Do you live in Sunderland? asks Peter Walker on Guardian.co.uk. Are your bags packed? Well, maybe they should be, according to right-wing think tank, the Policy Exchange. In a report in which it’s sometimes hard to see “where the serious thinking ends and the sheer provocation begins”, the authors argue it is unrealistic to expect “struggling” northern towns, such as Sunderland, Bradford and Liverpool, to become prosperous again – so people should be paid to move south.
Given the group’s close ties with the Tories, the report, released on the eve of David Cameron’s tour of nine marginal seats in the north-west, has “plenty of potential” to cause embarrassment. Labour was quick to accuse the Tories of “dismissing large swathes of Britain as worthless”, says Nicholas Watt in The Guardian. Chris Grayling, the shadow minister for Liverpool, sprang to the Tories’ defence, saying, “This independent report does not reflect Conservative party policy and we do not agree with its conclusions. We wholeheartedly support the regeneration of northern cities.”
So what exactly does the report, Cities Unlimited, say? It says the Government should accept the “uncomfortable truth” that many northern towns, which grew up and enjoyed the wealth-creating conditions of the industrial revolution, have no hope of being regenerated this century. Coastal cities, such as Liverpool, or Scunthorpe, are the most vulnerable, as they have “lost much of their raison d’etre”. Sunderland was singled out as an example of failed regeneration. The report recommended regeneration budgets be rolled up and local authorities allowed to spend the money as they liked, either on helping people relocate south, or on council tax cuts.
It also proposed that all three million new homes planned by the Government should be built in London, Oxford and Cambridge. “Cities based on highly skilled workers are the most dynamic,” it said. “Oxford and Cambridge are unambiguously Britain’s leading research universities outside London.” Tim Leunig, the economist at the London School of Economics who co-authored the report, admitted some would see his ideas as “unworkable, unreasonable and perhaps plain barmy”.
And plenty did. The north-west’s leading civil servant described the report as “offensive”, says Ben Schofield in The Daily Post. North-east MP Sharon Hodgson compared the proposals to Norman Tebbit’s “get on your bikes” remark, and Leeds West MP John Battle told the Daily Mirror, “The Tories have very few friends in the north as it is and this is hardly likely to endear them to many more.” My reaction was to “laugh out loud”, says Brian Reade in the Daily Mirror. How can anyone say Liverpool has lost its “raison d’etre” when it is “undergoing a full-blown renaissance”? Its economy has grown more quickly than any English city apart from London over the past ten years. It has the biggest retail development in Europe; depopulation has halted; employment is up; crime is down and tourism booming. And suggestions that three million new homes be built in three southern cities weren’t met with much more enthusiasm, says Jim Pickard in the FT. The Campaign for Rural England said that it would lead to over-development and congestion and create “swathes of car-dependent urban sprawl”.