For poorer and middle-income families today, it is not just low growth but also the skewed way in which it is shared, that produces stagnation. Indeed, low growth and high inequality means typical households in Britain are 9 per cent poorer than their French counterparts, while our low-income families are 27 per cent poorer.
Panel discussion on ‘Getting inequality down’ at the final report conference of The Economy 2030 Inquiry.
Speakers:
Lindsay Judge, Research Director at the Resolution Foundation
Mark Drakeford, First Minister of Wales
Christina McAnea, General Secretary of UNISON
Andy Haldane, Chief Executive of the Royal Society of Arts
Gavin Kelly, Chair of the Resolution Foundation (Chair)
Read the report: https://economy2030.resolutionfoundation.org/reports/ending-stagnation/
View the event slides: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/events/ending-stagnation/
[Applause] right let’s get going uh we are going to be talking about getting inequality down which is quite bold because I can see out there what I might call inequality pessimist a pessimist about their capacity to do this uh I’ve worked with some of you um and and that isn’t surprising because it
Is a hard uh is a hard task as you’ve heard earlier ourv is under current policy settings if we managed to boost growth that all else equal would be likely uh to increase inequality if we don’t do anything else and that is why as you heard from ton earlier uh we have
Proposed after things on predistribution uh higher employment good jobs increased skills as well as redistribution a wealth state that doesn’t leave uh some group group some people behind as the economy grows and a tax system that shares burdens fairly uh and that is what we are going to be uh discussing in
The next 45 minutes or so we have a great panel another great panel uh uh they they could all each of them individually fill the entire session with uh but uh I’m not going to let them uh and so we’re going to try and keep to
Time they have promised me they will do so which is great because I’d really like if we at all can to hear from some of you to um in terms of our speakers you they probably don’t need introduction I’ll do is very briefly very very briefly we’ve
Got Mark dford uh first minister of Wales uh since 28 we got a cheer the Welsh contingent did you bring this m yeah yeah you did you brought your fans I like that I hope you all brought your own fans uh Mark has been first Minister since
2018 which in the current ERA I think uh uh well that means you’ve you’ve basically seen our four Prime Ministers en counting and uh uh you probably deserve a prize for longevity or something so uh we’re really really grateful to have you here today mark thank you and then we’re going to hear
From Christina MC who is the general secretary of uh our largest Trade union Unison really pleased that you’re here thank you um and then we’re going to hear from Andy heldane chief executive of the RSA uh government Zar on all matters leveling up um and former Chief
Economist at the bank of England um but to kick us off we’re going to hear from Lindsay judge who is a research director at the resolution Foundation has done has led lots of the important work in this inquiry and Lindsay is going to succinctly set out uh some of our key
Proposals when it comes to reducing inequality Lindsay thanks Gavin um so Emily um set out the economy 2030 agenda for growth very cogently in the last session but as toon said and Gavin has just repeated we know that growth on its own does not address the second major problem we face
As a country which is Skyhigh inequality and in fact our modeling has shown that growth alone will drive up inequality over time in the absence of policy interventions that are pre or redistributive so what do we need to do if we don’t want to look like the us we
Don’t want to be an economy that’s high growth High inequality what does policy need to do in order to tackle inequality the first objective that policy makers must focus on is Raising employment and that would be inequality reducing because as my first chart shows if we if
As you get employment gains they tend to be bottom heavy so this is showing you the change in working age employment rates um by income Des hours in the decade leading up to the pandemic and as you can see that the gains from growth fundamentally ACR to those at the bottom
And in terms of policy we need to be thinking about three key groups in the next decade we need to be thinking about what more can we do for working parents we’ve obviously had some progress in recent months on the child care um offer and of course Child Care is an area
That’s devolved as well so interesting developments in the different nations but we need to do better we need to rationalize our child care system and move towards increasingly a universal offer we need to do a lot more to help those who are disconnected from the labor market because of ill health the
Chancellor talked about that already this morning and in particular we can learn from the example of what we’ve done with maternity and maintain the links for people who are falling out of work with ill health with their employers and finally we need to think about older workers we need to reduce
The incentives for older workers to leave the workplace currently our pensions rules and regulations are permissive when it comes to early retirement and then punitive when it comes to going back into the labor market we need to make changes on that score too but of course it’s not just
About employment it’s also very much about the gains from employment and one of the big things of course is that we know how to do this in the UK we have form when it comes to redistributing through earnings in the form of the minimum wage very sensibly introduced
