Labour needs to deliver transport improvements for the North - Jon Trickett

The planned expansion of Heathrow, and four other London airports is clearly going to be a matter of considerable concern for local residents in those areas. The environmental case will rightly be hard fought. But from the North’s perspective, the focus of investment in the South inevitably leaves us feeling like we've been overlooked yet again. The country definitely needs growth. But any new found prosperity needs to be spread equally.

But let’s be very blunt. Money has been sucked out of the Regions like ours and then poured into the South East for decades. When the Conservatives were in government, transport spending per head in London was £906 but it was only £321 per head in Yorkshire. To ‘level up’ transport spending in the North we’d need £86bn to be level with London.

Underfunding in the North has real world consequences. In my constituency, Normanton and Hemsworth, it takes 1 hour and 27 minutes to travel 25 miles between the former pit village of Upton to the city of Leeds. Yet it takes 1 hour 20 mins to go right through the whole of the capital from Reading to Shenfield (57 miles).

These differences have a massive economic and social impact. Better and more frequent transport links mean people in the south can access up to seven times as many jobs by public transport than in the North. This is not economic or social justice.

Lack of mobility in regions like the North of England restricts growth.

A fairer and more impactful approach would be to invest in the regions. So, it was disappointing to see the announcement by the Government of potential cuts to major projects falling on the North. For example, ‘Network North’, an £8.3bn fund for local transport infrastructure which was meant to offset the cut to the northern leg of HS2, looks likely to be scrapped.

The government has approved a third runway at Heathrow, a second runway at Gatwick, terminal expansion at Luton and HS2 from London to Birmingham, and stronger links between Oxford and Cambridge. But the North only gets an upgrade to TransPennine infrastructure.

Capital and current spending is also skewed towards the South. In Yorkshire and the Humber public spending is £12,186 per person, in London it is £14,842, which is 15 per cent higher than the UK average.

The North should no longer accept a few crumbs off the top table whilst the South East gets the whole cake. That is why I am calling for economic justice for all of our regions and nations.

We need massive investment in the regions so that economic prosperity is shared by the whole country. The Labour government must reject the economic orthodoxy of the Treasury whose restricted vision never seems to extend far beyond the M25.

Labour’s political task is to reconnect with working communities everywhere and rebuild trust in politics. This won’t be achieved by becoming managers of an unjust and unfair economic system.

Jon Trickett is the Labour MP for Normanton and Hemsworth.