The Tories’ promise to level up the UK threatens the country’s poorest people by making places central to their strategy – not poverty itself, a key think tank has warned.
According to an analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, some of Britain’s poorest live in some of the wealthiest areas, which means the focus should go beyond creating opportunities in hard-hit areas.
The IFS remarks come as the government’s delayed strategy paper, expected this week.
Poverty is not ‘evenly spread’
“It is really important to remember in all this that, while high paid jobs are unevenly spread, low paid jobs, and indeed poverty, are not,” said Paul Johnson, director of the IFS.
He added: “A higher fraction of London’s population is in poverty than in any other region. We need to worry about places, but we need to worry about people too.”
The leading think tank concluded that wages for the lowest earned in Britain are similar no matter where they are, according to The Independent.
For instance, employees in the bottom 10 per cent of earners have wages of about £8-9 per hour in every area of the country – but areas such as London have higher living costs, such as housing, increasing its residents’ risk of poverty.
Between 2016 and 2019, 28 per cent of Londoners were living in poverty compared to the country-wide average of 22 per cent.
But the think tank also noted that there is a significant difference between top earners, depending on the region – with London’s top 10 earners paid 80 per cent more than Scarborough’s.
The IFS also revealed that continuous spending cuts which started in 2010 worsened regional inequalities, suggesting the government is, at least partly, undoing the cuts and the effect they had on people.
Levelling up ‘stunt’
Last week, the government was accused of faking extra cash for poorer UK areas in order to save Boris Johnson’s job.
The claims come after Michael Gove’s department for levelling up released a statement ahead of the publication of the white paper.
The statement boasted that 20 towns and cities in Britain will enjoy a “new £1.5 billion brownfield fund”, but only mentioned Sheffield and Wolverhampton as beneficiaries, The Guardian has reported.
The cash is meant to help with “housing, leisure and business in sustainable, walkable beautiful new neighbourhoods”, according to the government.
Gove insisted this is a “radical new regeneration programme” which would transform the country and fulfil the Tory promise of a more equal United Kingdom. “This huge investment in infrastructure and regeneration will spread opportunity more evenly and help to reverse the geographical inequalities which still exist in the UK.”
But Gove’s department backtracked after The Observer got in touch with senior Treasury sources to ask if the Tories signed off the sum – and, according to the newspaper, admitted it is not all new cash and includes funds already announced by chancellor Rishi Sunak last autumn.
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