Firms driven to distraction

But, as any business leader will testify, even the most profitable plan needs a little capital to start it off, and that is why George Osborne’s “march of the makers” has stalled. The Government is unable, or unwilling, to invest in the North.

Transport infrastructure is a longstanding problem for Yorkshire businesses and the damning results of the KPMG survey, while desperately disappointing, are of little surprise.

Chronically underfunded by successive governments, it is now at a stage where 30-year-old trains handed down from other networks are paraded as if such charitable donations to the poor folk of Yorkshire are to be celebrated.

They are not. The staggering statistic that just six per cent of spending in the Government’s National Infrastructure Plan will be in the North, while 84 per cent will go to London and the South East, busts any rhetoric from Westminster about closing the North-South divide.

To rub more salt into the wound, it would appear money is available but, rather than guarantee funding for the Northern Hub, a £560m rail investment that would bring £4.2bn of economic benefits and up to 30,000 jobs, the coalition decided to use £675m to pay for a council tax freeze that has been economically condemned by council leaders of all political persuasions.

The generous funding goes on with the much maligned policy to reinstate weekly bin collections. A mere £250m has been set aside for this derided pet project of one time Bradford Council leader Eric Pickles.

The Government just cannot afford for such sums not to be spent wisely.

The wasted opportunity during Labour’s boom years of failing to invest in Yorkshire is one that is magnified 10-fold when viewed from the current perspective of austerity. But, with the economy in such a perilous state, any failure to make best use of public funds now is an even graver mistake. In his Budget on March 21, the Chancellor has a chance to rectify it. Invest in transport, invest in the North and Yorkshire businesses will start marching.