• Contact
  • About
  • Authors
DONATE
NEWSLETTER SIGN UP
  • Login
Yorkshire Bylines
  • Home
  • News
    • All
    • Brexit
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
    Image of a baby deer

    Steer clear of baby deer!

    RAF Linton

    RAF Linton to house asylum seekers: what we know so far

    Prime Minister Johnson meets with Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein

    Johnson returns from his Belfast train crash empty handed

    It began as a mistake

    Made a mistake? Simple: just deny it ever happened and make it again

    Working from home cartoon

    Working from home under attack by out-of-touch and out-of-date government

    image of carer and patient

    Government fails to support unpaid carers

    Image of oil rig

    Oil sticks: what’s behind the rising price of oil?

    Cartoon by Stan

    Refugees: what next after the Nationality and Borders Act?

    FOI request denied

    Freedom of information or denial of information?

    Trending Tags

    • Johnson
    • Coronavirus
    • Labour
    • Starmer
    • NI Protocol
    • Brexit
    • Culture
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Home Affairs
    • Transport
    • World
  • Politics
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
    • All
    • Culture
    • Dance
    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Recipes
    • Sport
    Photo courtesy of the JORVIK Centre

    JORVIK Viking festival

    Image of Cragg Vale

    Norky’s Ramblings: a WARTS ramble in Cragg Vale

    Image of 'no racism' at cricket match

    Condoning racism in English cricket comes at a price: £50,000 to be exact

    Debbie Kurup as Star (centre) in The Cher Show, credit Pamela Raith

    The Cher Show: a truly believable show

    image of nadine dorries

    Dorries isn’t joking! Privatising Channel 4 will protect public service broadcasting

    Wild Fell by Lee Schofield

    Book Review: Wild Fell – Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm, by Lee Schofield

    Coat of arms of Bulgaria

    Happy St George’s Day in Bulgaria!

    Chicken crossing the road

    Carry on spaffing: why did the chicken cross the road?

    Rotherham

    William Cowen and Yorkshire’s Changing Landscapes

    • Food
    • Music
    • Poetry
    • Sport
  • Business
    • All
    • Economy
    • Technology
    • Trade
    Food bank packing at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, by Staffs Live on Flikr

    Sooner rather than later – why the poorest households need help now

    Constructing houses

    Trouble in Happy Valley: Calderdale Council struggles to agree its local plan

    Cost of living crisis

    A government that’s out of touch and out of ideas

    Cost of living - a house, a piggy bank and a magnifying glass

    Cost-of-living crisis likely to escalate due to rising global consumption

    Driverless car

    How safe are driverless cars?

    Port of Dover, Eastern Docks, Customs Control

    Brexit border checks: better never than late?

    no money to spare

    Levelling down in North Yorkshire: local government reorganisation delivers greater Conservative control but no new money

    Unite the Union flags

    Workers at major housing association in Yorkshire considering strike action after ‘insulting’ pay offer

    Smart meter

    22 million people in the UK having to pay over 50 percent more for energy, as the price cap rises

    Trending Tags

      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
    • Region
    No Result
    View All Result
    • Home
    • News
      • All
      • Brexit
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Health
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
      Image of a baby deer

      Steer clear of baby deer!

      RAF Linton

      RAF Linton to house asylum seekers: what we know so far

      Prime Minister Johnson meets with Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein

      Johnson returns from his Belfast train crash empty handed

      It began as a mistake

      Made a mistake? Simple: just deny it ever happened and make it again

      Working from home cartoon

      Working from home under attack by out-of-touch and out-of-date government

      image of carer and patient

      Government fails to support unpaid carers

      Image of oil rig

      Oil sticks: what’s behind the rising price of oil?

      Cartoon by Stan

      Refugees: what next after the Nationality and Borders Act?

      FOI request denied

      Freedom of information or denial of information?

      Trending Tags

      • Johnson
      • Coronavirus
      • Labour
      • Starmer
      • NI Protocol
      • Brexit
      • Culture
      • Education
      • Environment
      • Home Affairs
      • Transport
      • World
    • Politics
    • Opinion
    • Lifestyle
      • All
      • Culture
      • Dance
      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Recipes
      • Sport
      Photo courtesy of the JORVIK Centre

      JORVIK Viking festival

      Image of Cragg Vale

      Norky’s Ramblings: a WARTS ramble in Cragg Vale

      Image of 'no racism' at cricket match

      Condoning racism in English cricket comes at a price: £50,000 to be exact

      Debbie Kurup as Star (centre) in The Cher Show, credit Pamela Raith

      The Cher Show: a truly believable show

      image of nadine dorries

      Dorries isn’t joking! Privatising Channel 4 will protect public service broadcasting

      Wild Fell by Lee Schofield

      Book Review: Wild Fell – Fighting for Nature on a Lake District Hill Farm, by Lee Schofield

      Coat of arms of Bulgaria

      Happy St George’s Day in Bulgaria!

      Chicken crossing the road

      Carry on spaffing: why did the chicken cross the road?

