Northern Powerhouse5 Mar 2019 10:19
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/02/02/northernpowerhouse-drained-huge-lack-ambition/
Northern Powerhouse is being drained by a huge lack of ambition
2 FEBRUARY 2019 • 7:00PM
The Northern Powerhouse. Sounds good, doesn’t it? In fact, if you’re one of the 15million living there, or among the million private businesses based in the region, a proper strategy to unlock the area’s massive potential is genuinely rousing stuff. The North has been overlooked for too long and the North-South divide is only getting bigger.
The Government certainly hasn’t held back in laying out a stirring vision for a booming economy with a flourishing private sector and a highly-skilled workforce.
Yet, predictably, it has mostly turned out to be spin. Five years after George Osborne came up with the idea, very little has happened to turn this vision of a thriving region into reality.
Indeed, the Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson is so frustrated by the lack of progress that he has resigned from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, saying he would “rather have Mary Berry than Jake Berry” as the Northern Powerhouse Minister. Ouch.
The Government will argue that it is ploughing investment into northern transport and infrastructure but its idea of meaningful isn’t shared by those at the coal face. Ambition seems severely lacking.
At a glance | Northern Powerhouse
A pet project of former chancellor George Osborne, the Northern Powerhouse is a plan to rebalance the UK politically and economically away from London and the South East. It was officially launched in 2014.
Key objectives
Uniting a collection of northern cities comprising 15 million people into one body to rival London
Attract greater investment into northern cities and towns
Devolve fiscal power closer to the point of spending
Improve transport to reduce travel times across the region
Create a single northern economy
Take its recent about-turn on a pledge to finance plans for a giant fertiliser mine under the North York Moors. It is precisely the type of grand project that ministers should be throwing themselves at. The mine, belonging to Sirius Minerals, is the largest private sector investment in the North and one of the biggest engineering projects being undertaken anywhere in Britain; 800 jobs have already been created and it is expected to generate 4,000 in total, in a region where the unemployment rate is among the worst in the country.
A 16-mile tunnel – the second longest in the UK – is being built more than 4,000 feet under the moors that will take the potash to Teesside, one of the worst-hit areas in Britain, on an underground conveyor belt to then be shipped out to countries all over the world, the stuff of Brexiteers’ dreams.
Yet, having secured $1.5bn (£1.15bn) in financing – roughly half the debt that Sirius says it needs to get the project off the ground – through a Treasury scheme, handled by the Infrastructure and Projects
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