How US-style Opportunity Zones could help Yorkshire's young people: David Richards

That call changed me. It exposed a truth too many prefer not to see. Opportunity in Britain is not evenly spread. The gap between the children of Surrey and those of South Yorkshire is not about talent or ambition. It is about access.

Over the past eight months, I have been working with Rob Wilson and the Social Mobility Commission as part of its Economic Growth and Investment Group. This week we launched Innovation, Investment and Inclusion: A Framework for Regional Renewal, a practical plan to reconnect growth with fairness and to give every region the tools to shape its own economic future.

The report makes a simple but radical argument. Enterprise and innovation are the engines of social mobility. Growth is not just about GDP. It is about whether a child born in Barnsley can climb the income ladder as easily as one born in Brighton. That is the true test of a fair economy.

Among the report’s recommendations, one idea stands out: the creation of Opportunity Zones in left-behind regions. These zones would offer investors strong tax incentives to put their capital to work where it is needed most. Capital gains could be deferred or reduced if they are reinvested locally through professionally managed funds with clear mandates set by devolved authorities.

This is not theoretical. In the United States, Opportunity Zones have channelled more than $100 billion into disadvantaged communities. With the right oversight and regional leadership, Britain could do the same, focusing on enterprise, skills and jobs rather than speculative property deals.

The logic is simple. Private investment creates growth. Growth creates jobs. Jobs create dignity and pride. When that happens in the regions that have been written off for too long, social mobility follows.

But to make this work, we must also fix another broken part of the system: the flow of pension wealth out of Britain. Today, only 4.4 per cent of UK pension fund assets are invested in UK equities, down from more than 50 per cent a generation ago. The retirement savings of British workers are being invested abroad, often in the very companies that later buy up our own. That is a national absurdity.

The Social Mobility Commission is calling for at least five per cent of pension portfolios to be ring-fenced for productive investment in the UK, including infrastructure, clean energy and regional growth. The capital exists. What is missing is ambition.

When I returned to Sheffield after two decades in Silicon Valley, I was struck by two things: the extraordinary depth of talent here and the scarcity of capital willing to back it. That is why we created Yorkshire AI Labs, to connect investors with northern founders and to show that world-class innovation can thrive outside the M25. Yet one venture builder cannot change a system that still treats the North as a branch office of the South.

The Social Mobility Commission’s report makes the case for something larger: devolved, enterprise-led growth. Every region should have a long-term Strategic Growth Plan shaped by local business, universities and civic leaders, and backed by stable national support.

Devolution must not mean passing the buck from Whitehall. It must mean giving regions the power and confidence to chart their own course.

If we want to move from subsidy to self-sufficiency, from dependency to dynamism, we must unleash private capital alongside public purpose. That means creating the conditions for entrepreneurs to thrive, investors to believe, and young people to see a future in the places they grew up.

I still think about those children without laptops. They were not statistics. They were reminders that inequality begins when opportunity is denied. The task before us now is to build a Britain where geography no longer decides destiny. We have the blueprint, the talent and the capital. What we need is courage.

David Richards is managing partner of Yorkshire AI Labs