Cautiously ramped up recently we think there’s distance to go when it comes to the minimum wage which is why we’re proposing in our report today that we set it on a trajectory heading towards 73% of average earnings now as the bike goes up with the minimum wage we know
That’s tough we know that’s tough but we think that’s a worthwhile strategy but we also think that a good work strategy has to go beyond the minimum wage and that’s for a really simple reason when toron talked this morning he showed you a chart showing declining satisfaction in the workplace over time
Particularly for low earners our workplaces are increasingly characterized by precarity and this chart really speaks to this this is showing you the level of anxiety that workers say they have about um unexpected changes to their hours of work so Across the Nation 25% of employees say that they’re worried about
Changes to their hours of work unexpected changes but when we look at the lowest two income quintiles that rises to third a third of workers and the poorest workers are worried their wages are going to change what can we do about that well we think you could have
A right to a contract reflecting your actual hours that would help the 1.2 million zero hours contract workers in this country for example we think we should require employers to give two weeks notice of shifts and they should be penalized if they change them subsequently and also of course a key
Way that people see their hours change as many of us experienced during the pandemic is if they get sick we need to increase sick pay to 65% of usual earnings and extend it critically to the lowest earners but we also think that higher national standards are not enough on
Their own and that there has to be institutional Innovation here I’m showing you some particular problem sectors in the economy let me just talk about the top one social care our research has shown and of course unions have shown this time and time again too that there’s
Huge issues complex issues in our social care sector and indeed in others but in Social care in particular we’ve noted for example that unpaid travel time is leading to a really high risk of underpayment of minimum wage there’s huge issues around lack of pay progression lack of training and no
Surprise that we have such a profound crisis when it comes to Recruitment and Retention in the social care sector what do we need to do about this well we think that for problem sectors we need to move to something called Good Work agreements we need to get employers and employee Representatives together and
They need to think hard and work out a program of action for the sector specifics but we also think across the totality of the labor market that we’ve got to do better when it comes to enforcing our labor market rules we currently have six agencies and local authorities implementing and enforcing
Labor market rules in the UK reporting into seven different government departments we need to rationalize this system and move towards a single enforcement body on labor market rights now I’ve talked a lot about the labor market but of course we mustn’t forget that there are 11 million working
Age individuals in the UK who get less than half of their income through earnings and for them the benefit system is a huge Lifeline the problem there of course is that the value of working age benefits has been on a steady downward slide over time and this chart really really brings
That home this is showing you the real value of unemployment benefits as a proportion of agage weekly earnings and in 1970 that stood at 30% today it’s less than half than that if we don’t do something about the value of our working age benefits those families are on that
Perpetual decline disconnected from the experience of the majority so what do we need to do we’re making a bold statement in the economy 2030 inquiry by saying that we need to increase working age benefits in line with earnings in the future we need to reconnect the fortunes
Of those the poorest citizens in the UK with those who are in work that’s expensive we’re really clear about that that is not a cheap option but we know that if you upated the state pension on the same basis in line with earnings and that could cover half of the cost of
That and we also need to remove some of the sharpest edges in the benefits system the two child limit is a perfect case in point so earnings benefits income what about costs well the number one cost that we know causes major problems and acts as a headwind against living
Standards is housing and there’s a number of reasons why we have a housing crisis in the UK today but one of the key ones of course is that we haven’t built at scale and this chart points to that this is showing you housing stock per thousand inhabitants for various
Oecd countries here no surprise the UK is languishing at the bottom of the pack and not just in terms of the ratio of housing stock that we have today but also how we failed to build over time what do we need to do well no surprises
We need to be building at scale and especially in cities which as the previous panel mentioned should be our economic powerhouses in the UK and that’s where we of pressure points will come when it comes to housing costs we need to build an adequate share of submarket housing for those who the
Market doesn’t deliver and we also need effective support with housing costs via the benefit system which is why we were so pleased to see the chancellor announced two weeks ago Autumn statement that was reping local housing allowance with local rents we would have been even more enthusiastic if he was doing it in
Perpetuity and not just for one year talked about sharing the gains let me talk finally about sharing the pain um we know that we need to be a higher tax economy we need know that there are structural reasons for that there’s demography there’s the transition to Net
