North left in limbo by Rishi Sunak’s Spending Review – Tom Richmond

It will mean that the worst of the Covid pandemic has passed – one dictionary this week named ‘quarantine’ as its word of 2020 – after a lost year.

And I also don’t doubt the Richmond MP’s sincerity when it comes to social mobility – it explains the increasingly venomous Labour attacks against him.

As former Tory leader William Hague says, Sunak is motivated by the view of the Tees Valley heartlands from his North Yorkshire home.

Yet, while no-one would have wished the current economic backdrop on the Chancellor, as indebtedness and borrowing soar to record levels, the North now appears to be stuck in limbo.

There were briefings hinting at an ambitious overhaul of Green Book rules so infrastructure investment here meets ‘value for money’ tests that have so favoured London and the South East.

Not a word on this in Sunak’s speech – the devil will be in the detail of the Treasury review that was published simultaneously to see if the North gets fairer funding in the future. I’m still to be convinced.

Instead, the tantalising promise of a £4bn levelling-up fund for the duration of this Parliament. Local areas will lobby London for funds and, presumably, waste valuable money in another political beauty and vanity contest. Demeaning, and likely to benefit favoured friends judging by the Government’s record, it also won’t go far.

And, despite Sunak previously admitting that the Government was “selling the North’s potential short” over transport, this new announcement – the only one not briefed in advance – was the only reference to “levelling up” in a speech that will define this Parliament (ominously, the Northern Powerhouse didn’t even warrant a mention).

As such, it’s even more reason that a Cabinet minister is given full-time responsibility for the Northern Powerhouse and Levelling Up agendas – or what now remain of them.

The background is this. The Power Up The North campaign, spearheaded by The Yorkshire Post and over 40 rival newspapers last year, called for a Cabinet-level Northern Powerhouse Minister.

This saw Jake Berry given this status when Boris Johnson succeeded Theresa May as Prime Minister. Yet, when it came to the post-election reshuffle, the role was downgraded and became part of Grant Shapps’s remit as Transport Secretary. The PM had either been blatantly electioneering when he made the initial commitment – or was guilty of taking the North for granted after his ‘blue wall’ success in the December 2019 election.

And herein lies the rub. While Shapps is a committed advocate for this region, the transport brief is a full-time one too – pandemic or no pandemic. It’s the same with other Ministers. Downing Street denies that a Northern Powerhouse or ‘Levelling Up’ Minister is needed in the Cabinet because this agenda was a priority for every member of Johnson’s top team. Yet most are so bogged down by Covid and short-term crises that they haven’t time for a more strategic outlook, hence Lord Bob Kerslake, a former head of the Civil Service, renewing calls for a political figurehead to have the role – and he knows more than most about how Whitehall works (or not).

That’s why it is regrettable that Sunak did not turn the spending crisis into an opportunity by spelling out the Government’s definition of ‘levelling up’, how it intends to measure success and how Ministers – and also civil servants – can be held to account.

It explains why his promises will be treated even more sceptically now until the London Government changes its approach. That begins with the Treasury setting up a base in the North as previously proposed and for this region to become home to a Ministry for the Northern Powerhouse and Levelling Up making a tangible difference here.

Finally, let me remind you of a statement made to Parliament in 2016 by a backbencher when Chris Grayling (remember him?) was failing this region’s railways. “The Northern Powerhouse is a wonderful phrase, but the people of northern England deserve more than a slogan; they need action,” they said to murmurs of approval.

That MP was a little known Rishi Sunak who went on to set out an enticing vision of the North becoming “the powerhouse not just of Britain but of the world”. Yet, as the bleakest ever financial forecasts show, his question back then – “how do we make the aspiration a reality?” – is even more profound.

Sunak’s own question must be answered with far more clarity of purpose if the phrase ‘levelling down’ is not to become entrenched in the new political vocabulary.

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