MAYOR DAN JARVIS' GREAT NORTHERN CONFERENCE SPEECH

Published 22 October 2020 at 12:51pm

At the Great Northern Conference on 22 October 2020 Dan Jarvis, Mayor of the Sheffield City Region, said:

“It’s a pleasure to welcome you to the 2020 Great Northern Conference.  The circumstances today are very different to the last time we met. And so is the venue.

I’d considered taking advantage of being on video to use one of those backgrounds that makes it look like I’m on an tropical island, but I think I have a far more beautiful and distinguished backdrop here, at our historic Cutlers’ Hall in Sheffield. Just be glad I’m not wearing pyjamas from the waist down!

In all seriousness of course, COVID has caused enormous disruption. With much of the North in lockdown and our economy reeling, it might not seem the time to talk about building a powerhouse.

But my message today is that this is exactly the time to talk about it.

Rather than being a reason to delay the levelling up of the North, the current crisis is the most powerful argument for accelerating it – and provides a unique opportunity to do so. But the government needs to understand that its credibility is on the line, and make levelling up more than just a slogan.

COVID has hit us hard.

The North has had more cases than other parts of the country, and around four times the hospitalisation rate of London. The disease has disproportionately affected more deprived areas, and we still have more than our fair share of them. We’re also especially exposed to the economic disruption COVID has caused, with more workers in vulnerable sectors and fewer able to work from home. Now we’re bearing the brunt of local lockdowns as well.

New analysis from IPPR North shows that in my own South Yorkshire, the level of people claiming unemployment-related benefits is now higher than it was in the depths of the post-2008 recession. In these circumstances the brutal reality is that we are on course for levelling down, not levelling up.

Meanwhile, the issues that made the case for levelling up in the first place have not gone away. The UK has the worst regional disparity of any comparable nation, with regional income inequality at levels not seen since 1901. Many Northern council areas, including three of the four in South Yorkshire where I’m Mayor, are among the most left behind in the UK, according a new index from the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

In the five years following the launch of the Northern Powerhouse in 2014, the number of children living in poverty in the North actually increased by a third, to 800,000. Again, policy has made or threatens to make this worse. Planned cuts to Universal Credit could leave one in three households in the North £1,000 a year worse off. Under austerity public spending fell £3.6 billion in the North even as it rose £4.7bn in the South East and the South West. Incidentally, you’ll be hearing from George Osborne later.

But there is a flip side to all of this, the great positive argument for levelling up, and that is our potential and our strengths. For me, the North is already a powerhouse – just one running far below its full capacity. We’re still the heartland of British industry, with some of our best and most high-tech companies.

In South Yorkshire alone we have amazing enterprises like ITM Power, helping build a hydrogen-fuelled clean energy revolution; Magtec, developing contactless magnetic gears for wind turbines; and Curvalux, bringing low-cost, high speed wireless broadband to the most inaccessible parts of the world. These enterprises reflect our long and storied history of manufacturing prowess and our ability to attract investment. But our strengths are not only in industry. We are a powerhouse in culture, in sport, in tourism.

We have incredible natural beauty. We have world class universities and fantastic assets in research and skills. Magtec for example are a spinoff from the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, which has been helping to put South Yorkshire at the cutting edge of industrial innovation since 2001. You’ll be hearing from AMRC’s CEO, Steve Foxley, later today.

Nor are our strengths just in South Yorkshire – even though to hear me, you might think so! They are across the North of England, and not just concentrated in one big city, but spread across our city regions, towns and rural areas. We can build a better, more even model of development than we’ve seen in other parts of the country.

Together, we really can create a more high-tech, more creative, more high-value economy not just for our region but for the whole of the UK, and help drive the transformations the world so badly needs. The potential rewards are great. It’s estimated that rebalancing national investment could add £97bn to the Northern and national economy by 2050. Failing to realise our potential is not just a waste, it’s an act of national self-harm.

The case for levelling up is undeniable. It is both a deeply moral case, and a deeply practical one. The time to act on that case is right now.

It’s now, first of all because we are at one of those rare moments where politicians suddenly find the elusive money tree. The need for exceptional public investment to keep our economy afloat is clear, pressing, and widely accepted. There might be a debate over the exact scale of the bailout, but we will need to spend billions. The question is whether that spending will serve some larger purpose than its immediate, minimal mandate of propping up the economy. That’s not just about levelling up – it is also about decarbonisation and infrastructure and a better, not just a bigger economy.

My goal in South Yorkshire is not just for recovery but a renewal that makes us Stronger, Greener, and Fairer. I think we need that for all of the UK.

But levelling up is at the heart of it.

If we are not going to do this now, when are we going to do it? This is an extraordinary moment, but it will pass. And it is predicted to leave the public finances substantially weakened when it does. If the government does not have the will to act before then, will it really have it afterwards?

