Know your cities quiz...

The Politics Show has exclusively brought you the conclusions of a major report into the economic strengths and weaknesses of Britain's big cities.

The report has been written by the Centre for Cities - an independent think tank which was the brainchild of the former Labour minister, Lord Sainsbury. The work has been carried out in partnership with the Local Government Association.

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You can read the full report here...

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You can read the comments from the Centre for Cities' Professor Tony Travers below:

But before you go on, can you guess which cities are struggling? Some of the findings may surprise you. Try taking our quiz first...

The programme revealed that:

1. Unemployment is rising fastest in Hull.

2. The most socially deprived city in the UK is Liverpool

3. The city with the most unaffordable housing is Oxford.

4. The British city where wages are lowest is Hastings

5. The city where most people leave school with no qualifications is Belfast

6. The fastest shrinking city is Dundee.

The Politics Show spoke to Prof Tony Travers, who is on the board of the Centre for Cities.

Commenting on the report, which is published in full on Monday 26 January 2009, the Centre for Cities' Professor Tony Travers said:

TONY TRAVERS: I think what's surprising is something that was already hinted in the unemployment figures that were published this past week, is that so far the increase in Jobseekers Allowance, and therefore the implied increase in unemployment, has been higher in many Northern towns and cities than perhaps in the South, so far anyway. Hull, which is highlighted in the report, has had a particularly big increase, and looks therefore very vulnerable as the recession goes on.

JON SOPEL: And what is the challenge that poses, then, to government policy, public policy?

TONY TRAVERS: The challenge is how to allow these places, and not only of course the places that appear vulnerable, but even those that don't, to have enough freedom to kindle their economies and keep them going. At the moment the government's been sending a message to local authorities, you know austerity, cut council tax, and there's a risk therefore that they will close everything down, and what the government really wants, of course, is ingenuity to keep them going.

JON SOPEL: And what about the cities themselves, in terms of their readiness to take action that's necessary. Didn't it highlight, one of the things was, that a degree of complacency?

TONY TRAVERS: Well I think in fairness to the cities, particularly the bigger cities, the Liverpools, Manchesters, Newcastles they've developed a view of themselves boosting their performance, saying the future's good, and now they're faced with a recession it's difficult to switch to a slightly more complicated message, which is 'we need to be able to do different things, perhaps raise more of our own money', and we need to be able to admit things, perhaps talk about problems, in order that we can talk about how to solve them. So they've got so much into this spirit of how to talk themselves up, they now need to think hard about dealing with a very different kind of world.

JON SOPEL: And in terms of what you said about government policy, can you see either the Conservatives, or Labour, or the Liberal Democrats, saying 'yes, here's a whole lot more money, you need to go and spend this, do what you will'?

TONY TRAVERS: No they're not going to do that. The government has had to produce vast sums of money for particular functions, and you know this has been referred to earlier in the programme, to prop up the banking system and so on. They've brought a little bit of capital spending forward for investment in housing and transport and so on, but in the end the cities themselves need to be able to access their own resources, because they will know better in Liverpool, Manchester, Hull, Belfast, what they need in a way that the government, dropping in money from the top, is unlikely to get entirely right.

JON SOPEL: Tony Travers, a great pleasure to have you on the programme. Thanks very much for being with us. Thank you.

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