Allegedly, the collective noun for a group of mayors a ‘magnificence’, although my preference is the ‘chain gang’. We witnessed this unusual sighting last Thursday in Sheffield, when the five northern metro mayors – Andy Burnham, Dan Jarvis, Tracy Brabin, Steve Rotheram and Jamie Driscoll – were joined by former Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry at the Great Northern Conference.
The Great Northern Conference
The event, now in its third year, brings together the great and the good of the North to discuss how best to grow the economy. In the words of Northern Powerhouse, the aim is to “build a greener, fairer, equal future for the North”.
The timing of it was pretty near perfect – a day after the autumn budget and four days before the start of COP26. There was much for Sheffield to celebrate in the budget, with the announcement of an additional £37m of funding from the levelling-up fund for two flagship projects in the city.
Yet for all that, the mayors were less upbeat about future prospects. Most of this is due to the fact that much-needed transport spending has not yet been allocated to the projects that Boris Johnson promised for the North.
Northern transport plans fail to deliver
It is widely accepted now that the eastern leg of HS2, a cross-country route that runs between Birmingham and Leeds via the East Midlands and Sheffield, will be shelved. Equally worrying is that there seems little movement on Northern Powerhouse Rail, which aims to transform the rail services and connectivity across the north.
The integrated rail plan, promised over a year ago, has yet to materialise. Civil Engineers director of policy Chris Richards was quoted in Construction News as saying:
“This uncertainty has caused untold damage to the communities living along the eastern leg of HS2 while also meaning we still lack plans to deliver the connectivity promised between cities and regions across the north of England.”
The government can only string this out for so long. ”We are waiting for the integrated rail plan and the mood music is not good at all”, Andy Burnham told the conference. Or, as the Sheffield Star put it, “Building the eastern leg of HS2 through Yorkshire, Northern Powerhouse Rail and the Integrated Rail Plan had all been promised but delayed and not delivered”.
Closing the north-south divide needs sustained funding
The more the government delays, the more questions start to be asked about just what the government IS going to deliver on for the North. Jake Berry, MP for Rossendale and Darwen, quoted a Centre for Cities report that calculated closing the north-south divide would cost more than the €2 trillion spent on the reunification of Germany – equivalent to around £71bn every year. For comparison, the UK’s levelling-up fund is £4.8bn in total. That’s one hell of an underspend.
Of course, anything is possible with the right level of sustained funding. Much could be made of South Yorkshire or the Humber ports, for example, in terms of the green industrial revolution. The conference heard about the exciting projects around the Humber and green manufacturing. There are huge possibilities, against which we have the reality of a substandard rail network, with no direct east-west link between the ports of Hull and Liverpool.
And don’t get anyone started about the lack of proper investment and provision for Braford – a city that quite literally is the end of the line when it comes to rail provision.
When you start to unpick the level of underinvestment against the level of transport spend per head enjoyed by those who live in London, you start to understand the frustration. Tracy Brabin, mayor for West Yorkshire, highlighted that her region’s transport spend is £174 per head against £500 for those in London. What they have, we want!
Growing frustration from the North
The frustration for these northern mayors is that they can see how much more they could do for their areas if they had the right powers and right investment. Dan Jarvis, metro mayor for South Yorkshire, stressed that we need more resources that are long term and reliable – in other words, not the piecemeal investment that Andy Burnham also railed against.
The can, it seems, can only be kicked down the road for so long. And that road is coming to an end. Mayors talk to each other and their sense of frustration is palpable. It’s also a frustration that’s increasingly shared by businesses, and northern newspapers and voters.
Not only is there no sight of the promised integrated transport plan, but the levelling-up White Paper is also notable for its absence. The government really needs to get its act together. In the North, we neither like to be taken for mugs, nor played like fools.
Much was made of the Conservative gains in red-wall seats. If the government continues with this smoke and mirrors approach, the new MPs here may soon discover that many former Labour voters only lent them their vote. Other parties are available.
