By Mike Emmerich
What’s good for London is good for the UK, right? Well yes, but that’s not the whole story.
Advocates for further devolution and public investment for London can point to myriad statistics which show how reliant the rest of the country has become on the capital. The latest ONS figures show that London produced a £26.6bn fiscal surplus (just over £3,000 per head) which is redistributed to fund public services in struggling regions. And if by ‘struggling’ we mean anywhere receiving more in public spending than it raises in tax, we can include every single region outside London and the wider South East.
And with London’s GVA running at about 170% of the UK average, it’s easy to make the argument that investment in London delivers a bigger bang for the buck.