Wanted: Ideas for North's future

A Northern People’s Assembly and a vacuum-powered hyperloop underground transport system are among suggestions IPPR North has put forward.

But it wants to hear what the public thinks the North should be doing in the decades to come.

IPPR North director Ed Cox said: “We believe the vote to ‘take back control’ in the North was as much about rejecting Westminster as it was the EU. The status quo was on the ballot paper - and it was decisively rejected.

“Northern entrepreneurs led the industrial revolution not by waiting for permission but by ‘getting on with it’ – taking back control from an elite which paid the North little heed.

“We need to see the same fire and imagination today – with a positive vision for the North’s dynamic economy after Brexit.

“We can’t wait on Whitehall - this must come from the North itself, which is why we’re throwing it open to northern businesses, community groups and the general public to send in their ideas.”

The think-tank has made its appeal ahead of a debate in the House of Lords where peers will discuss IPPR North’s annual ‘State of the North’ report.

Published in December, the 2016 report described the EU referedum result - where Yorkshire voted 58 per cent to 42 per cent to leave - as a “cry of outrage” from communities in the North left behind by rising wealth in the South.

It also warned that the economy of the North was much more dependent on the EU for trade and was more vulnerable to economic “turbulence” from Britain’s departure.