‘We are not going quietly and we are not going away’

Leading political, education and business figures gathered in Liverpool today to discuss plans to bring more to the North including a plea from the metro mayors for the government to revisit its original plans to bring high-speed rail to the region.

The Convention of the North conference comes a week after Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove released a long-awaited white paper outlining the government’s plans to address regional inequality in the UK.

Ahead of a keynote speech by Gove this afternoon, metro mayors Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram, Jamie Driscoll, Tracy Brabin and Dan Jarvis together with Clive Memmott, CEO of the Greater Manchester Chamber of Commerce, urged the government to “get back round the table” and look at the options for rail plans properly after it emerged there were no such economic analysis was done when ministers decided to scale the proposal back.

The Integrated Rail Plan peeled £18bn off the plans for new east-west links put forward by the North – missing out Bradford and significantly reducing the size of the proposed high-speed network.

The Government’s technical annexe assessed the value-for-money of the full NPR route as “poor” – but admitted “it has not been possible to fully assess impacts on the wider economy, particularly those associated with households and businesses changing location in response to the investment”.

“We’re fighting for future generations in the north of England. We would let them down if we accepted second best,” said Burnham.

“It would be the kids of this city that we would be failing if we accepted this plan that is on the table, but also generations beyond us.

“This plan is about the ambitions for the Northern economy in this century, and the next century.

“We’re not going to have those ambitions if plans are drawn up by civil servants who don’t live here and frankly, often don’t care enough about what happens here.

“How can this be the government’s flagship levelling up policy when the Integrated Rail Plan hasn’t undergone a levelling-up assessment.

“The call we’re making today is to set up a process with us where the North’s preferred plan for a full Northern Powerhouse Rail via Bradford and Leeds and beyond versus the current Integrated Rail Plan are assessed both against all the criteria but particularly the levelling-up impact of both.

“And when we see the results of that open assessment, then I think we can resolve this matter and move forward.”

He added: “We are not going quietly and we are not going away.”

Commenting about the abandoned plans for a high speed rail line between Leeds and Manchester, via Bradford, Tracy Brabin said: “Bradford sits in the sidings where you have to reverse out in order to get to leave. You cannot leave the poster child for levelling- up in this situation.

“So, what we’re saying to government, is that this cannot be it.”

She added: “We have ambitions, and we want government to work with us to go further because this cannot be the end of the story.”

Elsewhere during the conference Cllr Louise Gittins, Vice Chair of TfN also spoke about how important transport is to “improve connectivity, but also to increase that equality of opportunity,” while former Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry MP said the North has the infrastructure in place to level-up.

Organisers NP11 also spoke of the role the North can play in driving the fourth industrial revolution.