How can London improve infrastructure investment and its relations with growing non-metropolitan cities across the rest of the UK?

A recent breakfast talk held at NLA sought to find some answers. 

Centre for London research manager Jack Brown kicked off the debate with a report on strengthening ties between London and the rest of the country and how the UK capital is perceived.

‘London’s economy is racing away from the rest of the UK’, he said, leading to discussions over whether we are a ‘regionally unbalanced country’. London puts more into the country’s purse, but Treasury figures also show that Londoners receive more public spending per head. Lots of money, though, goes on highly visible infrastructure projects, which creates ‘highly understandable resentment’; and nowhere is this truer than in transport spend.

Perhaps, suggested Brown, decisions should not be taken in Westminster and Whitehall where there is a perceived ‘bias’ to the capital, and proper devolution could lead to better governance, more democracy, and end perceptions of London-centrism.

He also recommended that there should be: more investment in infrastructure overall and everywhere; that the narrative should be changed from a ‘zero-sum game argument between London and elsewhere’ to the recognition that there is a good deal of private collaboration; and that better data would also help drive a better debate.

Arup chief economist Alexander Jan said that transport infrastructure investment is ‘crucial’ to provide for growth and that schemes like Crossrail 2 are designed to support growth much further than the reach of London, but it was hard to find schemes outside of London with similar impact. But for decades there has been concern over regional inequality, perhaps back to the war and over decanting people from the capital. Antipathy towards ‘London’ tends to get caught up with that held for politicians and even bankers, Jan said. But it was worthwhile highlighting the fact that the UK has not been as ‘into’ investment on infrastructure as its European counterparts.

Other points raised at the conference included: