The December General Election resulted in clarity on who will be in power for the years to come and provides a major opportunity for the UK to address its stubborn regional productivity gap and inequalities that have challenged us for decades. We’ll use this opportunity to work in close partnership with government to ensure every UK region is able to reach its economic potential.
Who would have guessed 10 years ago that we’d have a former London Mayor from the Conservative party become Prime Minister after having won a large majority in the North of England? That former mayor and current Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made ‘levelling up’ places a top priority of his government with hopes of keeping his strong majority in place for many years to come.
At the same time, based on engagement with officials the expected Cabinet reshuffle next month will be important in deciding exactly what ‘levelling up’ means across government departments. For instance, will it involve devolving further powers, directing funds from Westminster to regions or perhaps a bit of both?
What remains true is that the most productive area of the UK remains almost three times more productive than the least. This impacts the ability for business to succeed across the UK resulting in jobs and improved living standards. And this is having an impact on our international competitiveness too: more than half of UK cities are among the 25% least productive in Europe.
We have ambitious plans for 2020 building upon the good work undertaken last year.
Engaging in this year’s mayoral elections
Firstly, we’re developing Mayoral Manifestos for elections planned in Greater London, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, Liverpool City Region and North of Tyne on 7 May. This will be the second time people in these places will decide upon an elected mayor. It’ll be interesting to see how many people turn out to vote compared to the first mayoral elections.
For our part, we’ll be focused on ensuring the views of members are shared with all major mayoral candidates. Last week, the CBI London team held a member roundtable identifying views from a diverse set of members including the need for mayors to be ambitious, have an open door with business and other partners and champion cross-border collaboration. To become involved in the London team’s consultation with members please contact Katy Recina.
We’re also consulting members on the draft manifestos for West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region and North of Tyne in January and early February with plans to publish our mayoral manifestos in March. To become involved in the West Midland’s manifesto please contact Mark Corbett and to help shape the northern manifestos please contact Hannah Richmond. Please stay tuned for upcoming CBI hustings events where we would like to ensure there’s strong business representation.
Shaping future regional and industrial policy
We’ll also be focused on the following this year:
- Reflecting on the Industrial Strategy and making recommendations for its future. This includes a summary of progress against Grand Challenges, Sector Deals and Local Industrial Strategies. This will focus on whether robust visions are in place, partnership working is underway, as well as plans for implementation
- Working with members to develop regional campaigns, covering each of the regions such as the importance of transport infrastructure in the South West. As always, we’d welcome member input and will test in more detail in future regional councils
- Expanding upon last year’s Powering Up Places setting out an ambition of ensuring 60% of the English population should be covered by a devolution deal within five years. This year working with members, we’ll set out key principles for devolving power in England to inform an expected government White Paper on the topic the first half of this year
- Refresh regional productivity scorecards building upon our previous Unlocking Regional Growth report, identifying the key drivers of productivity across the country. This will involve analysing regional data to provide a snapshot of regional strengths and weaknesses to help inform decision making regionally and nationally.
As always, we’d welcome your involvement on any of the exciting work we have underway this year. Please feel free to get in touch with me to discuss further, or to direct you to the appropriate colleague responsible for the area.