Don’t let £1bn Network Rail cut power down North – The Yorkshire Post says

For, while Ministers have found £825m to complete Crossrail, and they had little option, it’s only now emerging that Network Rail will have £1bn less to spend between now and 2024.

And while there is acceptance that the Treasury has tough decisions to make in the wake of the Covid pandemic, it is the lack of transparency by Ministers when infrastructure investment was supposedly so integral to Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Spending Review 10 days ago.

As such, Ministers should not (if they have any sense) be surprised to learn that this decision only serves to increase suspicion and scepticism about their wider commitment to the Northern Powerhouse and high-speed rail.

Given this, it is imperative that both Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, who also has a dual role as Northern Powerhouse Minister, and Network Rail confirm that this cut will not be at the North’s expense – it is only in the past week, for example, that the last Pacer trains, those ubiquitous symbols of the North-South divide, were taken out of service.

And they should be aware that the underhand manner of this decision makes The Yorkshire Post, for one, even more convinced that the relocation of Whitehall ministries to the North must go hand-in-hand with reform at Westminster so there are more effective ways to scrutinise Northern Powerhouse policy and, hopefully, establish the Government’s actual definition of ‘levelling up’.

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