PwC adds support to funding fight

accountancy giant PwC has thrown its weight behind the Yorkshire Post’s campaign to get a fair deal on funding for Yorkshire.

Roger Marsh, the senior partner in Leeds, said the region wants to play a key role in supporting the national recovery, but needs the resources to realise its potential.

He said the Government’s approach to economic development lacks both a strategic overview and sufficient investment and warned that it risks leaving successive generations with a huge debt burden.

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Mr Marsh said: “We want fairness, but we are not asking for favouritism. We want people to begin to see what the North can contribute.”

He said the UK should set a vision to achieve economic growth on the same scale as Germany, the powerhouse of the European economy, if it wants to tackle the budget deficit and underlying debt problem.

Mr Marsh said ministers should look at the country as a whole and identify strategic priorities that could ultimately deliver GDP growth of 3.5 per cent.

These priorities would recognise regional strengths, such as car-building in the North East and West Midlands, the nuclear industry in South Yorkshire and wind power in the Humber.

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These would then be supported with investment to create centres of excellence or “game-changers”, he said.

Examples of investment include the new high speed rail line linking London and Leeds and improved rail links between Northern towns and cities, he added.

Mr Marsh argued that tens of billions of pounds of public money are needed to create magnets for wider investment.

At present, Mr Marsh said different parts of the country are “fighting over the scraps” of the £1.4bn regional growth fund.

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He added: “Is there enough in the pot to deal with the deficit reduction strategy, let alone the debt reduction that’s needed?”

PwC sponsored research by think-tank The Smith Institute which found that prospects for the North look bleak without a fairer allocation of funding and better delivery structures.

Mr Marsh warned that trying to rebalance an economy without resources is a contradiction in terms.

He said: “As with the history of regional policies since the Second World War, the danger is there will be too little spread too widely, the lasting effect of which will be sub-optimal for UK plc, let alone for Yorkshire and Humber.”

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Mr Marsh was appointed to head the Leeds office of PwC in May.

He has spent most of his career working in business recovery, but in 2007 he had a life-changing experience when he was seconded to the Cabinet Office, at the heart of Government.

The two-year role gave him a unique insight into the complex formulas at work in the UK economy. Asked if he was optimistic about the country’s future, Mr Marsh said: “I believe there are the seeds of optimism. What I haven’t seen yet is the whole of UK plc approach that means those seeds can germinate and can properly produce the sort of GDP growth we need.

“There’s a huge opportunity here for us to rebalance in a way that we never had before, but there is a price to pay and also there’s a timescale to it.”

The Yorkshire Post is calling on Prime Minister David Cameron to deliver on his promise to close the North-South divide.