Britain has been stuck in a low earnings, low productivity, and low growth cycle for 18 years. Someone born in 2008, the year of the financial crash, will become an adult this year without having experienced the benefits of economic growth. Young people are bearing the brunt of economic failure, as they struggle to find jobs with youth unemployment at 16%. Little wonder that this is an issue the Government has turned its attention to with the Milburn Review.
A flatlining economy is starving young people of opportunities, but low growth is itself a product of failure to realise potential. That's why it's important to see growth and reform as two sides of the same coin, as many cities and mayors do. In Greater Manchester this link between economic progress and public service reform has been understood for two decades. An early move was to establish reform and prevention boards, pooling the public health grant across local authorities, and establishing ‘Work Well' to keep more people at risk of ill-health in work. Reducing poverty, ill-health and worklessness is as central to growth as urban densification, business innovation and connectivity. That's why many combined authorities (CAs) have developed local growth plans that combine both of these elements.
