Andy Burnham calls for 'bigger vision of levelling up' after budget announcement

He has also joined other metro mayors from the North and urged the Government to commit to building HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail in full, amid growing concerns they will both be scaled back to save money.

The Government has promised to provide £4.8bn of levelling up funding and Chancellor Rishi Sunak announced this week which areas were successful in their bids.

Around £1.7bn will be distributed for 105 projects across the UK in the first round of funding, including £19.5m for Rotherham town centre and £12.2m for Halifax swimming pool.

Speaking at the Great Northern Conference, Mr Burnham said these “localised projects” will not improve the life chances of people living in those places or help build a more productive economy.

“If you give London-style transport to 2.8m people in a place like Greater Manchester, that does change people’s lives,” he told The Yorkshire Post.

“It connects them to jobs and opportunities and lays the foundations for a more productive economy.

“If £1.55 (cost of a single London bus journey) was a consistent fare to catch a bus across the North of England, that would change millions of lives here. That would be levelling up.”

He added: “We’ve got to get back to a bigger vision of levelling up where we link towns to cities and cities to cities. It’s that big strategic investment that will lift the economy of the North of England.

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves that a list of projects, that local authorities used to fund themselves, will actually do that.”

The Labour politician welcomed the Government’s decision to provide £7bn over five years to upgrade urban transport in several regions, including West and South Yorkshire and Greater Manchester, but said the Government needs to provide “sustained investment across the board”.

He also said he is concerned the Chancellor failed to mention Northern Powerhouse Rail or HS2 in his Budget speech on Wednesday and that when the long-awaited Integrated Rail Plan (IRP) is published, it may show that both projects have been downgraded.

“This is not what we were promised,” he said. “There is no expense spared on HS2 in the South of England and now it is coming North, all of a sudden the money is running out. It is the age-old story.”

At the conference, former Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry, said the levelling up funding announced on Wednesday was a “down payment” for a much larger project.

The Tory MP added: “I was really pleased with the Budget, I think it was a fantastic start for the levelling up agenda. There was money injected across the North of England.”

But he also highlighted a report from the Centre for Cities think tank, which states “the challenge of levelling up is comparable to that of the reunification” of East and West Germany.

According to the think tank, up to €2trn was spent on the reunification project between 1990 and 2014. That is the equivalent of around £71bn every year.

Mr Berry said: “That is the scale of the challenge. We’ve taken some great first steps. But it is for us as the North to make sure we get more.”

The Government has said the IRP will be published “soon” and it is “absolutely committed” to levelling up the North and delivering economic growth by improving transport infrastructure.