Zero there’s a desperate need for public Investments that Emily talked about previously and but if we’re going to be a higher tax economy we also need to be a better and fairer tax economy too now I’m not going to take you through the mintii of our tax program in our final
Report I commend you to the to the actual document but let me talk about three key principles that we highlight the first is we must work hard towards equal treatment for different sources of income we currently tax earnings from employment earnings from self-employment rents and capital gains in very
Different ways we need to start moving and making changes so that that situation changes the second thing we need to do is um tax wealth better wealth in the 1980s was the equivalent of three times of national income today it stands at over seven times national
Income but our take of tax take from wealth has barely gone up as a proportion of GDP over that time there’s so much more we could do and this isn’t just about snazzy New Wealth taxes we just need to sort out some of the wealth taxes we currently have council tax and
Inheritance tax for example and finally we need to make sure that the sacrifices are fairly shared so we know for example that higher inome households are rapidly moving towards electric vehicles which are tax privileged currently and that means the ex cheer losing revenue and lower income families are bearing the
Brunt of Motoring taxes so one of the suggestions we make in the economy 2030 final report is to introduce a simple per mile road Duty for electric vehicles our tax package overall reduces the very highest tax rates but raises an additional 1.3% of GDP by the end of the
Next decade so we a good work agenda reconnecting benefits to the value of earnings tackling housing costs fairer taxes that’s our agenda for reducing inequality in the economy 2030 inquiry and I really look forward to hearing from the panel and from you about [Applause] it thank you so much Lindsay uh
Admirably concise um Lindsay had another 20 slides that she could have uh showed you and obviously didn’t for obvious reasons um there’s lots of other stuff it’s chapters six and seven of the report for the super ke we could have talked about an apprenticeship guarantee uh the major expansion of provision at
Sub-degree level of training and support for Fe and a huge amount there’s a huge amount in there on tax reform there really is quite an ambitious agenda of tax tax cuts as well as tax Rises although net as Lindsay said they raise more money so do look at the report
Right no more Ado Mark over to you for your perspective thank you uh well Gavin thank you very much good afternoon uh apologies uh at the beginning I am going to be rattling a huge amount of stuff P you very quickly and we’ll probably end up speaking in
Headlines quite a lot of uh the time but I want to try and cover as much ground as I can uh I thought I’d begin with two of the propositions in the report one of which I definitely agree with the other of which I want to just add a small
Caveat to uh so the first proposition is that we must be as hard-headed about lower inequality as higher growth and I hope that the Practical things that I will talk about this afternoon demonstrate uh that these are not remote possibilities but things that are actually happening today in that
Hardheaded way uh the second proposition that the report uh offers us is that governments have been deeply unserious about what it might take to improve things and uh here’s a I know where this is going I enjoyed uh we are short term to the core uh well I just wanted to uh
Put a footnote in there because I won’t come back to it otherwise uh but in Wales we have this thing called the well-being of future Generations act which is probably the single most radical piece of legislation passed in the whole of the Devolution era uh it places a legal obligation on ministers
And not just ministers but other public sector organizations that when you are making decisions you have to ask yourself not simply what impact will this have on people today but what impact will it have on those Generations that come after us uh and in the seven goals of the well-being of future
Generations act the most radical of the goals is that we must work towards a more equal whales now I’m not saying this because I think the report is an e the the ACT is an easy drag and drop you would need something different I’m sure in different contexts but what it does
Do uh and I can you know tell you this from uh doing it all the time it does change the culture of decision making it does act as a powerful counterweight simply to thinking about about the here and now when every time you make a decision you’re confronted with a
Question about what impact it will have on those who come uh Beyond us uh with that out of the way I’m going to try uh to respond to the challenge set out in the report which is to provide confidence that a better future is possible uh or to quote that famous uh
Welsh socialist Raymond Williams uh that to attempt the genuinely radical thing is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing uh and if there is a recipe for what I think government is about it is about trying to live up uh to that ambition and in doing so I’m going to
Offer you four things four strands in how we do make hope possible uh and here they are uh I think we have to use the power of a reformed State uh we need to recognize that while inequality is more than money for the poorest uh in our society it’s money that matters the
Most uh that when it comes to dealing with in work poverty we have to put to work the potency of social partnership and finally that in thinking about inequality we must drive for policy Innovation as well as trying to re-equip the policies of the past for contemporary condition so there we are
