{"title":"A new deal for workers","authors":"Melanie Simms","doi":"10.1111/newe.12390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12390","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Following a landslide victory in the general election, the Labour party has launched an ambitious agenda to transform the regulation of work and employment. With commitments to enhance worker rights and legislative reform, Labour's relationship with trade unions presents both opportunities and challenges. While improved dialogue between unions and government is already evident, the success of these initiatives hinges on fostering robust structures for collective bargaining and addressing enforcement weaknesses. This long-term endeavour seeks to achieve a fairer distribution of economic growth and requires sustained collaboration beyond the current parliamentary term.</p><p>Any sensible answer to that question needs to differentiate between unions that are affiliated to the Labour party and those that are not. The era when unions and the Labour party could be considered as ‘two wings’ of the labour movement are long gone. That said, some of the UK's largest unions are affiliated – Unison, Unite and the GMB being the three largest unions by far. They have routes to liaise with the party and we can expect those unions to continue to try to shape policy over the coming years.</p><p>But by far the majority of unions, including most of the unions representing professional public sector workers, are not affiliated to the party. The Trades Union Congress (TUC), as the umbrella representative body of many – but not all – unions, also has no formal affiliation to the party. Nonetheless, these unions are leading some of the longest-running disputes in sectors such as the NHS and higher education and will expect to find it easier to campaign, shape and lobby as policies develop to the point of delivery.</p><p>However, some of the wider agenda laid out in policy documents will be more challenging and will face more structural hurdles to delivery. For example, there are significant decisions to be made about how to establish a single status as ‘worker’ (rather than differentiating between employees and self-employed workers) as this navigates a complex legal terrain where tax law and labour rights may conflict. With commitments to end the use of ‘fire and rehire’ tactics by employers and reduce the use of zero-hours flexible contracts, much of the devil will be in the detail and it is possible that some may be unhappy with how these are implemented.</p><p>But this opens a potentially longer-term vision for the collective regulation of work and employment. A key concern from the legacy of the governments from 1997 to 2010 was how easily some labour market regulation reforms were undone. This will always be a weakness of a system that relies on government to lead. A far more effective, and likely efficient, approach is for the state to actively support structures that facilitate negotiation between employers and unions, looking only to the state where there are issues of direct relevance, such as legal changes or the funding for state services.</p><p>Cruciall","PeriodicalId":37420,"journal":{"name":"IPPR Progressive Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/newe.12390","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430206","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Financial precarity in English local government","authors":"Peter Eckersley","doi":"10.1111/newe.12393","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12393","url":null,"abstract":"<p>Readers of <i>Progressive Review</i>, and particularly those drawn to an issue that sets out the scale of the challenges that face the new Labour government, will be very familiar with the impact that austerity has had on the public realm since 2010. These impacts have been particularly acute at the local level in England, and especially in deprived communities.1 A spate of local authority ‘bankruptcies’ in major cities such as Birmingham and Nottingham, which involve chief financial officers issuing ‘section 114 notices’ to inform ministers that their expenditure will exceed their revenue over the course of a financial year (something that is illegal under the Local Government Finance Act 1988), have only served to illustrate how widespread the problem has become.2</p><p>Ultimately, questions about local government finance touch on the issue of local government itself: what it is – or should be – <i>for</i>, and how it should relate to the centre of government. To what extent should councils be free to levy taxes, spend money and shape places as they wish? Should they exist primarily as delivery arms for central policies, or do they also have a key role to play in shaping local communities? Ultimately, whom do they exist to represent?</p><p>Local authorities in the UK are very unlike their counterparts elsewhere, in that they tend to cover large geographical areas and very large populations that do not always correspond to local identities. This is the result of a longstanding belief in the administrative superiority of larger governmental units, rather than any wish to ensure that local government represents identifiable local places.17</p><p>Indeed, the previous government's direction of travel continued in this direction, by emphasising the role of large, subregional metro mayors and combined authorities. Starmer and his team appear to have bought into this idea, and have been less forthcoming in setting out their vision for what we might call ‘traditional’ local government. Nonetheless, working on the basis that Starmer's team recognise the key role that councils need to play in addressing challenges such as lacklustre economic growth, climate change and endemic poverty, we could see a revitalisation of subnational government in England in the coming years. The challenge of rebuilding capacity within local authorities – as well as in other public bodies – will be difficult, but is necessary to ensure that the state can deliver on all parts of the government's agenda.