      Rotherham

      William Cowen and Yorkshire’s Changing Landscapes

      • Food
      • Music
      • Poetry
      • Sport
    • Business
      • All
      • Economy
      • Technology
      • Trade
      Food bank packing at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Newcastle-under-Lyme, by Staffs Live on Flikr

      Sooner rather than later – why the poorest households need help now

      Constructing houses

      Trouble in Happy Valley: Calderdale Council struggles to agree its local plan

      Cost of living crisis

      A government that’s out of touch and out of ideas

      Cost of living - a house, a piggy bank and a magnifying glass

      Cost-of-living crisis likely to escalate due to rising global consumption

      Driverless car

      How safe are driverless cars?

      Port of Dover, Eastern Docks, Customs Control

      Brexit border checks: better never than late?

      no money to spare

      Levelling down in North Yorkshire: local government reorganisation delivers greater Conservative control but no new money

      Unite the Union flags

      Workers at major housing association in Yorkshire considering strike action after ‘insulting’ pay offer

      Smart meter

      22 million people in the UK having to pay over 50 percent more for energy, as the price cap rises

      Trending Tags

        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Region
      No Result
      View All Result
      Yorkshire Bylines
      No Result
      View All Result
      Home Business Economy

      Sunak’s ‘levelling up’ budget will deliver a decidedly uneven future

      Contrary to Sunak's claims of levelling up, his budget will mean a fall in real income for average earners and growing inequality.

      Lord NewbybyLord Newby
      29-10-2021 07:11
      in Economy, Region
      Sunak’s ‘levelling up’ budget Photo by HM Treasury available under creative commons licence

      Sunak’s ‘levelling up’ budget Photo by HM Treasury available under creative commons licence

      230
      VIEWS
      Share on FacebookShare on Twitter
      ADVERTISEMENT

      Levelling up has become the centrepiece of the government’s rhetoric about its purpose. This was repeated this week by the chancellor. The government is “about” levelling up he said, “Because for too long, the location of your birth determined too much of your future”.

      Hear, hear to that, but do the measures introduced yesterday match the ambition?

      Budget measures were woefully inadequate

      Take education for a start. The government is putting more money into both capital expenditure and funding per pupil to restore previous cuts, which is welcome. But the key issue is how it helps children catch up after the setback of the pandemic. On this, it is woefully inadequate.

      The government plans to spend £5bn compared to the £15bn its own adviser recommended, before he quit in disgust at the government’s stance. £5bn is less than the government is giving back to the City banks, as it reduces the banking levy. This really matters, because the children who most need support in catching up will be from poorer households. So a shortfall in spending here means that poorer children will on average fall further behind their middle-class contemporaries.

      The opposite of levelling up.

      To the extent that levelling up refers to the income of the poorest, the announcement in the budget to reduce the taper on universal credit will help those who take on more hours, or move to more remunerative jobs. But the original £20 uplift benefitted six million people and cost £6bn per annum. The changes in the taper restores only £2.2bn next year and the Treasury accepts that four million poor people will remain worse off with the removal of the uplift.

      The opposite of levelling up.

      A levelling up programme of smoke and mirrors

      When we were members of the EU, we benefitted from the structural funds, which were targeted to less-prosperous regions – a quintessentially ‘levelling up’ programme. The UK used to receive about £2.1bn each year from this fund. Its replacement is the ‘UK shared prosperity fund’. Over the next three years, £2.6bn in total is allocated to this fund. By 2024/25 it reaches £1.5bn – a cut of nearly 30 percent.

      The opposite of levelling up.

      On transport, there is additional funding for public transport in the city regions, with Manchester – under Andy Burnham’s effective leadership – doing particularly well. But the single most important transport improvement needed in the north is the Transpennine rail link. Here there was silence and certainly no new impetus to a project that has virtually stalled. Projects like the Sheffield Supertram, which are getting funding, are definitely needed, but the Transpennine rail link is currently a disgrace and its improvement would offer economic development benefits that far outweigh individual city projects.

      In the cities such as Manchester and Leeds, a major constraint on mobility and wellbeing is the crippling effects of the building safety scandal. Some leaseholders are facing bills of over £100k, which they can’t begin to find. The government has committed £5bn towards the cost of remediation – but the total cost is at least £15bn. The government announced yesterday a residential property developer tax that will raise at least £2bn. But the government will use these proceeds to partially offset the £5bn already committed. So not a single leaseholder will feel the benefit. And for many, bankruptcy beckons.

      Picture of Singapore (goodbye Singapore on Thames)
      Brexit

      Sunak bids farewell to Singapore on Thames

      byAnthony Robinson
      28 October 2021

      Brexit opportunities

      The chancellor argued yesterday that levelling up will be achieved because government policies will engender an “innovative high-skill economy” as the “only sustainable path to individual prosperity”. This they claim will be enhanced by the opportunities available because of Brexit.

      It is therefore illuminating to see what the government claims are those opportunities. In the red book accompanying the budget, these benefits fall under two heads.

      The first is ‘reforming the tax system’. By this, they mean reforming tonnage tax to make it easier to register ships in the UK; reforming alcohol duty to make champagne cheaper; reducing air passenger duty (APD) on domestic flights; and introducing freeports. These range from the irrelevant to the bizarre – why cut APD in the week before COP26? – but whatever they do, they do not constitute incentives for an innovative high-skill economy. (It is incidentally revealing that the chancellor spent seven times as long on alcohol duties as he did to climate change – a depressing indication of priorities.)

