Peer calls for ‘culture shift’ to revive UK economy

Lord Heseltine said yesterday that simply cutting taxes, civil servants and red tape will “do practically nothing” to help the economy without huge devolution of power to the regions.

The Conservative Party grandee produced a high-profile report for George Osborne last year on how to kick-start growth outside of London, in which he said up to £80bn of central funds should be handed to the regions to spend for themselves in areas such as skills training, housing and infrastructure investment.

The Chancellor has said he supports the principle and is expected to set out the Government’s formal response alongside the Budget in a fortnight’s time.

Lord Heseltine made clear that picking and choosing measures from his report would not suffice.

“It isn’t a list of two or three things – it’s a culture, in a sense,” he said. “And the culture shift is to recognise that if you really want to change the performance of this country, a very large number of people and organisations have got to perform better.

“That’s very uncomfortable. What people really want to hear, and many of them say, is ‘look Chancellor – reduce the taxes, get rid of some civil servants, get rid of a bit of red tape, rough up Europe’, and they assume all will be well. Actually, if you did all of those things, practically nothing would happen. Because what really matters is what we do in delivering the jobs that we’ve got day by day.

“You have a system which is very largely dominated by London.

“Over 100 years we have gradually sucked power away from the great English cities, which made this country what it was.”