A vision for a fairer future

By Andy Hull / @andyhull79

A year ago Labour List covered the start of the Islington Fairness Commission‘s work. That work culminates today in the publication of the Commission’s final report, Closing the Gap. As suggested in yesterday’s Guardian, it offers a bold action plan for building a fairer borough, which, despite its swanky image, is one of the most deprived in England, with a massive divide between rich and poor.

Chaired by Professor Richard Wilkinson, co-author of bestselling book The Spirit Level: Why Equality Is Better For Everyone, the Commission’s aim was to come up with radical ways to tackle the root causes of poverty and inequality and create a fairer borough for the benefit of all.

Now the Commission – the first of its kind in the country – is publishing its final report with 19 concrete recommendations for how to narrow Islington’s divide. It argues that all employers in Islington should pay their directly employed staff at least the London Living Wage and that this should apply to contracted staff as well wherever possible. Major employers should also publish their pay differentials to show the differences in pay between those at the top and bottom of the organisiation. To address the issue of crippling debt, the Commission recommends that the Council should look to pass a by-law to stop payday loan companies from operating in the borough as well as taking strong enforcement action with its partners against illegal loan sharks. And employers in Islington, the report contends, should do more to help support young people into training and employment, or to help them set up their own business.

As Professor Wilkinson’s renowned research demonstrates, ‘Large differences in income and wealth increase the social distances between people and add to distinctions of class and status. To want to create a classless society without reducing income differences is like wanting to get slim without reducing the calories’.

But with such wide divides between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ – Islington has no shortage of multi-millionaires and yet half of all the borough’s children live in poverty – it will be no mean feat for Islington’s community to rise to the challenge the Commission lays down, especially against the backdrop of swingeing government cuts on an unprecedented scale. That said, inaction is not an option: our Labour Council cannot just sit back and watch as pupils from poorer backgrounds lose out to their wealthier peers by 10 percentage points in educational performance by the time that they leave primary school.

The Commission’s report, however, is where the hard work begins, not where it ends. Actually delivering meaningful and lasting change on the ground in the face of persistent problems of poverty and inequality will not be easy. But there is the political will in Islington – and not just in the Council – to make the Commission’s work real. Those who have been involved in its work will now champion it, advocate its recommendations, and do everything they can to ensure that this is one report that doesn’t just gather dust on a shelf.

Meanwhile, Fairness Commissions have now also been set up in Liverpool and in York, and discussions are under way about others being established elsewhere in the country. It should come as no surprise that people around the country are trying to rise to The Spirit Level‘s call to arms. A fairness agenda is one that speaks to core British values, felt keenly up and down the land. That’s why hundreds of local people turned up to take part in the public meetings held by the Islington Fairness Commission. Those of us who sat on it are determined not to let them down.

Councillor Andy Hull is Co-Chair of The Islington Fairness Commission