Those are my four uh themes uh the first is about using the power of a reformed State and uh you know I sometimes when I used to teach these things in universities I used to get blank looks from students when I would say that uh in Wales we believe uh
That good government is good for you uh as though this was an entirely taken for granted proposition but of course we know that there are many people uh who believe that government does best When government does least and the government should just get out of the way and allow
The system to operate effectively we’ve never taken that view uh in Wales uh we believe that when we take Collective action to tackle common problems then and crucially for this session those Solutions reach deep pest into the lives of those who need them the most and I’m just going to offer you
Two very quick examples of what I mean by that and they’re absolutely contemporary uh examples some of you uh may have read that we now have a default 20 M hour speed limit in all builtup residential areas uh in Wales there are many reasons for it but it is an inequality measure in
Itself accidents don’t happen accidentally if you are a child living in a disadvantaged family or a disadvantaged community you are much more likely to be involved in an accident that accident is much more likely to leave that child seriously injured the risks are clustered by individuals and by area and our policy
Of requiring a 20 mph speed limit in all residential areas is an inequality measure as much as it is anything else and at the same time we’re Consulting at the moment on reforming the school year to bring it into line with the way that people live their lives uh today and we
Do that because we know that learning loss learning loss is greatest in those families and for those children who arrive at the school gate with the impact of inequality already imprinted on them but when schools have done the fantastic job they do in investing in those young people over the school year
You come to July those children are now the beneficiaries of everything that has been done and they go away and six weeks later they have not seen a book they have not uh been helped to retain what they’ve learned in terms of uh numeracy for many of them they have been hungry
Uh during uh that period for far too many of them they face that problem as well and we will reform the school uh year in order to help those children the most now I said that this was about a reformed State and using the power of a
Reformed State there’s a lot in the report itself you need to set it alongside the Gordon Brown report in order to have a formula to de deal with a suffocating weight of entrenched and chronic economic centralization in the united uh Kingdom renewing Labor’s Devolution project for the middle of the
21st century is I think uh essential if we are going to have governance Arrangements in place in order for us to make those economic and social policies actually operate in the lives of the whole of the United Kingdom I said my second Point uh was that while
All those other things are important if you’re in the four million people who live in destitution in contemporary uh United Kingdom then money is the answer uh to your uh problem uh there’s an urgent need to recreate a union of solidarity in the United Kingdom by rebuilding our system of social security
So that it does what it originally said it would do it would give you a guarantee of protection against those things that can go wrong in the lives of any one of us it will be a slow process of course but there are things that can be done not just by central government
But by Regional governments as well in wals we’ve retained the council tax uh benefit we’ve retained and bolstered the social fund and we’ve done those things that one of my political Heroes Barbara Castle used to talk about the social wage those policies that leave money in
The pockets of people who need the money the most so to give you just three examples in the field of Education alone we have free breakfasts in our primary schools we have Universal free School meals in primary schools and we’ve just raised uh the level of the education maintenance allowance which we retained
In Wales having been abolished uh elsewhere my third point was about inw work uh poverty and I’m just just for a moment going to highlight the recipe that’s there in the report itself a focus on skills public investment alongside private investment a willingness to do more to help those
Nent injury uh industries of the future but the very best examples uh in Wales whether it’s Aerospace in the north uh East or whether it’s Japanese investment in the Southeast they share those qualities that you see in companies in other parts of the world they regard their workers
As an asset uh in creating a successful future and in Wales we have the social Partnership Act which puts that social partnership model bringing the trade unions employers public and private the wsh government around the same table we’ve put the force of law underneath that because those difficult conversations and they are challenging
Conversations are the place where you can craft a landing spot where everybody is prepared to put their Collective effort the work we do through the social partnership Council on social care for example to take Lindsay’s other earlier example is all about not just pay but the things that go alongside it terms
And conditions how people are treated in the workplace how we get that profession to be better recognized social partnership ship I think lies at the heart of a recipe for dealing with that inward poverty challenge finally uh to a policy Innovation because while a lot of the report is absolutely about
Recreating things that have worked in the past in contemporary conditions we need to think more widely than that as well I’ll leave you just with this one example uh Lindsay talked about the precariat is there any more precarious group in our society and those young people who leave the public care system
