Major investors in the North East have been urged to help “break the chain” of huge inequalities holding back the region.
Financial services giant Legal & General (L&G) is launching a new £1 million fund to help improve health equity in the North East and in turn transform the area’s economy.
Speaking alongside mayor Kim McGuinness and other leaders in Newcastle on Monday morning, the company’s CEO António Simões called it a “moral imperative” for the firm to take action to combat severe inequalities in an area where it made made substantial investments over the years – including for the building flagship Helix development and the regeneration of Sunderland city centre’s former Vaux Brewery site.
It comes just days after the mayor announced the creation of a new Child Poverty Reduction Unit to help the 118,000 living in destitution in her patch.
A new report from Health Equity North has also revealed today how women living in our region have shorter lives and work more hours for less pay, as well as being the most likely in England to suffer from domestic violence.
In a roundtable discussion held at the Catalyst building on Monday, Newcastle University pro-vice chancellor Jane Robinson laid bare the scale of the inequities felt across the region.
She reported how nearly a quarter of five-year-olds here suffer from tooth decay, and as a result end up missing more time at school, and how the gap in life expectancy in areas of Newcastle just a few Metro stops apart can vary by eight to 10 years.
Prof Robinson added that, according to research conducted by the university, closing the health gap between the North and the South of England could add £13.2 billion to the UK economy.
Mr Simões, who recently succeeded County Durham-raised Nigel Wilson at L&G, said that the £1 million it will give to voluntary and community organisations in the North to start combating those issues, out of a £3 million national pot, would reach “places where private investment won’t go”.
Expressions of interest in bidding for a share of the money have already been made by almost 400 organisations – ranging from housing associations, to NHS trusts and bakeries.
The former Santander bank boss admitted that the fund, which was announced this summer and for which applications are set to open this month, was a “small amount” compared to the scale of the problem but that L&G was “just getting started” and hoped other big businesses would follow their charitable drive.
He added: “There is a big convening power for us as leaders. I think there is a pent up demand for international investment into the UK. And we have to have a narrative where companies are benefiting society and also doing that in a way that is commercially viable for shareholders.”
Ms McGuinness told the Local Democracy Reporting Service how she wanted to create more public-private partnerships in the region to tackle health inequalities and also deliver major infrastructure projects like the restoration of the mothballed Leamside Line.
She agreed that £1 million would not solve the problem but was “an approach and a signal” of what she hopes is to come.
The Labour mayor said: “It means nothing if it doesn’t improve real people’s lives – breaking the chain between where you are born having a fundamental impact on where you end up, the fact that a kid in Fawdon can expect to live 10 years less than one in Gosforth.”
She added: “This is showing that I am not the only one who cares and is talking about this, we are taking this approach right across our region from people who are investing here.
“We want to be talking openly about the link between positive social outcomes and profit, being really honest and open about that in the most commercial rooms in the world and having the expectation that that is how we want to do business here.”