Levelling up the North more urgent than ever amid Covid-19 impact - The Yorkshire Post says

Yet, today’s report from leading think-tank the Institute of Public Policy North suggests the Prime Minister has fallen short of those promises in his premiership to date.

Whilst it has undoubtedly been a challenging year for Mr Johnson as a result of the unprecedented pandemic and its devastating consequences, it is simply not good enough that decent jobs, wages and the opportunities to live a good life are becoming increasingly unattainable for too many people across the North of England.

Eighteen months after this newspaper joined forces with other publishers in the region to launch the Power Up The North campaign, challenging Britain’s main political parties to commit to a package of policy measures to turbo-charge the North’s economy, this is what the IPPR North’s annual State of the North report has found.

The authors say the UK entered the global pandemic with deep, growing divides between and within regions and Covid-19 now makes the challenge of reducing inequalities even greater and more urgent than before.

The Government is duty-bound to address this “wake-up call”, not least because of the support of a swathe of former Labour ‘red wall’ seats in the North that helped the Conservatives to victory last December.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s announcement last month of a £4 billion “Levelling Up Fund” and reforms in the Treasury are welcome steps in the right direction. However, with the pandemic shining a light on the extent of deep-rooted regional inequalities, it is clear there is much work to be done to ensure people and businesses in the North are most able to thrive.

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