      The second Brexit benefit is allegedly, ‘deepening trade ties across the word’, by which they mean new trade agreements such as those with Australia and New Zealand. These agreements, of course, will have a miniscule impact on our exports. Their main effect will be to undercut British farmers with cheap meat imports, often produced under less-stringent environmental conditions. No wonder there is incredulity in the Antipodes that we have agreed to such lopsided deals. And the Office for Budgetary Responsibility makes it clear that Brexit reduces the size of the economy by 4 percent – twice the negative effect of covid.

      An uneven future beckons

      For the average earner, rising inflation and rising taxes will mean that next year will see a fall in real incomes. Any improvements in future years will be meagre.

      As for the government’s aim of a high-income, levelled-up country, forget it. It’s simply not going to happen.

      ADVERTISEMENT
      Previous Post

      Sunak bids farewell to Singapore on Thames

      Next Post

      Brexit red tape and costs continue to hit Yorkshire’s trade with Europe

      Lord Newby

      Lord Newby

      Dick Newby is leader of the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords. He grew up in Rothwell, where his family have lived for over 400 years. He was government treasury spokesperson during the coalition, having been Charles Kennedy’s chief of staff. He is a member of the One Yorkshire committee. He lives in Ripon, where his wife is canon pastor at the cathedral.

      Related Posts

      RAF Linton
      Home Affairs

      RAF Linton to house asylum seekers: what we know so far

      byDr Stella Perrott
      18 May 2022
      Photo courtesy of the JORVIK Centre
      Culture

      JORVIK Viking festival

      byKerry Pearson
      17 May 2022
      Image of Cragg Vale
      Culture

      Norky’s Ramblings: a WARTS ramble in Cragg Vale

      byPeter Norcliffe
      14 May 2022
      counting votes
      Politics

      The local elections: how did the parties do in Yorkshire?

      bySam Chandler
      13 May 2022
      Debbie Kurup as Star (centre) in The Cher Show, credit Pamela Raith
      Music

      The Cher Show: a truly believable show

      byGraham Clark
      12 May 2022
      Next Post
      A photo of Westminster Council House tied up in red tape

      Brexit red tape and costs continue to hit Yorkshire’s trade with Europe

      Want to support us?

      Can you help Yorkshire Bylines to grow and become more sustainable with a regular donation, no matter how small?  

      DONATE

      Sign up to our newsletter

      If you would like to receive the Yorkshire Bylines regular newsletter, straight talking direct to your inbox, click the button below.

      NEWSLETTER

      LATEST

      Image of a baby deer

      Steer clear of baby deer!

      18 May 2022
      RAF Linton

      RAF Linton to house asylum seekers: what we know so far

      18 May 2022
      Indyref march

      SNP success in local government elections heralds second Scottish independence referendum

      17 May 2022
      Photo courtesy of the JORVIK Centre

      JORVIK Viking festival

      17 May 2022

      MOST READ

      Prime Minister Johnson meets with Mary Lou McDonald of Sinn Fein

      Johnson returns from his Belfast train crash empty handed

      17 May 2022
      RAF Linton

      RAF Linton to house asylum seekers: what we know so far

      18 May 2022
      It began as a mistake

      Made a mistake? Simple: just deny it ever happened and make it again

      17 May 2022
      Photo credit Robert Sharp / englishpenLicensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.

      The Davis Downside Dossier

      1 January 2021

      BROWSE BY TAGS

      antivaxxers Charity climate change Coronavirus Cost of living Creative industries Crime Cummings Democracy Devolution Equality Farming Fishing hgv History Immigration Johnson Journalism Labour Local Democracy Mental Health mining money NHS NI Protocol omicron Pies pollution poverty PPE Public Health Review shortage social media Starmer tax travel Ukraine Yorkshire
      Yorkshire Bylines

      Yorkshire Bylines is a regional online newspaper that supports citizen journalism. Our aim is to publish well-written, fact-based articles and opinion pieces on subjects that are of interest to people in Yorkshire and beyond.

      Learn more about us

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Contact
      • About
      • Letters
      • Donate
      • Privacy
      • Bylines network
      • Shop

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      No Result
      View All Result
      • Home
      • News
        • Brexit
        • Education
        • Environment
        • Health
        • Home Affairs
        • Transport
        • World
      • Politics
      • Opinion
      • Lifestyle
        • Culture
        • Dance
        • Food
        • Music
        • Poetry
        • Recipes
        • Sport
      • Business
        • Economy
        • Technology
        • Trade
      • Donate
      • The Compendium of Cabinet Codebreakers
      • The Davis Downside Dossier
      • The Digby Jones Index
      • Newsletter sign up
      • Cartoons by Stan
      • Authors

      © 2022 Yorkshire Bylines. Citizen Journalism | Local & Internationalist

      Welcome Back!

      Login to your account below

      Forgotten Password?

      Retrieve your password

      Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

      Log In