Summary
Evan Davis and guests examine the prospects for business in this government priority for increasing economic activity beyond the Southeast of England. How important is political devolution? Or are practical changes, like transport links and skills education more significant?
Guests: Andrew Carter, chief executive, Centre for Cities Akash Paun, senior fellow at the Institute for Government Steve Cole, maritime business improvement director for BAE Systems Lucy Winskell, chair of the North-East Enterprise partnership
Producer: Lucinda Borrell Sound: Graham Puddifoot Production Coordinators: Siobhan Reed and Sophie Hill Editor: Hugh Levinson
The programme was produced in partnership with the Open University
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.1 | Hello, it may be world events that are on our minds at the moment, but on the program this week, |
| 0:11.0 | we're going local. We're devoting our conversation to the government's key domestic mission |
| 0:16.2 | leveling up, which is about giving a kickstart to the parts of the country that haven't flourished economically in recent decades. |
| 0:23.6 | It is a massive business ambition, but it's also a political one in that tied to leveling up |
| 0:29.6 | is the idea of handing power down to regions or localities that can make decisions for themselves better than the folks in London. |
| 0:43.8 | So devolution and the deconcentration of economic power in the capital are the agenda today. |
| 0:46.5 | The government published a white paper in February. |
| 0:48.5 | We're going to talk through that and whether it'll work. |
| 0:52.1 | But I should say there are two words that often confused with each other. |
| 0:57.3 | Centrophugal and centripetal. Centripetal forces are those that tend to drive things to the centre. And that has been the dominant economic force here and in other |
| 1:03.5 | countries too, in fact. Centrifugal forces drive things out from the centre. And leveling up is about |
| 1:10.8 | strengthening those centrifugal forces |
| 1:13.6 | when for decades a lot of employers have acted very centripetally. Well, let's talk through what can be done |
| 1:20.3 | and I have four guests today to take us through the issues. Now the first two are what you might |
| 1:25.9 | call think tank analysts, Andrew Carter, Chief Executive of the Centre for Cities, joining us in the studios, and Akash Pown, senior fellow at the Institute for Government, who's currently joining us down the line from Leeds. |
| 1:39.3 | Now, both of you, I want you to take us through the government's white paper. Andrew, start us off |
| 1:46.0 | of what the central idea of levelling up was in the white paper. Yeah, so the levelling |
| 1:52.4 | in white paper is 400 pages, so there's a lot in it. But it starts with this recognition |
| 1:59.0 | that the UK is not unique, but probably extreme, when we look at the differences between different parts of the country. |
| 2:06.3 | So when we think about the differences between parts of the greater southeast, particularly places in and around London, |
| 2:12.9 | and we then contrast them with parts into the Midlands and in the north, whether you're looking at health or whether you're looking at education |
... |
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