</p>","PeriodicalId":37420,"journal":{"name":"IPPR Progressive Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-08-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/newe.12393","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142430207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Levelling up","authors":"Nick Gray, Danny Dickinson","doi":"10.1111/newe.12378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12378","url":null,"abstract":"<p>We are coming to the end of a parliament where levelling up has been an ongoing theme, so it is a good time to begin to consider what levelling up is (or was), how it emerged, what if anything it has achieved and what lessons the past few years might offer a new, potentially progressive, government. In this article we argue that government has begun to deliver on some eye-catching initiatives, but their impact on economic levelling up is unlikely to be significant. More positively, we argue that levelling up – including a broadening and deepening of devolved economic governance – has moved regional inequality up the political agenda and into the public consciousness. This represents an opportunity for a progressive government if it first resolves some of the political tensions and contradictions around levelling up. These include a conflation and confusion over whether interventions are designed to drive economic growth and productivity or build social infrastructure and pride in place.</p><p><i>Progressive Review</i> readers are likely familiar with at least the headline evidence on UK regional economic inequality, which remains exceptionally high for an advanced economy.1 Pointedly, for an article such as this one examining the impact of recent policy, regional disparities have worsened over the past five years.2 Recent years saw populist politicians, thinktanks and commentators claim the cause of tackling regional economic inequality as theirs; with particular emphasis in Conservative politics on a ‘Brexit dividend’. Advocates of progressive politics were left on the defensive as ‘out of touch’ and representative of an often vaguely defined ‘metropolitan elite’. The government elected in 2019 presented itself as best able to help people in places that had been ‘left behind’ in a globalised economy – the places that “don't matter”.3</p><p>Levelling up builds on the Cities and Local Growth agenda (CLoG; incorporating the northern powerhouse) that gave us the current patchwork of regional development governance, including combined authorities, ‘metro-mayors’ and local enterprise partnerships (the last of which are being wound down this year). Genuine revolutions in regional policy have been comparatively rare, but the 2010 Coalition government's scrapping of much of the regional tier of governance – particularly the regional development agencies and regional government offices – was a relatively radical juncture. (The-then business secretary, Vince Cable, described the sweeping away of the regional structures as “a bit Maoist”. Is it possible to be <i>a bit</i> Maoist?)4</p><p>Analyses of levelling up often takes the 2022 levelling-up white paper5 as a point of departure. However, levelling up in practice is sometimes only loosely related to the themes in the white paper, which is broad in its analysis and aspirational in its goals. Much of the document discusses academic analysis of economic geography with an implicit nod to the agglomeration","PeriodicalId":37420,"journal":{"name":"IPPR Progressive Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-05-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/newe.12378","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140949209","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Devolution in the North East","authors":"Steph Coulter, Michael Kenny","doi":"10.1111/newe.12380","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/newe.12380","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In May, the North East Mayoral Combined Authority will elect its first metro mayor, creating one of the largest, and potentially most important, devolved authorities in England. This is taking place 20 years on from the failure of the last Labour government to get local people in the North East to agree to its plans for a new model of regional government. This time around, a modest system of devolved administration – in the North East and some other parts of England – will be in place should Labour win the upcoming general election (as current polling suggests it will). How the party understands and responds to the challenges that its predecessors failed to surmount will say much about its competence and strategic priorities in relation to the grand challenge of English devolution.</p><p>Reflecting on the long history of regional policymaking in relation to the North East, helps us to understand the factors that have made the establishment of an effective and legitimate model of government in this area so difficult. A sense of this history also alerts us to the challenges associated with extending devolution across England more generally.</p><p>Three key factors have long shaped the North East's distinctive political culture: an entrenched pattern of economic underperformance relative to England's more affluent South East; a widely felt sense of disillusionment with the prevailing model and outcomes of the UK's parliamentary government; and a historically ingrained sense of pan-regional identity, which has long sat in tension with strong local attachments to the key cities within its jurisdiction, and rivalries between them.</p><p>The rooted and distinctive sense of identity can ultimately be traced back to the medieval Kingdom of Northumbria – itself an unusually semi-autonomous entity within a relatively centralised English polity.1 A strong sense of affiliation to this geographical area was passed into the industrial era and maintained too by a distinctive local dialect and the relative geographical isolation of the area.2</p><p>However, over the past century, the North East's economic prospects have steadily deteriorated, so that the region is now, on many different metrics, rated as one of the poorest parts of the UK. These failings are rooted in the notable underperformance of its main cities, Newcastle and Sunderland, on metrics such as productivity, businesses per capita and wages, all of which are below the national average.3 Economic geographers often refer to the damaging impact of the poor economic performance of the UK's ‘second tier’ cities, and those in the North East sit at the bottom end of that category – generating remarkably few spillover benefits for those towns that sit on their edges.4 This economic divergence between the North East and wealthier parts of the UK has become a live political issue in recent years. Support for Brexit was marked, as 58% of the population, the third highest regional total, voted to leave the ","PeriodicalId":37420,"journal":{"name":"IPPR Progressive Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/newe.12380","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140949139","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Jack Newman, Rachael McClatchey, Geoff Bates, Sarah Ayres
