Working together will be the key to getting devolution to work in Yorkshire - Henri Murison

Moving together, Hull and East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire will mean both banks of the Humber will be under a devolved set of powers with access to borrowing against what is known as ‘gainshare funding’.

The evidence is that there is potential to make a difference by making good investment decisions based on local knowledge. As chair of the Humber Enterprise Partnership even with only limited powers, Lord Haskins sought to pursue the opportunities of the Net Zero economy, despite having only some of the policy levers available to pull or push.

In addition, businesses like Siemens have backed the region, building the blade factory in Hull followed by their global mobility business developing a rail campus in Goole.

Over the past decade, productivity has been increasing 2.6 per cent a year under the average growth a year measure across both banks of the Estuary. This is not only the highest rate in the North over the period, including outperforming Lancashire and Greater Manchester that have also performed well, but even further ahead of London that has disappointingly gone slightly into reverse.

If you drill down on East Riding of Yorkshire it has an average annual growth rate of 3.5 per cent, the highest of any individual council area in Yorkshire. East Riding is economically interconnected with its neighbouring city of Hull. The boundaries are so closely drawn that much of Hull’s expansion has occurred within the East Riding.

Both Metro Mayors on either side of the Estuary will be bound to collaborate with a future review to the arrangements to guarantee this, building on existing key pan-estuary institutions like the Freeport and Energy Board which bring them together on shared agendas already. These institutions benefit from strong business leadership which is hugely powerful.

In addition to devolution expanding across more areas of the North, including all of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, regions with the longest-standing devolution will gain greater powers and funding control.

The promise made by Chancellor Rachel Reeves of single settlements will mean that the Metro Mayors of South and West Yorkshire will have more discretion of how the existing money committed for economic development and growth is spent.

We must remember, in the context of having limited amounts of money to spend, it is even more vital that every penny is spent based on the best available evidence.

The long-standing issue with Whitehall spending is that some interventions fall short, while others miss the mark entirely. Breaking down spending in silos will lead to better results, and then making additional investment where the spending is well targeted.

The prize is that to achieve the ambitions of a more prosperous North, with people paid higher wages and with better health outcomes, we will need higher productivity. After ensuring current central government funding spent in places is devolved and more effective, the Northern Powerhouse Partnership has emphasised that the next step will be to generate more funding locally.

Alongside making taxes like council tax fairer, we also need to keep more of the taxes we pay in our own region. A direct relationship between their plans and their region’s prosperity will keep our Metro Mayors focussed on the long-term, economic and social issues we face, rather than marginal issues which may have political attention but are not going to make a big long-term impact.

The government’s growth mission is to create better employment opportunities in the North, but challenges remain that go beyond what any single Mayor’s jurisdiction can address within a single travel-to-work area.

Working within existing structures, that means Transport for the North with partners must ensure that the new Bradford Rail Station is a downpayment on the new line to Huddersfield, and from nearby there at Marsden that line continues to Manchester, Manchester Airport and Liverpool.

Working together with Metro Mayors through the Great North, with all of local government and business, we need to keep the North united. The prize of addressing transport, the opportunities in Net Zero and the innovation agenda is huge. In all these areas there is a role for private funding and finance, as well as of course for public investment.

We have the opportunity, as both the late Lord John Prescott with the Northern Way and George Osborne with the Northern Powerhouse articulated, to change the North’s destiny. To make us genuinely greater than the sum of our parts.

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