Your editorial on regional imbalance correctly identifies the need for capital investment in poorer regions (The fate of Flybe confirms that levelling up must be more than a slogan, Journal, 6 March). However, it accepts a government narrative that inequality is primarily inter-regional rather than intra-regional.
On average, London is by far the most affluent region, but it is also the most unequal. A recent report from the mayor of London, Poverty in London 2017/18, discloses that one in 10 of inner London’s children are in households with severe low income – a higher proportion than anywhere else in the UK; material deprivation among pensioners is at its highest in inner London, at 20%, and second highest in outer London, at 13%, and the next highest is Wales at 9%.
The poor in London are heavily dependent upon local government services, and all London boroughs have suffered massive cuts in funding since 2010 and struggle to provide even basic safety net provision of children’s services and social care, let alone services that make life minimally satisfying like open spaces and libraries.
This erosion of social infrastructure is far from unique to London, of course. However, the rhetoric of “levelling up” provides cover for yet more cuts in services to London’s poorest – although I suppose they can increasingly be employed as minimum-wage security guards to protect the wealthy from the civil disorder that these burdens will provoke.
Conveniently for the well-off, this emphasis on regional imbalance distracts our attention from inequality between the rich and the poor. It allows the government to ignore the need to revise the tax and benefits systems to ameliorate the suffering this causes.
Mike Cushman
London
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