{"title":"Tackling health inequalities","authors":"Jack Newman, Rachael McClatchey, Geoff Bates, Sarah Ayres","doi":"10.1111/newe.12381","DOIUrl":"10.1111/newe.12381","url":null,"abstract":"<p>In recent years, both of the UK's largest political parties have sought to orientate their policy offering around missions. Both have made explicit commitments to tackle the country's geographic health inequalities. In their starkest form, health inequalities – whether based on race, class, gender, geography and so on – will mean that those at the wrong end have, on average, fewer years to live and worse health when alive. In comparison to London and the South East, a baby born in the North East will live three years fewer, while the north of England as a whole has 144 extra infant deaths a year.1</p><p>It is not just that these injustices are self-evident; it is also that the economic consequences that flow from them matter. At a time of labour shortages, sluggish economic performance and underperforming cities, economic inactivity due to ill health is much higher in the north than in the South East.2 It is unsurprising but welcome that both main parties have developed ambitious missions to tackle these inequalities as part of their headline domestic policies of ‘levelling up’ and ‘mission-driven government’.</p><p>And yet, since 2010 when the Marmot review laid bare the millions of years of life lost to health inequalities, very little has changed.3 Life expectancy has stalled in England overall, it has decreased in deprived parts of the country and the gap continues to grow.4 What is missing is not ambitious political rhetoric or ambitious government objectives; the two main parties have almost identical missions on healthy life expectancy. Nor is there an absence of understanding about the causes; both parties acknowledge the wider determinants of health that underpin growing spatial health inequalities.5 The problem, we argue, is the failure to identify mechanisms of change.</p><p>Over the past five years, the government has put health at the heart of its levelling-up rhetoric, defining levelling up as “people everywhere living longer and more fulfilling lives, and benefitting from sustained rises in living standards and well-being”.6 The focus on longer lives and wellbeing is reflected in the levelling-up missions. Mission 7 targets improvements in healthy life expectancy and mission 8 targets people's self-reported wellbeing.7 Both also entail a commitment to reduce the geographic disparities of their respective metrics.</p><p>The government has legally bound itself to these missions, enshrining them in Part 1, Section 1 of the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, which requires the government to report each year on levelling-up progress.8 Unless the Act is repealed, these same requirements will bind future governments too.</p><p>There are, however, concerns with the way these missions are formulated. While there are clear targets for improving outcomes overall, such as the target for a five-year increase in healthy life expectancy by 2030, there are no specifics on the reduction in health inequalities. All that is required is for th","PeriodicalId":37420,"journal":{"name":"IPPR Progressive Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/newe.12381","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140690437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blazing a trail","authors":"Katy Shaw","doi":"10.1111/newe.12374","DOIUrl":"10.1111/newe.12374","url":null,"abstract":"<p>The past decade has witnessed an English ‘devolution revolution’ in which a series of new combined authorities and associated mayors have been rolled out across England. By May 2024, 60 per cent of England will be governed by a democratically elected mayoral combined authority (MCA). The ethos of English devolution is to transfer power and resources from the centre of government to the regions, to have decision-making closer to communities and to better understand needs and opportunities on the ground. In terms of culture, devolution affords agency to advocacy, nationally and internationally, to connect audiences, publics, partners and investors to a single coherent message about the offer of a place and its people.</p><p>But as devolution has evolved across England, tensions have begun to emerge between central government's one-size-fits-all approach to culture and the changing needs of communities in the regions. Devolution has created the need for a more relationship-based approach to culture delivery at a local level, one that is less top down and more co-created closer to communities. In this new world, arm's-length bodies (ALBs) have become key delivery mechanisms for recognising and responding to regional priorities and planning. Through aligned funding and support to deliver shared objectives in new place-based partnerships, their rewiring of the relationship between the centre of government and the regions is key to the success of cultural devolution.</p><p>The 2024 IPPR North <i>State of the North</i> report “recommends further regional empowerment and prioritising regional rebalancing” in policies, including culture. It argues that “clear promises and tangible change for people's communities would reap political reward … local and regional leadership should be strengthened through broader and deeper devolution, improving outcomes and trust”.3 By better investing and connecting culture spend closer to communities, we can more effectively ensure that culture becomes a delivery mechanism for meeting other targets in areas like education and skills, health and wellbeing, pride in place and civic identity. This approach is also popular with voters. As the RSA states, “the public want local leaders to have more control over both spending and decisions over policy, including schools, transport … skills, and culture”.4</p><p>The aim of devolving culture is to enhance delivery and reach, adding value and expanding access to put local people and places at the heart of decision-making. Devolved mayoral authorities can co-create a local cultural framework with communities and cross-sector stakeholders to enhance pride and wellbeing, develop the local visitor economy, and build skills and investment to increase access and opportunities for local young people to live and work in the area. This integrated approach to service delivery is key to driving inward investment: through harnessing culture and the creative industries to catalyse growth, dev","PeriodicalId":37420,"journal":{"name":"IPPR Progressive Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2024-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/newe.12374","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140693513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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