A report released shows northerners were more likely to die from Covid-19, spent nearly a month and a half more in lockdowns, suffered worse mental health and were made poorer than the rest of England during the first year of the pandemic.
The report authors make a series of recommendations to Government including:
- Place-focused vaccination programmes targeted at vulnerable populations in the North of England.
- Increasing NHS and local authority resources and service provision for mental health in the North. Investing in research into mental health interventions in the North.
- Investing in increasing capacity in northern hospitals to help them catch up on non Covid-19 health care.
- Making health a key part of an integrated levelling up strategy.
- Recommitting to ending child poverty. To do this Government must increase child benefit, increase the child element of universal credit by £20 per week, extend provision of free childcare, remove the benefit cap and the two-child limit and extend provision of free school meals, and invest in children’s services by increasing government grants to local authorities in the North.
- Maintaining and increasing the additional £1,000 extra funding of universal credit.
