Daily Mail: Key Boris aide Baroness Finn launches vicious attack on ‘incapable’ civil service saying it is risk-averse and obsessed with the ‘metropolitan bubble’
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Speaking to Bright Blue, the independent think tank for liberal conservatism, Chair of the Conservative Policy Board, Neil O’Brien OBE MP, has urged the Conservative Government to move away from Thatcherism and toward an integrated science and industrial policy inspired by countries in East Asia as the guiding policy for levelling up the UK after Covid-19.
Bright Blue interviewed the influential policy chief as part of the new edition of its Centre Write magazine, The Great Levelling? released today, on the theme of levelling up after the pandemic. In the interview, O’Brien said:
“It’s such a funny thing to talk about being a Thatcherite in 2021 given that Thatcherism was a policy response to the problems of Britain in the 1970s; literally before I was born. You can admire the achievements of that period, such as how they got inflation and the trade unions under control and removed bits of the state that didn’t belong there, but think that you’ve got to conduct economic policy on the basis of the problems facing Britain today.”
O’Brien claimed that debate on economic policy in the UK is behind the times and we need to look to East Asia for inspiration:
“The economics of how science and technology, industrial policy and finance come together and the economics of geography are the two biggest things to happen in economics over the past couple of decades. This hasn’t really been reflected in our national economic debate and certainly not in the papers … you wouldn’t see much mention of Hyundai or Samsung that have come into being as a result of government economic policies on the other side of the world. Taiwan went from having no semiconductor industry to becoming the world leader, all since the 1980s.”
He bemoaned the lack of a concerted economic development programme for poorer areas of the country by previous governments:
“Compared to what has been done in regional policy in other countries like Germany, it’s not on the same scale … Our R&D budget has been very low in the UK and we need to change that. Then after that you need to think about infrastructure like transport and connectivity that all support growth. In the UK, too quickly we move to a conversation about levelling up and transport spending. Really that is something that follows on from the initial economic development. In areas that have poor growth and demand, generally transport isn’t the main problem. Ireland has been very skillful with an aggressive inward investment strategy and we can learn from that.”
However, he dismissed Labour’s attempts to push a new ‘1945 moment’:
“Fundamentally, I don’t believe there has been a transformation of public attitudes in any ‘1945’ sense … For me, [the pandemic] has underlined, and this won’t come as a surprise, the importance of a robust industrial and technology policy. First we had a rush for PPE, then for ventilators, then for testing equipment, and now a global vaccine production race. It has shown the limits of depending on international supply chains as well as the incredible power of technology.”
He continued:
“The vaccine programme has clearly been a huge success … The combination of that and getting the exit from the pandemic right, as I think we are doing, now has the Conservatives pulling ahead of Labour in the polls again, even in the eleventh year of being in power. It’s incredibly striking and helps explain why Keir Starmer keeps doing these endless relaunches that don’t get anywhere.”
In his article for Centre Write, the Rt Hon Kwasi Kwarteng, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy, said of how the UK can show environmental leadership while levelling up:
“Clean growth is the only way forward to build back better. The economic challenges we will face as a country following the Covid-19 pandemic will be overcome by a strategic set of actions aimed at delivering sustainable growth across the whole of the UK. The main focus will be on developing resilience across all regions in the country to bounce back from economic shocks, investing to foster technological innovation, and creating new high value jobs, industries, and companies.”
“Particular emphasis should be on reducing avoidable plastic waste. This will include reforming and reconfiguring the packaging supply chain, increasing the producer’s responsibility, introducing a higher plastic tax, extending a deposit return scheme for drink containers countrywide, and a ban on specified single use plastics. Further legislation will follow in the coming years to implement such changes and boost recycling rates. The UK is on track to meet a target of at least 50% of household waste to be recycled by the end of 2020.”
In her article for Centre Write, the Rt Hon Baroness Finn, the new Downing Street Deputy Chief of Staff, said of the role of civil service reform in levelling up:
“In the Brexit referendum of 2016, overlooked families and undervalued communities expressed their discontent with a political system they regarded as aloof, arrogant, remote, and centralised. A key part that the civil service can play in drawing together a renewed sense of common purpose is making sure that it draws on all the talents of every part of the UK, and ensuring that decision makers are acquainted with the challenges faced by those outside the metropolitan bubble.”
“It is not enough simply to relocate jobs. Those leading the civil service also need to think harder about cognitive diversity. Levelling up means not only geographical diversity, but respect for and inclusion of different voices and life experiences.
