Funding threat to tourism drive

The widening North-South divide, he announced, would be tackled, and long-standing regional disparities addressed. They were admirable pledges from a Prime Minister struggling to reduce the record budget deficit.

It is difficult, then, to square Mr Cameron's promise of a brave new world for the regions with revelations that his Government is considering re-jigging its tourism funding to take yet more money away from Yorkshire councils in favour of Boris Johnson's London.

Mr Johnson, it seems, holds this Conservative-led coalition in a disturbingly vice-like grip as he prepares for his re-election campaign in 2012. As the plug is quietly pulled on much-needed transport schemes up and down the country, the capital's 16bn Crossrail project is to be funded in its entirety.

Now he appears poised to scoop another 60m for his city through the tourism fund, at the expense of cities like Leeds.

London, let us not forget, is already enjoying unparalleled worldwide publicity, and enormous injections of funding, ahead of the 2012 Olympics.

Meanwhile, these are tough times for Yorkshire councils, already under-funded and struggling to provide an ever-increasing range of services as they prepare to impose cuts worth 25 per cent.

The North, long reliant on public sector jobs, will be hit hard, and Yorkshire is in no position to see a further 12m snatched away in favour of the already-bloated capital city.

Furthermore, such a proposal is as ill-thought out as it is unfair. Local authorities, like Harrogate, are all too aware of the extra strain that tens of thousands of visitors put on their services. Councils have a pivotal role in supporting this region's tourism industry, a fact that Ministers appear to have overlooked.

Mr Cameron has made a career on being an excellent communicator. He must now put his rhetoric into action and resist any policies that see even more funds diverted to London ahead of the Mayoral election

in 2012.