At the top of the new government’s agenda seems to be the much-vaunted idea of levelling up, although details of what this means are somewhat sparse. What it should involve, and what those of us who have served constituents in the North for many years have strived to achieve, is destroying the north-south divide and creating a North as full of opportunities for young people and small businesses as in
London or the home counties.
There is no quick fix for this. It is a long-term, transformational ambition that tackles some of the most entrenched problems in society. Many children in the North have lower educational attainment than elsewhere in the country, adversely affected by disadvantage to the extent that more than 12,000 infants go to school unable to speak in full sentences or use the toilet. A woman living in parts of central Manchester would expect to die almost 20 years earlier than one in boroughs of south-west London. Our productivity lags behind the capital and the South-East – northern workers produce £4 less per person per hour worked than their Southern counterparts.
A major first step would be to address the historical imbalance in funding for major projects. The Treasury’s rigid appraisal of funding allocation has always favoured areas of high productivity, expensive house prices and demonstrable growth – ie London and the South East. This, the Green Book appraisal method, needs to be urgently changed to produce a balanced economy.
But equally important is investment in infrastructure. The north has seen barely any investment since the railways were first invented. HS2 is a major first step to create the world-class rail network the North needs and deserves. Joining it up with Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR), linking
Liverpool in the west with Hull in the east and up to Newcastle, would provide fast, frequent, reliable services for people living in our great cities and towns, but crucially also the capacity that would end the misery for commuters stuck on packed trains, crawling through notorious bottlenecks such as the Castlefield Corridor in Manchester.
Leaks of the Oakervee review, the independent report that government commissioned but is seemingly unwilling to publish, recommends a six-month pause to the Northern part of HS2 to integrate it properly with northern Powerhouse Rail. Given that we may not see new lines in the north for 20 years, further delays would seem unhelpful. However, getting the integration right between HS2 and NPR is vital; it will save money, it will create one, fully integrated system and it will give the 16 million people of the North the services they need. Our Northern leaders need to oversee this pause to make sure the full economic benefits are realised and the government do not let the delay drag on indefinitely.
There are very practical reasons why we need HS2 in order to deliver NPR. The leaked review states that NPR services will make use of up to around 110km of the proposed Crewe to Manchester and Birmingham to Leeds HS2 tracks. So you physically can’t have the new Northern Powerhouse Rail without the new HS2 tracks. The critical capacity benefits would also not be realised without both projects.
But equally, there is another reason why we need both. It seems the north always has to make a choice – HS2 or NPR. We up north are getting a little bit tired of southern-based sceptics, be they Conservative MPs, peers or journalists, telling the north what is should prioritise. The north is speaking loudly and clearly with one voice: it’s not either/or, its both.
We never hear London being asked to choose, say between Crossrail and the HS1 link to the Channel Tunnel.
London, as a global city, needs major investment. But so does the north. The opportunity to truly level up the country is within our grasp. Only committing to both HS2 and NPR in full will give us the opportunity to tackle some of the significant imbalances in the UK.
Lucy Powell is the MP for Manchester Central and a former shadow education secretary.