When it comes to government policy and funding, the North of England often seems to miss out. The scrapping of the Northern leg of HS2 is one of the most recent examples of this, so is ‘levelling up’ a lie?
North Cut out from HS2
Last month, Rishi Sunak announced that the Northern leg of HS2 from Birmingham to Manchester was to be scrapped due to spiralling costs.
This means that the high-speed rail line intended to transform transport over Britain now will only exist between London and the West Midlands. Once again, ‘levelling up’ has been abandoned in favour of serving the needs of London.
Sunak’s Alternative: Network North
Sunak has promised that all the funds intended to be used for the Midlands and Northern areas of HS2 will be reinvested into transport plans for those same areas.
Some of the funding from these new plans include:
£12bn to better connect Manchester and Liverpool
Nearly £4bn allocated to improve local transport across the North’s six city regions
£2.5bn to fund local transport for towns and smaller cities
Upgrades to the Energy Coast Line between Carlisle, Workington and Barrow, enabling trains every 30 minutes between them
£100m shared across North and Midlands to support the development of London-style contactless and smart ticketing
£3bn for improving connections between major cities
£2bn towards new Bradford rail station and line connection
Almost £3.3bn set aside for building potholes
£2 bus far extended to December 2024 rather than rising to £2.50
£700m bus funding package for the North
£1.5bn for Greater Manchester
Nearly £1bn for Liverpool City Region
“Every penny of the £19.8 billion committed to the Northern leg of HS2 will be reinvested in the North; every penny of the £9.6 billion committed to the Midlands leg will be reinvested in the Midlands; and the full £6.5 billion saved through our rescoped approach at Euston will be spread across every other region in the country.
Instead of one line, serving a handful of stations and tens of thousands of people each day, Network North will serve hundreds of places and tens of millions of people each day, right across the Midlands and North. That is real levelling up.”
This all sounds pretty good, doesn’t it, but how can we be sure the government will deliver and that this isn’t just another failed promise?
As argued by The Yorkshire Post,
“Taken together, it means the Government has cancelled the certainty of a high-speed rail line serving the North and Midlands that was more than a decade in the planning in favour of a series of hypothetical schemes that run the risk of either requiring much more funding or simply not coming to fruition at all.
It is little wonder there is growing cynicism about whether much of ‘Network North’ will happen as billed”
Andy Burnham’s Response to Network North
Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, responded to the replacing of the Northern leg of HS2 with Network North by pointing out how no Northern leaders or mayors had been consulted in this new plan. Whilst the HS2 transport plans involved Northern leaders and helped represent Northern voices, this new plan does not. How can a plan be created to help the North of England without the input of actual Northerners?
“So, what has been announced today is not a solution to the East-West bottleneck that we face on the railways in the North. It does not deliver that new line. It involves patching up existing lines and leaving us with a problem that has still not been fixed. So, it doesn’t work East-West.
“It just does not make any logical sense to take HS2 trains up from London to Birmingham and then off HS2 onto the West Coast Mainline which is already a heavily congested line
“And people here know […] it’s not just East-West where people can lose hours of their working week when making journeys. It can be North-South as well, because neither railway is as reliable as it needs to be for people here in the north of England.”
Manchester City Council Leader, Cllr Bev Craig has said
“We need to approach this with diligence and a watchful eye to make sure the North isn’t being hoodwinked into the promise of more cash, into the promise of more investment, and into the promise of legislation to deliver this without it being realistic or without it ever being on the table”
Will the government actually deliver the new plan of Network North or will it face the same fate as the northern leg of HS2? Will the north finally have our transport needs considered? I guess only time will tell…
by Red Star Wealth
In February 2019, the Environmental Audit Committee found that we bought more clothes in the UK than any other European country. Fast fashion is becoming ingrained in our society, but its impacts are severe.
What is Fast Fashion?
Fast fashion is the mass production of clothing at low costs so that brands can immediately maximise profits by jumping on the latest trends whilst remaining price competitive.
An Unsustainable Practice
The Environmental Audit Committee estimated that around 300,000 tonnes of textile waste ends up in household black bins in the UK every year. This is a shocking insight into the culture of waste that has taken over, not just the UK, but most of the world.
The Committee also stated:
“Textile production contributes more to climate change than international aviation and shipping combined, consumes lake-sized volumes of fresh water and creates chemical and plastic pollution.”
The environmental impacts of fast fashion are huge, with high CO2 emissions, numerous pollutants, and extreme water usage. In fact, it takes around 2,700 litres of water to make just one cotton t-shirt, the equivalent of providing drinking water to an individual for 900 days.
Fast fashion is incredibly damaging to the planet, animals, and to the workers involved in its production. There is an issue of usage of child labour, prison labour, forced labour and bonded labour in the creation of these textiles, in order to mass produce at low costs.
