Sue Stirling (Newcastle, ippr north): Politically, the extent to which England truly has distinct regions is a sensitive and debatable issue. Many claim the current division of the country into nine regions is an artificial construct that has little in common with history or identity. From an economic viewpoint, however, regions are important, regardless of how you divide them up. The realities of the modern global economy mean that regions face an international battle to attract capital and human resources and that they have to compete just as hard as nation states.
Yesterday, ippr north published The Northern Economy in the Next Decade - an economic agenda for the three northern regions of England (the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber). The paper presents a set of recommendations identifying what needs to be done in order to improve the North's economic performance and close the productivity gap with the rest of the country.
England needs a more articulated and coherent regional policy, as opposed to the current system whereby various policies receive a bolted on ‘regional' element. The northern regions need ‘positive discrimination' in the form of specific instruments and resources which are only available to them and can be more precisely targeted at improving regional economic performance and the local population's well-being.
If the northern regions are to approach the national average for socio-economic development they will need fast-track strategies to ‘jump' several stages of development. Otherwise, they will find it hard even to keep pace with the South East, which has greater economic growth, innovation, and resources, and because of this is better placed to take advantage of ‘one-size-fits-all' regional policies.
The report also reminds us that socio-economic development is about more than narrow economic performance indicators such as gross valued added [http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=254] or investment levels, which currently gain the lion's share of analytical attention. To truly evaluate regional performance, a wider set of social and environmental indicators need to be factored in. Without them, strategies to achieve dynamic economic growth in the North will not be clear about how best to exploit local assets and respond to local conditions; nor will they fit commitments to tackle the environmental impact of economic growth.
To a large extent, the three Northern regions face similar challenges. To address them, they need to combine forces in strategic areas by developing a joint spatial strategy and lobby their interests in transport, housing, employment and other areas more effectively. This in turn needs to be linked into a national spatial strategy, which is also currently lacking.
For more details on the research and to download papers from A Northern Economic Agenda visit www.ippr.org/north
