GALLERY: Labour Party Conference 2025

In September 2025, Health Equity North held two panel events and a roundtable event at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool. We partnered with politicians, policymakers and Government representatives to bring the North’s pressing health issues to the forefront of our Government.

Private roundtable: Delivering the 10 Year Plan in Health Inequalities: productivity, mental and physical health across the life course.

Northern MPs Anna Dixon, MP for Shipley, and Debbie Abrahams, MP for Oldham and Saddleworth, led discussions with representatives from the University of Liverpool, The Work Foundation, Centre for Ageing Better, Durham University, Northern powerhouse Partnership, University of Manchester, University of Sheffield, IPPR North, Yorkshire Cancer Research, Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Healthcare Infection Society.

The roundtable considered how joined-up strategies can deliver better health and employment outcomes across the life course, especially through preventative approaches, early interventions, and regional innovation.  The event focussed on our Health for Wealth report which shows that productivity is lower in the North, largely due to poorer health outcomes, and ‘Ageing in the North’ report which found that  targeted investment has the potential to reduce or recover as much as £10.9 billion in lost productivity costs, £315 million in NHS costs from falls and hip fractures, and £588 million in NHS costs from treating conditions resulting from poor housing. 

We will shortly publish a full report on the roundtable discussions.

Wireless event: Building a Better Future for Northern Women: Health, Opportunity, Equality

Our Executive Director Hannah Davies and Northern Health Science Alliance Chair Professor Louise Kenny joined Professor Dame Lesley Regan, Women’s Health Ambassador for England and Kirith Entwistle, MP for Bolton North East, Member of the Women and Equalities Select Committee. The event focuses on our Woman of the North report which found that women living in the North have lower healthy life expectancy, fewer qualifications, worse mental health, and are more likely to suffer domestic violence or to end up in the criminal justice system than their counterparts in the rest of England.  The economic cost of these inequalities is also explored in the report which estimates women in the North lose out on a staggering £132m every week, compared to what they would get paid if wages were the same as women in the rest of the country. The panel looked at the scale of inequalities facing women in the North, in health, work, and life chances, and how these intersect with national policy, as well as the opportunities that exist to make change happen, and what actions should be prioritised to close the health gap for women in the North.

We will shortly publish a full report on the panel discussion.

Wireless event: Addressing child health and social inequalities through poverty reduction nationally and locally

Kate Proctor, UK News Leads at Save the Children, chaired the meeting which saw Sam Rushworth, MP for Bishop Auckland, Professors David Taylor-Robinson and Kate Pickett, Academic Co-Directors of Health Equity North and Graham Whitham, CEO and Founder of Resolve Poverty discuss to ever-present effects of child poverty and the regional inequalities prevalent in the North of England. Held with the University of York’s York Policy Engine, Health Equity North and Child of the North, the event explored how national policy and local strategies can work hand-in-hand to reduce child poverty and close the health and opportunity gap experienced by children across the UK, particularly those in the North. We were also joined by two young people, Philip and Hope from the University of Liverpool’s Young People’s Advisory Board, who shared their lived experience and asked the panel all-important questions on what issues need to be urgently addressed in order to improve  circumstances for young people.

We will shortly publish a full report on the panel discussion.