Is there any group to whom uh a greater duty is owned uh by the public given that the public has taken over the parentage uh of those young people uh we have a 2-year experiment of offering a universal basic income to every child who leaves public care in Wales it’s set
At the level of the real living wage it is unconditional those young people get a income that they can absolutely rely upon and a worker to help them to navigate that future who knows you know we will uh evaluate it in a rigorous way
And have to be open to the fact it may not deliver on what we hope but the early signs are really encouraging that those young people offered that guarantee make decisions which are not about taking a job here and now because you’ve got to get through the week finding somewhere to sleep tonight
Because you don’t know where where you will be tomorrow they use the money to invest in things that create a pathway for them to a future in which they can be contributing citizens of the United Kingdom and different ways of thinking ways in which add to the repertoire of
How we can do what Raymond Williams said and I’ll close with a quotation from another Williams so uh this is Archbishop uh Williams uh and he was asked in a wreath lecture recently about how he would uh conceptualize the proper purpose of politics and he said that it
Was the patient progress made in pursuit of the common good and I think uh I’d live uh with that this is a long journey the report is clear about that but if we’re prepared to set out on it with patience or with progress in mind and
Knowing that the common good is the load star that guides us on that Journey then and I think we can have the optimism that the report asks for excellent thank you very much Mark thank you uh patience and perseverance is what uh we are all about here um Christina a
Trade Union perspective thank you uh and thank you for the invitation to speak today and um there’s so much in this report that uh certainly my union would support and I I want to thank Mark because I think what they’re doing in Wales is an inspiration for what we
Could be doing in other parts of the UK um so I just wanted to focus on a few quick areas um uh and certainly in terms of us you won’t be surprised to hear from unison’s point of view as the biggest Union and the biggest public sector Union that we think investing in
Public services is absolutely essential if you want to break down equalities uh inequalities in this in this country we’ve had a government that for the past 13 years hasn’t seen any value in investing in public services and we’ve seen the damage that has caused to both
Growth to the economy and indeed um to uh equalities in this country the consequences of structural uh inequality are are very apparent we see and this isn’t just the past 13 years so I’m not just blaming the conservative government this is something that’s been going for many years is that undervaluing of the
Skills that many people have particularly women uh it bring to the labor market are just not valued um and we pay the people who um who manage the ticket barriers at stations and and uh and the underground they get paid more than uh than the people who work in Care
Homes if you look at the people who look after animals in a zoo will get paid more than people who look after your children my children when they went to Nursery or or a childminder because we don’t place a value on what are seen as women’s skills whether that’s caring
Cleaning catering um and a you know Administration a myad of other other skills that that they bring to the workplace and that needs to fundamentally change and part of that is structural I’m going to mention something that I know everybody eyes glaze over but job evaluation big issue
In the public sector um and actually this is really important because it’s how you boost pay is by getting recognition for the work that people do I we have a a broken social care system in this country and until that’s fixed that impacts on all of us whether you’re
A worker in that sector or whether you’re someone whose family and relatives and loved ones depend on it and that also impacts on whether people can go out to work until you’ve got the social care sector sorted that will not happen and I also want to mention um I
I’ve talked about early years workers but early years investing in early years there been evidence has been around for years and years I remember when Gordon Brown introduced um uh sh the evidence was all there that investing in early years pays off in the long run because
It has such an impact on disadvantaged children and impacts on their whole life as they go forward and as I say evidence has been there for years and years on this so that is an investment that actually benefits the whole of society um taxation of course is is a massive
Issue for us because that’s how I’m constantly being asked how you going to fund all these things that you want in the public sector I won’t go into it in detail I think just to see lots of support from Unison in terms of moving towards a more progressive taxation
System particularly things like um uh capital gains tax where if you make your if you make your living through renting out property you’re probably paying less in tax than the tenants that may be working in the care home down the road and that cannot possibly be right um and
And um also uh for us one of the key issues is making work better and making work pay better uh and making people more productive through paying them more money um and what we need for that we need a legal framework that penalizes poor working practices whether that’s
Insecure work uh compulsory zero hours the kind of the gig economy and the fake um uh self-employment that we we see people being forc into and what we need is a a a a framework that encourages good practice so better enforcement of employment and I would say Trade union
