - it also proves we can do something about poverty if we want to.
Health Places, Prosperous Lives - IPPR
Next up, health and prosperity from IPPR, published at the end of last week.
IPPR (I think we’re due a ‘State of the North’ report from them soon too) examine a “sickness epidemic creating new wave of economically inactive in ‘bad health blackspots’”. These are linked to low productivity, high poverty and persistent unemployment, they say.
They find huge variation in life expectancy, even within regions - a spread of nearly ten years either side of the average for the North East, for example.
I won’t rehash the productivity or deprivation points, as we’ve touched on them already above, but they dip into them presenting very similar data and telling very similar stories as Centre for Cities and the JRF.
The solution to some of this, IPPR argue, lies in building safety and security for people, and encouraging communities to build deeper relationships.
They push for greater fiscal devolution, including the ability for regional mayors to levy taxes on alcohol, junk food and tobacco (a sure vote winner, you’ll agree!), as well as for greater public health funding and a recruitment drive for public health specialists.
Local Roots of Trade Routes - Resolution Foundation
A final stop on our Willy Wonka-style tour of the nation’s policy thinkoriums.
The Resolution Foundation yesterday published some analysis of regional services trade.
Nationally exports of services make up 56% of the UK’s total, having surpassed goods in 2019 - now, an element of Brexit foot shooting helped achieve that, but it’s still an important thing to note.
It also makes up more than a third (37%) of imports, so it’s a big market whichever way you’re travelling (or not, given you can trade services from the comfort of your desk).
It won’t come as a surprise that Newcastle’s services exports are fairly small, or that London’s - driven by the financial services sector initially, but with info and comms, and professional services growing too - have rocketed away in recent years.
There’s some interesting further analysis of what category of place trade comes from too.
So, large towns do the bulk of the work on goods trade, but London accounts for approaching half of services trade. In both cases, you can see core cities probably don’t do as much as they should - which brings us nicely full circle, back to the conclusions of the Centre for Cities report at the top of this newsletter, our bigger cities are under-performing and ought to be a focus for levelling up.
What I’ve been reading/thinking about this week
The Common Room (formerly known as the Mining Institute) is an incredible asset in the heart of Newcastle. It’s a venue which is deeply rooted in the region’s industrial heritage, and is playing an active role in defining its future through STEM programmes with schools and its annual Face of Engineering Festival which celebrates diversity in the industry. They are on the look out for supporters and investors to put the whole thing on a sustainable footing - if that’s you or your organisation, you should speak to their chief exec Liz Mayes.
Way back in 2010, as the world economy was still reeling from the Financial Crisis, a couple of academics - Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff - published a paper which was held up as a justification for austerity. Only the conclusions of that paper, which argued that there was a Debt-to-GDP ratio beyond which economic growth collapsed, were based on an Excel error. Mathematician and explainer of stuff Hannah Fry posted a video about it this week, and you can read more about it from 2013, when the error was discovered, here. Now, that paper didn’t change the ideological desire of the likes of George Osborne to cut spending, but it did provide cover for it. I disagreed with it then, and I disagree now. I think the proper role of a government in a recession is to protect people from the worst of it, and to prevent long-term economic scarring which can make recovery and future growth slow. We didn’t do that in this country, which is why everything we talked about in the first few sections of this newsletter is true.
What’s coming up in the next week or so?
PMQs later on
It’s a big Select Committee day - full list here, including a Levelling Up Committee one on children, young people and the built environment featuring evidence from Prof Alison Stenning of Newcastle Uni
Crime stats tomorrow for the year to Sept 23
Life expectancy for local area stats are due on Friday
Housebuilding stats for Apr-Sept last year are due on the 30th
Maybe some more Tory MPs will suggest changing Prime Minister…
Working with me
As always, let’s find a time for a coffee if we’ve not caught up recently - happy to chat about anything you’ve got going on that I might be able to help with.
You can find out more about me on my website.
You can email me on worroom@substack.com or arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk
I’m @arlenpettitt on Twitter, and you’ll find me on LinkedIn and on Bluesky too.
Another great read, Arlen. I love your newsletters and how they make policies and the typical jargon/reasoning associated with stats so much easier to understand, along with the real-world impact that so many in the UK (and our region!) are facing. Politicians lie, numbers don't. Keep up the brilliant work!