The GMB trade union yesterday pledged to defend jobs and services in the wake of the results of the BBC-commissioned Experian survey.
The results of the survey show that public spending cuts that are in the pipeline will impact hardest on the old industrial heartland economies in the North East, North West and West Midlands.
Paul Kenny GMB general secretary said: ‘The economic recessions of the 80s and 90s, made far worse by the monetarist ideology of the then Tory Government, ripped the heart out of the UK’s manufacturing industry.
‘The destruction of jobs left a legacy of high unemployment and high levels of incapacity benefit claimants in the old industrial areas.
‘This survey shows that this new Tory-Lib Dem government public spending cuts will leave these areas reeling in terms of job cuts and yet again single them out as the main victims of public services cuts.
‘The upcoming conference season provides an opportunity to remind the electorate that it was the excesses of the bankers not high public spending that caused this recession.
‘It is not too late for delegates to the Liberal Party Conference to insist that their MPs stand by their party’s position at the General Election that there should be no public spending cuts until the recovery is fully under way.
‘The deficit in public finances is mainly the outcome of the loss of six per cent of national output because of the recession.
‘There will be major campaigns mounted across the country to stop the mindless destruction of jobs and services by a Tory Party hell bent on using this deficit to pursue the ideology of a smaller state.
‘This survey pinpoints the parts of the UK most at risk yet again to Tory ideology and the GMB will be at the forefront of the campaigns to defend jobs and services.’
Meanwhile, public sector union Unison warned that the government’s public sector pay freeze is causing untold misery.
Unison general secretary Dave Prentis commented on statistics showing that take home pay has increased by 1.3 per cent, well below the level of inflation.
He said: ‘The squeeze on pay is adding to the country’s economic woes with consumer spending power and confidence plummeting.
‘Increasingly we see empty and boarded up shops littering the nation’s high streets.
‘The pitiful 1.3 per cent pay increase across the economy is bad enough, but for more than a million local government workers their pay is completely frozen this year.
‘With inflation at 3.1 per cent and with the increase in VAT and national insurance kicking in next March, the picture looks bleak.
‘Public sector workers face a further two-year pay freeze which will cause untold hardship to working families.
‘Unless this government starts to think about the damage that a pay freeze will cause, we will see more hard-working people losing their homes and falling into impossible levels of debt.’
The BBC-commissioned research published on Thursday suggests that industrial areas in the North East and Midlands are least resilient to economic shocks.
Middlesbrough is ranked as the most vulnerable, followed by Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and Stoke-on-Trent.
The Experian research estimates how England’s regions may cope with further public sector cuts.
The study looks at the ability of each local authority area to withstand sudden changes in the economy.
A clear north-south divide is evident in the research.
Elmbridge in Surrey is the most resilient area in England, followed by St Albans in Hertfordshire and then Waverley in Surrey, the information suggests.
The research, commissioned by BBC English Regions, looks at four key themes; business, community, people and place.
A number of factors have been analysed, including the amount of vulnerable and resilient industry within an area, the life expectancy of residents, earnings of workers, unemployment and crime rates.
Middlesbrough Labour MP Stuart Bell said: ‘The reason there’s a north-south divide is because we lost our major industries in the 80s, like steel and shipbuilding, and jobs from those sectors went into the public sector.
‘We recalibrated the economy along those lines to the benefit of the North East.’
Bell said the government was making a ‘fundamental’ mistake in thinking that the private sector would step in to create jobs.
He warned: ‘You don’t go from the public sector to the private sector, you go from the public sector to the dole queue.’
The Experian research suggests Middlesbrough will be the least resilient to public sector cuts.
It is ranked at number 324 out of 324 council areas. The Teesside town also appears as the least resilient in the business section.
Alastair Thomson, the dean of Teesside University business school, said Middlesbrough had a high number of workers employed in the public sector, particularly in the NHS and education.
He said there was very little of the traditional heavy industry associated with Teesside and the North East left.
Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon said the town’s budget would be cut by more than £30m over the next three years.
The North East as a whole does not fare well in the Experian study.
Redcar and Cleveland, Hartlepool, South Tyneside and Sunderland are all in the bottom 20 of the overall resilience table.
One of the area’s large industrial employers, Corus steel works in Redcar, announced the partial mothballing of the plant and loss of 1,600 jobs in February.
At the top of Experian’s resilience table is Elmbridge in Surrey, followed by St Albans in Hertfordshire, which also topped the business resilience section.
Mel Hilbrown, director of St Albans and District Chamber of Commerce, said the main industry in the city was knowledge-based, such as finance and consultancy, which had proved resilient in the recession.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the Experian research showed a north-south divide was already present in England.
He claimed that large spending cuts to be announced next month should be seen as part of a broader effort to put the economy on to a more sustainable footing.
In his speech on the government spending review, Clegg stressed the need to ‘balance the books’, adding: ‘A thriving economy cannot be built in the long-term on shifting sands of debt.’
