Deliver a transformative Budget by investing in the North and empowering the region - Henri Murison

From the perspective of the business community, there is much the Chancellor has said she will do that we can and will welcome. On capital budgets, the last government chose to cut National Insurance and largely pay for it by cancelling or scaling back major infrastructure projects. As one of the reasons our productivity has not grown faster is that we as a country have underinvested in infrastructure the worst thing we could do is cut that back any further. Otherwise, we will be reducing the amount of tax revenues which the next Chancellor, and successors, will have to spend.

The wider government growth mission is one the northern business community can and do all support. It is a missed opportunity that much of the detail of a Northern Growth Corridor is still yet to be announced. Developing this corridor is a tangible way to build upon green shoots of productivity growth across the Pennines in Greater Manchester, across to here in Yorkshire most notably in Rotherham – the town which has raised its productivity faster than any other northern town over the last two decades.

With investment in Northern Powerhouse Rail, in innovation and in energy infrastructure we can raise productivity in the national interest. A year into this government, to have announced the details of the Oxford - Cambridge growth corridor but not yet the detail of an even more ambitious policy across the Pennines shows what must be top of the Chancellor’s to do list if the growth policy of this government is to be a serious plan rather than just empty rhetoric.

However, as much as there may be announcements which haven’t yet been made which we will need to see in the coming weeks and months there is news we are likely expecting tomorrow. In the Moors and Dales, as well as our great cities like Hull, Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield and York, we will likely see new powers to levy a visitor levy on overnight stays.

The Northern Powerhouse Partnership has for many years consistently made the case for fiscal devolution. As well as the practical benefits of spending more on promoting our great region to prospective visitors and improving the public transport which visitors will be able to use, there will be a principle established. That not every tax should always be controlled and go back to the Treasury.

The next step after a levy on overnight visitors will be to go further and faster. Rather than getting a transport fund given to them by government we should instead allow our Metro Mayors to retain a proportion of the National Insurance paid, the same as happens in France with the versement mobilité which has paid for underground and tram lights right across the country there.

We need to reform council tax by revaluing the hugely outdated and unfair 1991 house prices it is based on which leave northerners paying more for often worse council services due to the unfair way historically that central government funding has been allocated. The fair funding review may have been a good step in the right direction, but the areas with the greatest levels of poverty still have less funding than they really need.

Our Metro Mayors still currently rely on funds from central government, not least the new replacement for the Shared Prosperity Fund which replaced the old EU funding, this cannot be the only way we fund our priorities. More of the future tax revenues which are increased from long term investments in our regions need to be retained to reinvest. A successful Metro Mayor with a single-minded focus on growth will then be rewarded in future years with more funding because they have taken decisions to do the right thing for economic and social prospects of a place. Instead, the temptation today is to make popular decisions – even if they may not be in the best interests of a region because the person who benefits most from a Mayor doing the right thing currently will be Rachel Reeves successors, not a Mayor themselves.

The business community will back this Chancellor if she protects major infrastructure and investment in innovation. She must also get the incentives right so in our great city regions of the North, here in Yorkshire as well as across the Pennines and in the North East, take the long-term approach she has also committed herself to.

A tough Budget should also change the long-term rules of the game as well as deal with the current trade offs that come from not having invested in the North to unlock our growth yet.

Henri Murison is the chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership.