Just a day after Chancellor of the Exchequer Nadhim Zahawi visited Darlington to back Levelling Up and announce the site of the new Treasury campus, analysis has revealed that public spending remains lower in the North.

Think tank IPPR North has published analysis showing that despite the rhetoric of the levelling up agenda, public spending on the North since 2019 has remained lower, and has grown less, than in other parts of the country.

In 2021 (the latest available data), total public spending on the North was £16,223 per person, an increase of 17 per cent on 2019. This is lower than the England wide average of £16,309 per person, an increase of 20 per cent on 2019.

Read more: Nadhim Zahawi backs Darlington Levelling Up

London saw the highest public spending per person and the highest increase over the course of the levelling up agenda, at £19,231 per person, an increase of 25 per cent. Indeed, the spending gap between the North and the capital doubled over the period – growing from a difference of £1,513 per person to £3,008 per person between 2019 and 2021. The lowest total per person public spending in England was in Yorkshire and Humber, at £15,540 per person, and the lowest percentage increase was in the North East, which saw a 16 per cent increase.

The figures tell a similar story when researchers remove spending on the Covid support scheme and on health to allow for the impact of the pandemic. When removed from the calculations, IPPR North finds that the North received £11,505 per person on public spending in 2021, an increase of two per cent on 2019.

80 per cent gap

 

The England average in 2021 was £11,524 per person, an increase of three per cent. The highest spend and highest percentage increase was on London, which saw £13,442 per person, an increase of eight per cent since 2019. In these calculations which remove spending on the Covid support scheme and health, the gap between the North and London grew by almost 80 per cent, from £1,081 per person to £1,937 per person over the 2019 to 2021 period. The lowest total per person public spending in 2021 was in Yorkshire and Humber at £11,049, and the lowest increase was in the North West, which saw an increase on 2019 of just one per cent.

IPPR North have welcomed the “essential” increase across England in public spending, but point to sustained underinvestment in the North and continuing financial pressure on northern local authorities, which have played into the country’s widening divides, as evidence that the next Prime Minister has to “go much further to unlock northern prosperity” and succeed in levelling up the country.

Marcus Johns, a research fellow at IPPR North said: "Regions like the North deserve nothing less than to be afforded the tools they need to level up for themselves. Candidates to be the next Prime Minister should commit to delivering where their predecessors have not. Reversing cuts to local government and to planned transport projects, beefing up the Levelling Up Bill to make it a transformative piece of legislation, and going big on opportunity and future proofing the economy”.

Ryan Swift, a research fellow at IPPR North said: “Our analysis suggests that levelling up was, in many ways, business as usual. But that has to change. The next Prime Minister will enter Downing Street as a result of votes lent to their party, by many in the North and the Midlands, in 2019. The government has not yet delivered for people in these communities."