Inclusive Growth Seminar Series

As Chair of the Oxford Strategic Partnership, I would like to invite you to a seminar series on Inclusive Growth in Oxfordshire. These seminars, held in partnership with Oxfordshire Local Enterprise Partnership, will explore how we can collectively enable a more equitable and inclusive economy in our county. I would welcome your participation and contribution to this important subject.

Oxford and Oxfordshire are among the fastest growing local economies in the UK but also one of the least equal, so we want to examine what fundamental structural changes may be required to ensure our future growth delivers benefits to all residents and serves to narrow the inequalities gap.

Through the seminars we want to develop a common understanding of this challenge, learn more about the measures and policy interventions being proposed, and what strategies are being trialled elsewhere. This will help inform what we can do here to have a meaningful positive impact on inequities in income and opportunity.

Oxfordshire’s Local Industrial Strategy now includes a commitment to an Inclusive Growth Commission, development of which will be informed by the seminar discussions. This initiative is to be sponsored through the Oxfordshire Growth Board.

I very much hope you will be able to join us, for the first and subsequent seminars on this important topic.

Warm regards,

Baroness Royall

Chair of the Oxford Strategic Partnership and Principal of Somerville College, Oxford.

Seminar 1 - Defining the Challenge and Potential Interventions

The first Inclusive Growth seminar will focus on the research, policy and data on economic and social inequality to define the real scale of the challenge nationally and locally. We will start the discussion on potential interventions to be developed through the seminar series and beyond.

Speakers confirmed as: Ed Cox, Dr Mark Fransham, Will Hutton and Professor Brian Nolan.

Ed Cox is Director of Public Services and Communities at the RSA (Royal Society of the Arts), where he is leading an ambitious programme of work on people, power, place and inclusive growth. Ed previously led IPPR (Institute for Public Policy Research) North for 9 years where he was a champion for devolution and much of the thinking behind the ‘Northern Powerhouse’. Before that, Ed was an adviser to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government where he played a key role in developing the Sub-National Review (2007) and the Empowerment White Paper (2008).

Mark Fransham is a Researcher at the International Inequalities Institute, London School of Economics. He is interested in comparative analysis of urban areas and their responses to economic and social change and has undertaken doctoral research at The University of Oxford about the spatial distribution of income poverty at neighbourhood level in England.

Will Hutton is a British political economist, academic administrator, and journalist. He is currently Principal of Hertford College, University of Oxford, and Chair of the Big Innovation Centre, an initiative from the Work Foundation (formerly the Industrial Society), having been chief executive of the Work Foundation from 2000 to 2008. He was formerly editor-in-chief for The Observer.

Brian Nolan is Director of Employment, Equity and Growth and Professor of Social Policy, Department of Social Policy and Intervention (University of Oxford). He is an economist by training, with a doctorate from the London School of Economics, and his main areas of research are income inequality, poverty, and the economics of social policy. His work seeks to understand why current growth models are failing those on middle and lower incomes in many developed countries, and what policies may help to promote better, fairer growth.