Rights reform of setpay which you’ve already covered um and one of the other key things is is making it easier to bring cases of discrimination so the burden of proof in race discrimination of disability discrimination is still very high very difficult I’m being told I’ve got one
Minute I’m going to have to speed up um make making equal pay much easier particularly for group claims and um one of the key things will be uh introducing Fair pay agreements in in certain sectors and I very much welcome Labor’s commitment to making the care sector the
First one that they will actually introduce that that will have significant impact on low paid workers in those sectors but it’s not just about pay it also has to be about recognition of the skills they bring the fact that these are not low skilled jobs they may
Be low paid they’re not necessarily low skilled and that has to be recognized and those skills need to be paid for um and I have to apologize as you know I I have to leave because you’ve been summoned onto the wild government announcement on something mad that I have to go and speak
On another one I is an occupational hazard thank you CHR um thank you very much Christina a bunch of great points um and thank you for your time if you need to slip away uh over to you Andy inequality between places Thank You Gavin uh and massive
Congrats to you and The Resolution Team for this fantastic report I couldn’t take issue with any of the diagnosis or indeed much of the prescription including around the tax and benefit stuff that Lindsay set out so clearly um but given where we are we need real boldness so let me drop a few
Few bold suggestions into the pot to get the conversation going so um the most powerful thing that a powerful person can do is to give away power um Gordon Brown demonstrated that on his first day in office uh his signature initiative then was to seed power to of montre policy to
The bank of England uh audacious and bold move but it worked and in some ways it was the signature of his long chancellorship and I think we need similar degrees of boldness and audacity now uh from the new Chancellor whoever she or he uh might be um now is the
Time uh for the new Chancellor not to play the role of magician Conjuring up new fiscal rabbits from the hat but rather to play the role of the magician assist consistent by cutting themselves into two and the institution over which they preside what do I mean by that
First we should consider the separation of of the treasury’s finance and economy functions the conflation of which I think has blighted UK growth policy over many decades for the entirely understandable reason that the fiscal first inclinations of the treasury t tend to take preeminence now an economy Ministry would be something
Standalone with its own Minister and whall Department except I wouldn’t put them in whall I would put the new economy Ministry instead in Darlington in what is currently uh the treasury’s alternative campus what better signal of growth intent and of spatially rebalancing our economy than to do that now those of you
In the audience will think we’ve heard all this before Andy hasn’t this been tried you not read the George Brown story or indeed the Michael hesseltine story or the Vince cable story that all withered on the vine uh of the treasury and that is right there’s no chance this
Could work without buying from numbers 10 and 11 so my suggestion would be that overseeing this National growth strategy is that triumverate of PM finance minister and new economy Minister supported by a common secretaria a new if you like Council of economic advisers us style providing analytical and policy
Support probably overseen by someone brilliant uh like Gavin or Torsten um God help new job for you um accompanying that and at the local level we do need a much Fuller throated and wholehearted approach to dvo than the debate we have even had so far and that
Means dvo not just of spending Powers but crucially of fiscal Powers as well on both fronts we remain in my mind too timid that would mean redrawing the dvo contract not just for the English regions but for Wales for Scotland and in time for Northern Ireland and W as
Well crucially crucially in terms set not by central government but by uh local leaders and because no good deed goes unpunished and to bridge what could be I think a gap bordering into a Chasm between new powers and responsibilities I would augment that with a standing second chamber of citizens assemblies to
Keep local leaders feet to the flames and fully attuned with the Public’s need and the third Point G yeah is we need a new institutional ecology for the financing of local areas the current one simply does not work for me one means of doing that is to create the equivalent
Of what many of the countries have which is a national Development Bank or be it operating on a deeply decentralized basis that would comprise a centralized spine of pooled expertise to enable local areas to serve up a portfolio of local projects right now those local projects carry an enormous risk premium
Relative to London projects one way of beating that premium back is by drawing upon the Central Pool of expertise and augmenting that with a Consolidated pool of capital to finance those projects a pool that would come from a consolidation of existing pension pots discussed in the previous panel but
Augmenting that with a consolidation of existing quazi public institutions namely the British business bank and the national uh infrastructure uh bank now I’m not naive enough to think that merely shifting governance and powers and institutions would be sufficient to take the UK from that stagnating state
