Healey says economic growth must extend beyond UK’s biggest cities
Chancellor John Healey says Britain’s growth must extend beyond its biggest cities as he prepares to outline his economic agenda.
In a major speech on Monday, the Chancellor is expected to outline plans aimed at driving long-term development across the country, ahead of his first Budget on October 28.
Writing in Sunday People, Mr Healey said his plan would seek to deliver progress by supporting local government and town centres.
“But not growth for its own sake – not a number on a spreadsheet. And not reserved for our biggest cities. This is about growth in every postcode,” he wrote.
“Factories across Britain taking on young people. Small business owners finally being able to expand. Town centres and high streets seeing new life.”
Mr Healey said: “Britain already has the strengths it needs to succeed – global financial centres, cutting-edge science and technology, world-class universities, and communities full of ambition. So the question is: What’s stopping us?
“Tomorrow I’ll set out my plan to deliver good growth in every postcode by making the most of Britain’s strengths.
“We’re putting mayors, local government, entrepreneurs and investors at the heart of this plan.”
The comments came a day after Mr Healey also told the Financial Times he would ensure the UK emerges from his first Budget with a solid “buffer against uncertainty”.
He warned the Budget could be tough, as US President Donald Trump’s war in the Middle East affects the British economy.
Economists have predicted that the fiscal buffer Rachel Reeves built up in her last budget, through a combination of tax rises and departmental spending cuts, will be squeezed by the inflationary pressures of ongoing global turmoil.
This could limit Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s ambitions to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, and spending plans across his wider agenda for Government.
The Chancellor told the FT: “What’s happening in the Middle East is hitting inflation, it’s hitting growth, it’s hitting borrowing costs.”
He added: “It’s part of a more dangerous world that is more uncertain and it’s one of the challenges we have to meet in this country, but have to meet with other (countries).”
Support our Nation today
For the price of a cup of coffee a month you can help us create an independent, not-for-profit, national news service for the people of Wales, by the people of Wales.
Get more trusted Welsh news
Choose Nation.Cymru as a preferred source in Google News to see more of our journalism.
This mustn’t be spun as unaffordable charity. It’s low hanging fruit.
Mr. Healey should come to the valleys and see for himself what generations of stagnation and managed decline under successive governments looks like. We are desperate for real, lasting, positive change.
The political choice made by Burnham and Healey is to adopt Reeves’s fatuous fiscal rules and the other madnesses of neoliberalism – despite claiming otherwise. This is another early nail in the coffin of the Burnham Government – it will fail just like those of other recent prime ministers, for much the same reasons. First, the growth objective is a fantasy and unaffordable in environmental terms. Second, the fiscal rules themselves are self-defeating – extracting further liquidity from the economy with Quantitative Tightening (QT), higher interest rates and concomitant inflation, and higher taxes (but desirable in the luxury sectors because… Read more »
Town centres aren’t a public service. They don’t need funding. They need consumers with more cash in their pockets, lower business expenses and a level playing field with online competition.