2 2GM Monday August 3 2020 | the times
News
Wage growth in London has been over-
shadowed by the rest of the country in
the past two decades as surging rents in
the city absorbed more of workers’ pay,
according to research.
A report by the Institute for Fiscal
Studies (IFS) found that regional pay
inequality has narrowed since the early
2000s but wealth inequality has
continued to rise as house prices in the
capital soared.
Property and financial wealth
increased by 150 per cent on average in
London between 2008 and 2018, the
think tank said. Over the same period
in the northeast of England, it rose by
just 3 per cent.
Whitehall has been tasked with de-
livering on Boris Johnson’s promise to
“level up” Britain’s economy, boosting
activity in “left-behind” areas.
The IFS found that average full-time
pay in London, which has the UK’s
highest wages with mean earnings 1.
times the national average, has grown
by just 1.5 per cent since 2002, account-
ing for inflation. Across all otherLondoners hit as wage growth
slows and housing costs jump
Callum Jones Trade Correspondent regions, this has risen by 5.6 per cent
over the same period.
Lower pay growth in the capital can
partly be explained by “big falls” in
earnings among those at the top of the
salary ladder after the financial crisis of
just over a decade ago. These reduc-
tions have hit more people in London
than elsewhere. Among those on lower
wages, a greater number of the workers
benefiting from increases in the mini-
mum wage have been based in other
parts of the country.
Higher housing costs in London have
“eaten more into the incomes of house-
holds” across the city, the report said.
Since 2005, average rents have risen by
43 per cent in the capital and 19 per cent
in the northeast.
The impact of Covid-19 on income
and wealth remains unclear, it added,
noting how “tourism-focused areas,
including often deprived seaside
towns” could be hit hard if the hospitali-
ty industry struggles to recover. High
streets in more deprived areas were
particularly vulnerable to an accelera-
tion in online shopping, it said. Such
challenges could bring opportunity,however. The IFS suggested a shift to-
wards remote working could dent “the
pull of London and other major cities to
high-productivity employers and
workers”. This could increase access to
higher-paid jobs in “more peripheral”
areas of the UK, it said, and “narrow
gaps not only in incomes, but also in
wealth, as property prices adjust”.
Even before Covid-19, David Phillips,
associate director at the institute, said
that it was clear “different parts of the
country face different challenges —
calling for different policy responses”.
In and around the capital, housing is
one of the fundamental issues. “The
high cost of housing pulls down the
disposable income of households, espe-
cially poorer ones,” Mr Phillips said.
“And the rapid growth in house prices
has widened wealth inequalities not
just between London and the rest of the
country, but also between those on and
off the housing ladder in the capital.
“In much of the rest of the country, a
bigger issue is low productivity and a
paucity of high-productivity firms and
high-paying jobs.”
The young people leaving city life, TimesBrexit planning helped virus response
Preparations for a no-deal Brexit
helped an otherwise weakened public
sector respond better to coronavirus, a
report has concluded.
The Institute for Government, the
Whitehall think tank, found that hospi-
tals, care homes and local government
faced the crisis poorly prepared “after a
decade of budget pressures”. This, it
said, had left “staff more stretched,
buildings were poorly maintained, and
vital equipment went unbought”.
However, the report found that in
certain areas the public sector’s re-sponse to Covid-19 had been improved
because of the extensive preparations
made to get the UK ready for a potent-
ial no-deal Brexit last year.
It said that no-deal planning by the
Department of Health and Social Care
meant that it better understood how
supply chains would be disrupted in a
pandemic and had improved its stock-
piles of some drugs.
Locally, planning for potential food
shortages meant that it was easier to
ensure that vulnerable people who
were shielding had access to food.
Overall, the report found lessons had
not been learnt from pandemic-plann-ing exercises while Downing Street fail-
ed to engage effectively with public-
sector bodies delivering the response.
“Frontline staff have performed re-
markably during the crisis, in extraordi-
narily difficult circumstances,” Nick
Davies, programme director at the
think tank, said. “But public services
have faltered due to decisions made
over the past decade. Greater invest-
ment in staff, buildings and equipment
would have left services far better
placed to respond to coronavirus.”
The institute compiled the report
with the Chartered Institute of Public
Finance and Accountancy.Oliver Wright Policy EditorCOMMENT 23
LETTERS 26
LEADING ARTICLES 27WORLD 28
BUSINESS 33
REGISTER 45Global
confirmed casesUK confirmed
casesCORONAVIRUS SUMMARY
WEATHER 49
CROSSWORD 60
TV & RADIO TIMESRegister of those at risk
Domestic travel bans and a new
targeted Covid-19 risk register are
among plans being investigated as
the government prepares a
strategy to cope with the virus in
the autumn and winter when the
NHS is likely to be under intense
pressure. A more sophisticated
risk register would potentially use
existing health service data to
identify those of all ages who are
most in danger from coronavirus.
They could then be asked to shield
at home while the rest of the
population continued to move
around more freely. Page 8Civil servants stay away
Senior civil servants have privately
made it clear to their staff that
they will not be forced to go back
to the office if they do not want to
go, defying Boris Johnson’s call for
a mass return to work. Some
departments have been told they
will get two months’ notice before
a collective return. There have
been two new Covid-19 outbreaks
in Whitehall — one in the Home
Office and one at the Cabinet
Office — and officials have
accused ministers of using them as
guinea pigs for plans to get people
back to their offices. Page 917,660,523 680,304,695 46,Curfew for Melbourne
Melbourne, Australia’s second
largest city, entered a six-week
“shock and awe” lockdown with a
police curfew as coronavirus cases
surged in 80 care homes. The
southeastern state of Victoria was
declared a disaster zone and its
six million people were told to stay
at home. Police will enforce an
8pm curfew, with fines expected to
reach thousands of pounds. State
authorities said that there were
nearly 2,000 cases of Covid-19 for
which contact tracers could not
find the infection source. Page 10King’s warning to Bank
The Bank of England has been
warned against a big increase to
its quantitative easing scheme by
the governor who started its
money-printing programme in
response to the 2009 credit
crunch. Lord King of Lothbury
said a large volume of money
stimulus would be premature
because although there were signs
of financial recovery, a significant
amount of the economy was still
shut down. Page 36Solicitors under threat
Legal advice centres may collapse
and about 60 per cent of high
street solicitors fear going out of
business because of the pandemic.
