'Even the winners are losing': Lisa Nandy warns…

'Even the winners are losing': Lisa Nandy warns against levelling up like London

Labour should not look to London as a model for levelling up, Lisa Nandy has told a major regional conference in Manchester today (January 25). The shadow levelling up secretary told the Convention of the North how a Labour government would unleash the 'power of all people in all parts of Britain'.

The Wigan MP warned that the way the country is governed 'must change or die', vowing to 'end a century of centralisation' by handing more power to local leaders in a 'significant expansion of economic devolution' in England. It came after her Conservative counterpart Michael Gove addressed the annual convention, setting out how the government plans to level up the country.

However, Ms Nandy said that 'times is up', promising that Labour would 'do things differently'. She told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that disparities within English regions are also growing and must be closed.

She said: "One of the great challenges that we've got here in Britain, is that we've got these great inequalities between regions, but we've also now got inequalities within regions that are even bigger. If we really want to be serious about the North of England as a powerhouse of Britain, then we've got to take seriously closing that gap."

The comments came after Northern mayors, council leaders and business representatives called for levelling up to be 'hard-wired' into UK law, as it is in Germany. They said lessons should be learned from East Germany's growth.

The shadow levelling up secretary told the convention that the country should not subscribe to one model of city-led growth and warned against following in London's footsteps. She was asked whether she want places like Wigan which she represents to become commuter towns serving the cities they surround.

She said: "That model hasn't delivered for anybody over the last few decades. A million people make their home in London every year, trying to find better work, better wages, better opportunities. I know because 20 years ago, I was one of them. And I did find those things.

"But what I also found where the cripplingly high housing costs that are blighting an entire generation. I found struggling public services, I found these huge experience and inequality, of poverty and wealth existing side-by-side.

"It's just not sustainable for any part of the country. If you undercook some parts of our economy, you overheat others so that now disposable incomes in London - when you account for housing costs - are lower than nearly every region in the country.