The Northern Economy in the Next Decade: Paper 5 from the Northern Economic Agenda project

This report presents recommendations for the three northern regions of England, the North East, North West and Yorkshire and the Humber, on:

• how to improve their economic performance; and
• how to narrow the gap in prosperity between these regions and more prosperous parts of England, while also delivering a socially just and environmentally sustainable northern economy.

It brings together our recommendations on future economic policy for the North of England. Our aim is to suggest reforms that will enable the northern regions to combine strong economic growth with a socially just distribution of the benefits from that growth, in a manner that is consistent with environmental sustainability and in particular the need to avert dangerous climate change over the twenty-first century.

Our in-depth analysis of the northern regions, embracing a wide range of economic, social and environmental factors of development, shows that there is no a priori reason why the North cannot at least make up a large proportion of the output gap with the UK average over the next 10 to 20 years.