“This means breaking up the current career ladder, welcoming people into the service not just for secondments but for periods of two years or more, so that the civil service can gain from people whose expertise is in, for example, renewable energy.”
In her article for Centre Write, Dehenna Davison MP, elected in 2019 in the former ‘Red Wall’ constituency of Bishop Auckland, said of how the Government can deliver for such ‘left-behind’ communities:
“With Covid-19 accelerating workplaces’ adaptations towards working from home, this creates huge opportunities for areas that those working for firms based in major cities may not have ordinarily considered living in. Towns like Bishop Auckland could begin to market ourselves as ‘digital commuter towns’. Why shouldn’t we aim to attract those in highly paid roles working for Manchester or London firms who are predominantly home-working? Why shouldn’t we aim to have more money being put into our local economy?
“Yes, Covid-19 has presented many challenges, but it has also presented opportunities. As we focus on a recovery that aids levelling up, we need to look at ensuring that young people have multiple reasons to want to stay in their hometowns. That they’re able to aim for local, high-paid jobs, or opportunities from further afield that the digital age makes possible. That they’re able to settle down in the streets they grew up in, and they enjoy spending their free time where they live. This is how we will truly deliver on the mission to level up.”
This edition of Bright Blue’s Centre Write magazine also includes contributions from Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen, Paul Howell MP, Alicia Kearns MP, the Rt Hon Lord O’Neill of Gatley, Professor Michael Kenny of the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, and many more.
Back in 2014 Nigel Farage stated that, even with the economic arguments for immigration proven, he was against it on cultural grounds. Being “slightly richer” as a country was not worth it if the price to be paid was the sound of foreign languages on public transport. The then Ukip leader added: “I would rather have a situation where young unemployed British people had a realistic chance of getting a job.”
Farage always sat at odds with many Conservative traditions, especially with the economic pragmatism and sense of fairness which one-nation Tories tend to pride themselves on. And he made it clear that many of the right’s preferred policy methods – trade, commerce and efforts to ‘grow the pie’ – were not Ukip’s levers of choice.
But today’s ‘levelling up’ agenda can only succeed with 21st century ‘one-nationism’. The desire to fix regional inequality represents an acknowledgement from the government that economics matters. Whilst the agenda is yet to be fleshed out, levelling up can’t happen without the promotion of growth and enterprise – it is the only way to reshape the economic gravity in poorer towns.
Our new report Level Best attempted to understand how places and communities change as they level up by analysing all the local authorities in England and Wales outside of the big cities to see how they fared after the economic crash of 2008.
Across 285 local authorities, we analysed five economic metrics (growth, house prices, employment, deprivation and pay), and seven measures of demographic change (ranging from ethnic diversity to the number of births to non-UK mothers).
The findings were stark. Across all seven demographic measures, as places that got more diverse, growth increased. Likewise with house prices. And there is a similar picture – although slightly less pronounced – when it comes to deprivation reduction, employment rises and salary increases.
For instance, where there was an increase of 5+ percentage points in births to non-UK mothers, the growth per head between 2011 and 2019 was £6,727. By contrast, it was £3,985 per head in areas where this figure fell.
Authorities where employment rose by over 6 points in the 2010s also saw their non-British populations rise by 2.3 percentage points, on average. In council areas where employment rose by less than 2 points, by contrast, the average non-British increase was just 0.24 percentage points.
These findings are a rebuff to the idea that immigration brings an area down or that metropoleis like London have been the chief beneficiaries of diversity and migration.
Corby in Northamptonshire, for instance – population 66,000 – saw growth per head rise by £11,371 between 2011 and 2019. This was a period when the town’s non-UK born population increased by 7 percentage points.
The truth is that people tend to move to areas where there are jobs and opportunities. The places that recovered best post-2011 attracted individuals from across the country and around the world. They found that migration and population change were part and parcel of growth; that being networked meant newcomers arriving.
The Nigel Farage idea that every migrant means one more unemployed Brit is fundamentally at odds with economic sense – as our report shows. So too is the idea that cultural diversity is automatically harmful to a place. Inflows of people are an inevitable aspect of any community prospering – including ensuring poorer places level up.
One-nation conservatives who accept this must argue against the Farageist rhetoric and the controversial policies of the ‘hostile environment’ era, and think about how investing in cohesion can play a bigger role in the drive to level up.
Chris Clarke is a Policy Researcher at Hope not Hate and the author of Level Best. Views expressed in this article are those of the author, not necessarily those of Bright Blue. [Image: Chmee2]
