- Conference
- 2022 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 22 February 2022
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Conference expresses it’s deep scepticism and anger at the Tory government’s claim that they are levelling up the country.
UNISON members and the communities in which they live will know only too well that it is the policies pursued by Tory governments that have resulted in the UK becoming one of the most unequal countries in the world.
From the Thatcher period to the present day, successive Tory governments have reigned down deindustrialisation, monetarism, anti-union laws, flexible labour markets and austerity on working people. And rather than seek to create a more qual country, their policy priority has been to make the UK a haven for global capitalism by creating an environment of low taxes, deregulation and privatisation.
Conference notes that these policies have resulted in growing wealth gaps between rich and poor, white and Black and north and south.
Conference notes the findings of recent research by IPPR North which show that:
1)Funding for levelling up pales in comparison to what has been lost during the austerity years;
2)For every job created in the North, just under three were created in London and the Greater South East;
3)In work poverty has risen in the north to 3.5 million in 2019/20.
Conference notes that the Shared Prosperity Fund, which forms a key component of the levelling up package announced by the government and which is worth £2.6billion over three years, simply replaces cash that poorer regions used to receive from the EU.
Conference agrees that targets included in the levelling up white paper on improving regional inequalities in life expectancy and educational outcomes are meaningless without measures to tackle the fundamental structural inequalities and work and class based power imbalances that underpin them.
Conference believes if anyone is qualified to identify the most appropriate levelling up criteria and the effectiveness of policies to achieve it, it is UNISON along with the wider trade union and labour movement.
Conference therefore calls on the National Executive Council to put in place plans to work with the TUC, the WTUC, the STUC and the ICTU, Labour Link and other like-minded organisations to establish:
a)Objective criteria to hold the government to account and establish substantive benchmarks for measuring levelling up. These should include progress towards increasing the share of national income received in the nations pay packets, progress towards closing the gender pay gap and addressing regional disparities in wealth, job opportunities, public service provision;
b)Alternative policies that will genuinely level up the UK, recognising the importance of public services, higher wages, an effective benefit system and progressive taxation.