Secondly, the moment to act is now because the credibility of the government is on the line. The handling of the pandemic has already dented people’s trust. We need the government to tackle COVID effectively, collaboratively, and in a way which recognises and actively counters the disproportionate impact it is having on disadvantaged areas and on the North in particular.

I absolutely understand the immense challenge they are facing.

But the unfortunate reality is that some of their policies – like the failure to fund local test and trace, the chaos over lockdowns, the inadequacy of support for people and companies affected by them – threaten not only to prolong the struggle against COVID, but to exaggerate its already unequal impact.

And these mistakes have not gone unnoticed. As the pollster Deborah Mattison tells us, Northerners disproportionately feel the areas under lockdown are being treated unfairly. Across the region, trust is corroding, optimism fading, divisions widening. This weakening of confidence inevitably bleeds into other areas.

Almost 70% of Northerners believe their area gets less resource than others. Over two thirds of them believe the government will not follow through on its promise of levelling up. All of us have a common interest in proving them wrong.

We can do that, but it needs the government to act within a very small window of opportunity. That opportunity is the Comprehensive Spending Review. This is the where the government can show that they are putting their money where their mouth is. But the CSR is due to be complete in a matter of weeks.

The clock is truly running down on levelling up.

The CSR is critical because levelling up will only mean something when it is backed with real investment. Not just for infrastructure, but for education, skills, health, environment, flood prevention – all the different areas where levelling up is needed for a Stronger, Greener, Fairer region.

That has to start, with the recovery from COVID. We need proper support for areas under lockdown, but followed up by a major investment and jobs programme – a New Deal for the North.

We’re doing what we can ourselves to help our local authorities and kickstart recovery – but with the limited resources and powers we have, we can only tinker at the edges. In terms of wider investment, an indication of what we need is the UK 2070 Commission’s recommendation for an additional £15bn a year for 20 years – a total of £200bn of new funding. That’s for all deprived areas, but it shows the scale of what we are talking about.

So far though, it’s just not happened.

We’ve been quite successful at attracting funds to South Yorkshire, with £262m allocated just in this fiscal year. But none of that, apart from the £30m a year gainshare we are getting following our devolution deal, represents funds specifically targeted to South Yorkshire, the North, or even disadvantaged areas more widely.

Otherwise these are existing funds which have come under our control, like the Adult Education Budget, or a share of national funds we’ve been allocated or successfully bid on. We’ve just been allocated £40m for highways, but it comes after a five year wait, from a local growth deal agreed before Sheffield City Region existed.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s hugely important this money is being spent under local control, and we’re grateful for it – but this is not levelling up.

There’s another thing. This is not just about money. Both to be legitimate and to be effective, a plan for a Northern Powerhouse, must also empower. It must be done with us, not to us. That means doubling down on devolution.

We recently achieved greater powers in South Yorkshire, and we’re showing just how much we can do with them.

Since I became Sheffield City Region’s first Mayor in 2018, we’ve created 15,000 jobs and 2,200 apprenticeships. Our Working Win pilot programme has helped 6,000 people with health conditions who want to get back in to work. We’ve leveraged £319m of investment and supported 24,000 companies. We’ve awarded more than £100m for projects ranging from natural flood prevention in Sheffield city centre, to the transformation of Doncaster’s historic Wool Market. We’ve secured £170 million to boost public transport and Active Travel, helping us towards our commitment of Net Zero Carbon emissions by 2040.

And this is only the beginning. We have plans to invest massively in skills and inclusion, to better support out businesses, to revolutionise and decarbonise our transport, to plant millions of trees and carry out natural flood prevention.

I can safely say that we stand ready to be levelled up. And I think my counterparts across the North would say the same. But while we’ve done a lot, it’s been with modest resources and powers. Overall, devolution in the North and in the UK has been piecemeal, inconsistent and limited. We are still the most centralised large developed country in the world.

We need, a national process of fundamental reform – not just for the North but for the whole country.

That will help unleash the Northern Powerhouse. But it will also help address the disillusionment and division that have had such a corrosive effect on our bonds as a society and as a country. That disillusionment Deborah Mattinson documented in the North is a relatively modest, but nonetheless dangerous expression of a wider crisis of faith which is already dividing us, and which seriously threatens to break up the country itself.

For all our sakes, the government needs to make levelling up part of a wider, more ambitious vision for reform. One that helps people feel they are finally taking back control, and that they have a country they can believe in.

So as we gather today, we are at a moment of crisis and a moment of opportunity. We’ve done a lot, but there is so much further to go. We are working for a great and worthwhile prize, and we can make a historic good come out of this terrible pandemic.

But if we are to do so, then the moment to act – is now.