Category Archives: Papers

Longer pieces that discuss ideas and events that the Foundation is interested in. These are part of an ongoing process, not the final policy of the Foundation.

Report on “A Voice for the Northern Economy” IPPR North Conference

Maybe not all supporters of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation and readers of this website are familiar with the work of the Institute for Public Policy Research North (IPPR North) www.ippr.org/north and its collaboration with the Northern Economic Futures Commission (NEFC). Whether you agree with all its recommendations or not the report Northern Prosperity is National Prosperity provides a vast amount of national and international research. It highlights the reasons why the northern economy has been in long-term decline and signposts a range of proposals for a better, fairer, future for the North. Interestingly, it identifies the Northern region of England, as does the Hannah Mitchell Foundation, as the North East, North West, Yorkshire and Humber.

This was the focus for the conference, A Voice for the Northern Economy, held in Leeds by IPPR North on 28 January 2013. The keynote speaker was Rachel Reeves MP for Leeds West, Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Neil McLean Chair of Leeds City Region Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) responded.

Read more of the report by Jenny Cronin here A Voice for the Northern Economy. IPPR North Conference (Opens a word document)

The Economic Transformation of the North

Professor Jeffrey Henderson describes how centralisation led to economic decline in England, and explains why only devolution to local and regional government can reverse that decline and create a fair and prosperous North.

“The fundamental problem that confronts the North, as it does in varying degrees every other region of Britain, is that of economic transformation. The question is not merely how to create economic growth (there was plenty of that during the 1990s and 2000s, but look where we are now), but how to build genuine development capable of delivering generalised and sustainable prosperity with low levels of inequality. If that can be done, then the country’s deepening social disintegration and many of the problems it has engendered, can be halted and reversed.”

Download the full paper: The Economic Transformation of the North

Jeffrey Henderson is a Professor at the University of Bristol and, currently, a Visiting Professor at the University of Leeds. He was born in County Durham and brought up there and in Yorkshire. He returned to the North in 1990 and lived first in Manchester and then in Leeds. He now lives partly in Leeds and partly in Bristol. Between 1992 and 1994 he was an advisor to Robin Cook MP, then Shadow Minister of Trade and Industry. During that time he worked on Cook’s economic policy manifesto, Re-Making Britain’s Future.