England, N. Ireland, Scotland, Wales – Devolution and Disadvantage

Sharpie — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 19:15:20 +0000

Joseph Rowntree Foundation have released a series of reports to mark 10 years of devolution. The reports look at the impact of devolved policies and recognise a need for the Westminster to continue to reserve certain powers in order to improve conditions across the board but picks up on a failure to communicate feedback and learning between central and devolved government policies.

While concluding that much of the improvement in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales stems from UK policy, the reports acknowledge promising results from devolved policies, especially in the areas of social housing and elderly care. Athough their impact so far has been limited in size these results should improve as the administrations stabilise and imbed.

A less positive equalising factor was raised by report author Jim McCormick, who warns -

“The scale of the projected cuts in public spending will cause some of the gains seen in the last 10 years to unravel.”

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England, N. Ireland, Scotland, Wales – Devolution and Disadvantage