The Commons justice committee
called for more funding for law
centres and other not-for-profit
legal services in a report into the
effect of the virus on the legal
profession in England and Wales.
MPs said that publicly funded
providers of legal advice were
struggling before the outbreak and
that “access to real justice” would
suffer without support. Page 9Companies fear failure
More than four fifths of medium-
sized companies fear that they will
not be able to trade for longer
than nine months under present
funding arrangements, a survey by
the accountancy firm BDO has
found. The poll of 500 businesses
underlines concerns about
viability after support packages
end. It also found that more than
nine in ten of the businesses had
made redundancies in response to
the Covid-19 outbreak. Page 41Global deathsUK deathsCOMMENT
There is a chance that lonely obedience to the
ten-day self-isolation rule will cost lives
LIBBY PURVES, PAGE 25Red card for coughing
Footballers should be sent off if
they deliberately cough at an
opponent or match official,
according to new guidance for
referees from the FA. The rules,
which are effective immediately
and apply to all levels of the game,
state that if there is a “clear act” of
coughing towards someone then
disciplinary action should be taken
in the form of a red card. The
guidance puts coughing on a
similar level to punching. Page 60‘Masks at home’ in US
Some Americans may need to
wear masks at home to protect
their households as the nation
enters uncharted territory in its
battle against the virus, the White
House said. Dr Deborah Birx, the
US task force co-ordinator, said
that rising infections in urban and
rural America marked a “new
phase” of the pandemic, which is
more broadly entrenched than
when it took hold in a few large
cities in the spring. Page 11Please note, some sections of The Times are available only in the United Kingdom and Ireland
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effect”: questions go unasked,
prevailing theories go unchallenged
and freedom and knowledge suffer.
Only 9 per cent of active SSH
academics voted Leave and only
7 per cent identify as right-leaning,
while 40 per cent of Leave-
supporting and half of right-leaning
SSH academics report that they self-
censor their beliefs out of fear of
consequences to their career.
The American legal scholar Cass
Sunstein writes that conformity is
worse in settings where there is a
social element. Many university
departments are collegial spaces
where social norms often include an
assumed commitment to progressive
values. There is also a politically
intolerant minority of 10 per cent to
25 per cent of faculty who take it
upon themselves to police these
norms inside the university. A clear
majority of academics, including
leftists, oppose these tactics. But as
Sunstein notes, a vocal minority can
prevail when the majority fears to
speak out. Our report calls on the
government to ensure universities
enforce existing laws on academic
freedom and commit to political
non-discrimination.Eric Kaufmann and Remi Adekoya
are co-authors of Policy Exchange’s
report, Academic Freedom:
Protecting Viewpoint Diversity.
Remi Adekoya teaches political science
at Sheffield University and Eric
Kaufmann is professor of politics at
Birkbeck CollegeF
or political minorities such
as conservatives and
gender-critical feminists
academic freedom is under
serious threat in Britain,
(Eric Kaufmann and Remi Adekoya
write). Forms of intolerance that
make the news, such as campaigns
to fire professors or no-platform
speakers, are thankfully rare even as
they appear to have increased
substantially since 2017.
The bigger problem, which our
new Policy Exchange report brings
to light, is the fact that academics
with dissenting views face
discrimination inside universities.
Indeed, one in three academics
would discriminate against a Leaver
for a job and an even higher share
would do so against a right-leaning
grant application. This leads
dissenters to self-censor in their
work in order to get hired, have a
pleasant work environment and
advance their careers. The result,
especially in the social sciences and
humanities (SSH), is a “chilling‘Academics
feel forced to
self-censor’
Comment
that most academics do not support
campaigns to dismiss colleagues for
their views. Of the 820 academics who
responded to the poll, 336 were retired.
The report was written by Remi
Adekoya, who teaches politics at Shef-
field University, Eric Kaufmann, pro-
fessor of politics at Birkbeck College,
and Tom Simpson, associate professor
of philosophy at Oxford. It was backed
by the former Labour MP Ruth Smeeth,
Trevor Phillips, the former chairman of
the Equality and Human Rights Com-
mission, Lord Sumption, the former
Supreme Court justice, and Ruth Kelly,
the former education secretary.
Mr Phillips described the findings as
“deeply disturbing”, adding: “No one
fought for diversity and inclusion in or-
der to create universities staffed by a
faculty who may look representative,
but are to all intents and purposes, in-
tellectually identical robots.”
The report called for parliament to
create a director for academic freedom
with ombudsman powers. It said an ac-
ademic freedom bill should also estab-
lish that universities have a duty to
protect academic freedom and that
staff are able within the law to question
and test received wisdom.
Jo Grady, general secretary of the
University and College Union, said:
“The idea that academic freedom is
under threat is a myth. The main con-
cern our members express is not with
think tank-inspired bogeyman, but
with the current government’s wish to
police what can and cannot be taught.”continued from page 1
Freedom of speech