Greenpeace Detox Campaign
Greenpeace’s Detox Campaign has helped create transformation in the clothing industry. The campaign was aimed at reducing the popular use of toxic chemicals in clothes manufacturing, which were being released into waterways in countries like China, Indonesia and Mexico.
80 brands signed the Greenpeace Detox Commitment, agreeing to “implement preventative and precautionary action on chemicals, by setting goals to eliminate hazardous chemicals in manufacturing.”
Their report, ‘Destination Zero- seven years of Detoxing the clothing industry,’ looks at the changes in the seven years following the campaign’s launch in 2012. They found that “great progress” had been made in phasing out hazardous chemicals, with brands within the clothing industry beginning to take responsibility for their production process.
Sustainable Clothing Action Plan 2020 Commitment (SCAP)
The SCAP commitment was voluntarily signed up to by over 90 organisations representing over 48% of UK retail clothing sales to help reduce the impacts of their products.
This commitment was launched by WRAP, a climate action non-governmental organisation which is working to tackle the causes of climate crisis. The commitment ran from 2012 to 2020, with aims of reducing the carbon, water and waste impact of the UK clothing and textile industry.
The plan had huge positive results, managing to achieve a 21.6% reduction in carbon and a 18.2% reduction in water, as well as meeting 60% of their waste target.
Textiles 2030
Driven by the success of their SCAP initiative, WRAP has created a new voluntary agreement for those in UK fashion and textile organisations: Textile 2030. 110 businesses and organisations, representing 62% of all clothing products placed on the UK market, have signed up to this agreement.
The aims of this initiative are to reduce the aggregate greenhouse gas footprint of new products by 50% and aggregate water footprint of new products sold by 30%.
Let’s hope they are successful in their aims to reduce the toll that fast fashion is taking on the environment to help our planet!
Government Policy is Lacking
Research undertaken by Seahorse Environmental and Dolly Thesis, commissioned by Hubbub, found that since 2007, the government has only produced 5 strategies and 19 policies tackling fast fashion, with only 1 policy proposed with any cost or budget.
It also found that only 32% of UK policies take direct action against fast fashion, with the majority merely raising awareness of the issue.
However, there has certainly been some progress made to address the issue via legislation. This can be seen through things like:
The plastic packaging tax April 2022– a tax applied to plastic packaging manufactured in, or imported into the UK, which doesn’t contain at least 30% recycled plastic
The Competitions and Markets Authority announcing in July 2022 an investigation of ASOS, Boohoo, and Asda’s George label, regarding potentially misleading claims of their products being environmentally friendly
The Modern Slavery Act 2015– Section 54 of this act required UK companies with annual turnovers of £36 million or more to produce an annual modern slavery statement and disclose what steps they are taking to prevent this issue in their supply chains
However, it does seem that more government action is needed to address the devastating impacts of fast fashion, rather than being reliant on the actions of non-governmental organisations and charitable groups…
by Red Star Wealth
Government plans for a new law on minimum service levels during industrial action could leave workers being denied their right to strike.
Waves of Strikes
There is a seemingly constant wave of strikes recently due to huge hikes in inflation without adequate wage increases to match. This is causing huge amounts of disruption for the UK public, which can certainly be frustrating, but that is the point of strikes!
If we can recognise that these workers striking is causing this much disruption, we can also recognise how much we rely on their service. If we need their services this much to go about our daily lives, surely we can also understand why they deserve to be fairly paid.
If we take nurses as an example, their average pay has failed to increase in line with inflation or with private sector wage increases for over a decade, meaning real wage decreases over time. Over the course of a year between 2021 and 2022 in England, 1 in 9 nurses left active service. We need to ask ourselves why, and the answer seems quite clear… why would people want to work somewhere heavily understaffed, where they are overworked and underpaid?
Since June 2022, many workers have undergone strikes, including (but not limited to) the following professions:
Rail employees
Civil servants
Nurses
University staff
Border force staff
Ambulance workers
Midwives
Postal workers
Physiotherapists
The Strikes Bill
The Trade Union and Labour Relations Act 1992 has protected employee rights for decades and this protection is now at a real risk of erosion. The Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill would amend the 1992 Act to “enable employers to issue work notices to require the minimum service levels to be delivered for particular strikes in specified services.”
The Union would then be expected to take reasonable steps to ensure the compliance of their members, and if failing to do so, would face paying huge damages. The Bill would essentially force Unions to go against the best interests of their members.
Its Implications
The Strikes Bill has now been passed in the House of Commons (315 votes to 246). It now needs to pass through the House of Lords to come into force.
Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has claimed that Labour, and others in opposition, are “putting lives at risk” by planning to vote against this bill.
However, many have criticised it for removing workers’ rights. If the bill passes, hundreds of thousands of people working in the public sector will be unable to exercise their right to strike. This means that many who have democratically and legally voted for strike action will be required to work during periods of industrial action, and face being sacked if they fail to comply.
