The Glasgow City Region Policy Lab – led by Dr David Waite, Prof Graeme Roy and Prof Stuart McIntyre (Strathclyde) - held an event on February 19 at the ARC (University of Glasgow) to explore the trajectory of inclusive growth policy within the city region. The event benefited from the support of the Centre for Public Policy.

The event focused on the Glasgow City Region’s embrace of inclusive growth in the Regional Economic Strategy and emerging concerns in the Innovation Action Plan.

Bookending the event were presentations from Prof Neil Lee (LSE) who spoke about his new book – “Innovation for the Masses” – and Dr Marianne Sensier (Manchester) who reflected on inclusive growth issues being considered by The Productivity Institute.

In our view, five key points from the session were:

  1. Inclusive growth is a concept that needs to be understood across the range of policy domains required to deliver it. Whilst to date, inclusive growth has filtered across all parts of local economic development policy - at a somewhat high-level - there is an opportunity to focus on particular policy domains, such as infrastructure and innovation, to ensure tractability.
  2. Glasgow is a context ripe for developing effective inclusive growth policy, as growth dynamics need to be directed to address vast disparities across a number of socio-economic and health outcomes. City region policymakers have long been engaged with issues concerning inclusive growth, and there may be opportunities to tie in future funding pots and allocations to support inclusive growth outcomes.
  3. Innovation districts are major regional innovation policies that can potentially be deployed to support inclusive growth. As Higher Education-led initiatives, these investments - which may substantially alter the character of certain neighbourhoods within the city region - provide a notable area of policy experimentation that warrant thorough evaluation and monitoring.
  4. Glasgow’s innovation action plan is an opportunity to write in a concern for inclusive growth in innovation policy actions within the city region that coalesce actors from the public, private, third and higher education sectors. Inclusive innovation provides an arena for policymaking that is distinct and novel.
  5. There is a question about whether there is the political and policy will to stick to the inclusive growth agenda that was first outlined by the Scottish Government in 2015. Progressive labels are coming and going, and there may be a risk of dabbling with different approaches that are not clearly distinguished or set out vis-à-vis what has come before.

Inclusive growth remains a key area of engagement for the Policy Lab, and we look forward to continuing and extending the dialogue with attendees.

A podcast capturing some of the key issues from the session is also available on Spotify.

First published: 13 March 2024

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