To that super Highway a lot more is needed a lot more suggested uh in today’s report nonetheless I do think that those governance shifts of the type I have outlined are absolutely necessary if not sufficient conditions for springboarding growth local strategies growth strategies pursued by emboldened and empowered local leaders are the
National growth strategy this country needs we’ve had separate panels Gavin on National growth and growth and balance in fact it’s the self-same diagnosis and will be the selfsame set of solutions growth built from the bottom up doing some of the things I’ve discussed today and some of the stuff here in the report
Thanks very much thank [Applause] you um thank you all of you uh time is racing on um we’ve had we’ve had hundreds of questions on slido there people firing them in I’m not going to do justice to them all I’m going to bounce off um various ones to pose one
Quick question which you’re going to answer in in a minute each if you can um and they they’re quite crunchy ones um so Andy I’ll start with you uh we have heard this morning about the need to grow uh particularly England second cities and to develop more high value
High paying jobs in those cities this panel is about reducing inequality yeah uh if you follow the prognosis set out we’ve heard this morning will you not get higher levels of inequality inside some regions even if that means lower levels of inequality between regions and
Would that be a good thing or was that a problem yeah so the UK stands out distinguishes itself for all the wrong reasons because it’s it’s wide and widening degree of inter Regional inequality y um so investing uh in our Superstar sectors to drive those um higher wage high Skool jobs is crucial
For closing those gaps if you like the 100 billion pounds dividend that would come from investing at scale uh in the UK’s second cities might that have as a side effect some widening of intra regionally quot possibly but with a bigger pie to play with there’s every
Chance then we can invest in the int Regional connectivity and Inter Regional safety net and Inter Regional skills that will then help lift wider boats in the city region I’m thinking particular of satellite and some stranded towns yeah brilliant thank you thank you Andy uh Mark now there’s a whole agenda here on
Tax um and there’s a whole proposal on reforming council tax uh in England uh lots of people laugh at you when you propose that I worked in it 20 years ago when I got laughed at by some senior cabinet ministers it’s very hard and that leads to a kind of fatalism which
Is nuts you have had a revaluation in Wales and you’re about to have another one I think um what is your lessons for us here about the viability of taking on this horribly iniquitous tax which causes a fair chunk of some of the problems we’re talking about today not
All of them but some of them well uh first of all it is really hard uh because you will undoubtedly hear from all the people who will be asked to pay more and you will hear very little from the much larger number of people who will be paying a little bit uh less
But if you’re serious about inequality then you just have to grasp uh this nettle you know the council tax is the the most regressive tax uh we have you pay a much higher proportion of your income on council tax if you live in a band a property then if you live in a
Band I property we will revalue again in Wales we’re the only part of the United Kingdom last 40 years to have a revaluation we’ll do it again and we will make the tax within its limits more Progressive than it is uh currently the message is you know you don’t get many
Chances at this you’ve got to be bold if it’s the right thing to do you’ve got to be prepared to see it through our consultation has the unique uh I think um current uh attributions of being praised both by the ifs and the taxpayers alliance well there you go not
Every day not every day you pull that off when’s this going to happen by just so we can uh the consultation is asking people how quickly they want to see reform and how far they want reform to go okay uh Lindsay we’ve had so we’re in this fine document setting out and you
You you said it I just want to say it again to link Social Security benefits for working age people to earning growth that is a big deal uh we’ve had I’ve had lots of whenever I’ve talked about this I’m like and see some of online various versions
Of are you mad aren’t you killing work incentives as well as like we can’t afford it but there’s a there’s a kind of a genuine question about what does this do to employment and the incentive to work uh what’s what’s your answer well I suppose the first thing to say is
Reducing the value of benefits indefinitely is is neither a moral nor a sustainable um way of increasing work incentives I mean on the specifics of linking working age benefits to the value of earnings of course that doesn’t do anything to work incentives it basically just freezes them at the
Current um at the current level but I think also our proposal has to really be seen in the round so it has to be seen alongside the other things that I pointed out the the rising um minimum wage value of the minimum wage um better good work agenda and those are those are
Positive things that increase work consensus one of the things we heard and again and again as some of our qualitative research in the inquiry was that work is so unpleasant for so many people these days that they withdraw from it as much as they can you know
People will work as many hours as they need to pay the bills and that’s it that’s not a that’s not a satisfactory situation we need to do better on the good work side as well to increase work incentives thank you Lindsay um I’m conscious that I’m stood between 500
People and their lunch uh so I think and I’m really sad to do this because there of you here but I think I think I’m getting a look yeah I think we’re going to call it um time now so would you help me thank our [Applause] panelists