The Trades Union Congress have described the bill as a “draconian piece of legislation” and that “forcing unions to send their members across picket lines is a significant infringement of their freedoms.”
UNISON assistant general secretary, Jon Richards, has described it as “a bill that gives all powers to the government and infringes workers’ rights, undermines democracy and doesn’t allow proper oversight by Parliament.”
If you enjoyed reading this blog, you might enjoy our previous post discussing the Government’s new statutory code on ‘fire and rehire’ practices.
by Red Star Wealth
The Government’s new statutory code on ‘fire and rehire’ practices falls short of properly protecting workers.
What is Fire and Rehire?
Fire and rehire is a practice wherein an employer dismisses an employee and rehires them on new terms, which are usually less favourable.
The New Statutory Code
On 24th January, the government announced that they were cracking down on employers using fire and rehire practices.
This new statutory code is intended to make it clear to employers that they aren’t allowed to threaten their staff with dismissal to pressure them into accepting less favourable terms. The code would also apply when employers attempt to replace their workers with new staff on worse terms.
Once this code is implemented, Courts and Employment Tribunals will be able to take it into account when considering relevant cases, including those regarding wrongful dismissal. If an employer is found to flout this code, they will have the power to increase the relevant employee’s compensation by 25% in certain cases.
P&O Ferries Scandal
Last year, P&O Ferries sacked 786 seafarers without prior consultation, with a plan of replacing them with cheaper agency workers.
Chief executive, Peter Hebblethwaite, admitted the company had broken the law with their actions due to their failure to consult trade unions in good time before the sackings, instead choosing to make the workers redundant with immediate effect.
Criticism
This code falls short of the outright ban on fire and rehire practices that many unions have called for. The Trade Union Congress general secretary said “A general code of practice is not going to stop another P&O-style scandal from happening, and it won’t deter bad bosses from treating staff like disposable labour”
Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, commented, “This code isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. It’s shameful that nearly a year after the P&O Ferries scandal the Conservatives can only offer this weak half-measure, which they admit will allow fire-and-rehire tactics to continue”
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite the Union described it as “an insult to workers and their families” and called on the government to ban fire and rehire practices for good.
This isn’t a New Issue…
The P&O Ferries scandal is certainly not the first of its kind. In April 2021, hundreds of British Gas engineers were sacked after refusing to sign up to new terms and conditions which would have seen them working longer hours and facing a pay cut.
Following this issue, a Survation poll was conducted on behalf of GMB, which found that 76% of those who answered believed that the practice of fire and rehire should be illegal. This included 71% of Conservative voters. Therefore, it is certainly not just criticisers of the Tory party who want workers to have protection from what is, quite frankly, an exploitative labour practice.
A Consultation is taking place over the 12 weeks following this announcement on 24th January. Here, the public and interested groups can share their views on a new statutory code for employers. You can take part by clicking here.
by Red Star Wealth
In his first speech of 2023 last week, Rishi Sunak announced that he wishes to implement plans for all pupils to study maths until age 18.
Sunak’s Reasoning
Sunak is stressing the importance of numeracy as “our children’s jobs will require more analytical skills”.
He also said that he wants people to feel “more confident” when it comes to finances and mortgage deals. If this is the case, why not supply financial education instead?
Ambition without Substance
At this moment, Sunak’s plans seem entirely unattainable given that he’s failed to give any indication as to how they will be achieved.
There are no new qualifications immediately planned and no plan to make A levels compulsory
There is an enormous shortage of maths teachers. In 2021, there were under 36,000 maths teachers in English state secondary schools, compared to 39,000 English teachers and 45,000 science teachers. Sunak has not stated how he plans to magic up more maths teachers to carry out his plans
Sunak has not said what his plans will mean for those studying humanities or creative arts qualifications
Currently, it seems like more of an empty aspiration than a concrete plan…
The Importance of Financial Education
Whilst financial education and mathematics have areas of overlap, the two should not be conflated… they are not the same thing.
If Sunak’s plans go ahead, we need to make sure that this studying of maths is something that can actually be applied to the real world. Whilst a strong grasp of maths can help with aspects of financial management, such as budgeting, it does not overlap with all financial needs.
For example, studying maths might help you understand how percentages work. However, a financial education carries this even further as you can start using these percentages in the ‘real world’, such as with taxes. Instead of simply understanding the percentages of each tax band, you can know what to do if you are taxed wrong, what the different tax codes are, how to fill out your own self-assessment tax returns, and so much more.
Sunak says he wants people to feel “more confident” in managing their finances and understanding things like mortgage deals. In that case, surely we should be providing a meaningful financial education to pupils instead? Understanding the numbers is not enough…
If you want to read more about the importance of a meaningful financial education, click here.
