Published Thursday 12 November 2020 at 10:01
Our Director of Public Health and Wellbeing, Professor Dominic Harrison, has written another column for the Lancashire Telegraph.
Read it here:
WHEN 1930s musical film star Ginger Rogers was asked ‘Are you as good a dancer as Fred Astaire?’, she said: “Well, yes I think we are just about the same”.
Then after some thought she added: “Except I have to do it all backwards in high heels and a tight skirt.”
Looking at the growing impacts of Covid-19 on the economy of northern towns, you cannot escape that Ginger Rogers feeling. We are going to have to work much harder to recover from Covid than the UK as a whole.
A new report out this week from the Northern Health Science Alliance on the effects of Covid-19 on the Northern Powerhouse areas, including Pennine Lancashire, shows just how the unequal health and economic impacts of Covid-19 are and what government needs to do to fix it.
The report argues that mortality rates during the first wave of Covid-19 (March to July 2020) were higher in the Northern Powerhouse than the rest of England. An extra 12.4 more people per 100,000 died in the Northern Powerhouse area than the rest of England due to Covid-19.
An extra 57.7 more people per 100,000 died in the Northern Powerhouse area than the rest of England due to all-causes (i.e. both Covid and non-Covid causes) . These extra 57.7 deaths per 100,000 could cost the UK Economy an additional £6.86billion in lost productivity.
Economic outcomes, particularly unemployment rates, were hardest hit in the Northern Powerhouse areas and mental and financial wellbeing was hardest hit and loneliness more evident. These reductions in mental wellbeing in the Northern Powerhouse areas could cost the UK economy up to £5bn in reduced productivity.
Over the past ten years, government led austerity cuts had already disproportionately affected local authority areas in the north. The report estimates that reductions in the core spending power of local authorities in the Northern Powerhouse areas meant that each loss of £1 per head cost £3.17 per head in lost productivity, equivalent to around a £2bn loss in Gross Domestic Product per year for Northern Powerhouse areas.
Even before the Covid pandemic, child health a key predictor of life-long health and economic productivity, was poor and deteriorating. Since the pandemic, adverse trends in poverty, education, employment and mental health for children and young people have been made worse. As a consequence, the productivity gap between the Northern Powerhouse and the rest of the country is likely to worsen for subsequent generations if central government don’t act rapidly.
The report concludes that “As it develops its post Covid-19 ‘levelling up’ industrial strategy, central government should pay particular attention to the importance of supporting the physical and mental health of the Northern Powerhouse areas as a route to increased prosperity.”
This means, as we move through the pandemic and plan our long term strategy for economic growth as a country, the government needs to invest disproportionately in new services, employment and skills opportunities for the north. Investing in improving health and wellbeing in Pennine Lancashire will be one of the best ways to achieve this.
Without this additional investment for the north, the country as a whole will miss one of its biggest opportunities to improve both lives and livelihoods.