New PM urged to sort out cost-of-living emergency and deliver ‘levelling up’

Leadership race frontrunner Liz Truss has this afternoon been confirmed as being the UK’s new Prime Minister.

In the wake of the announcement, Northern leaders have already spoken out on what should be top of the new Prime Minister’s in-tray, as Britain grapples with the economic crisis.

Henri Murison, chief executive of Northern Powerhouse Partnership said: “The lesson from the Boris Johnson era has been the rhetoric of levelling up needs to be matched by delivery.

“On Northern Powerhouse Rail and HS2 we need to see the full network, connecting Bradford on the new line to Manchester and ensuring Hull and Sheffield are better connected to Leeds as well as opening them up to the West onwards towards Manchester Airport and Liverpool.

“Building on the new devolution deal for North Yorkshire and York, we need in the short term more of the funding currently spent by Whitehall like on post 19 skills devolved to all those Metro Mayors who have the capability and capacity as soon as practicable.

“This needs to be as well as a further new deal with powers and funding for the North Bank of the Humber.”

Tracy Brabin

Tracy Brabin, Mayor of West Yorkshire, said urgent measures to combat the cost-of-living emergency must come first.

She said: “No one should have to make a choice between eating or heating. As Mayor, I’m doing what I can to help by slashing bus fares and saving people money.

“But Government must act now on this cost-of-living crisis before millions of people are catapulted into poverty or destitution.

“This means freezing the energy price cap, providing an uplift to Universal Credit to help the most vulnerable and providing urgent financial support to local businesses.”

Brabin said she also wanted to see the Conservative Government deliver on its party’s pledge to “level up” the North with long-promised investment, especially on transport.

“This includes delivering Northern Powerhouse Rail in full, with that vital new station in Bradford,” she said. “This will ensure our talent isn’t cut off from opportunities and prosperity, truly unlocking our people’s potential.

“So, my hope is that our new Prime Minister does what our last Prime Minister failed to – back up their words with concrete action on the cost of living and levelling up.”

South Yorkshire Mayor, Oliver Coppard, said he wanted to see reassurance from Truss that her government would be committed to raising its focus beyond London and the South-east.

He said: “Our communities across South Yorkshire need to feel confident that they can rely on the new Prime Minister and her government to improve the health and wealth of our region, even more so at a time where all too many people in our region are faced with tough decisions about whether to heat their homes or put food on the table.

Oliver Coppard

“In this region we have the ambition to build an economy that’s innovative, sustainable and fair.

“I want to see the Truss Government step up to match our aspiration with the tools and resources we need to make South Yorkshire thrive.

“If not, the people of South Yorkshire will see this Prime Minister as it saw the last, with promises that are left undelivered.”

James Mason, chief executive of West & North Yorkshire Chamber, echoed Brabin’s calls for investment, especially the fulfilment of Northern Powerhouse promises.

“Under the leadership of the previous Prime Minister, Levelling Up was more of a slogan than actual action and here in our part of the country we want to see a clear and obvious commitment to this beyond just words,” he said.

James Mason

“With the country currently experiencing the greatest level of economic challenge seen in a decade, businesses large and small need confidence that the new administration has the leadership and vision required to ensure that they will not be abandoned in this most desperate of hours.

“A perfect start point for this would be to ensure all companies are provided with the assistance required to get through the coming months without insurmountable burdens in terms of overheads and tax.

“Liz Truss can make these assurances swiftly and compellingly to provide these assurances.

“She can also put Yorkshire and the North at the heart of the economy’s future by being the Prime Minister that finally delivers on the pledges made by her predecessors by beginning work on Northern Powerhouse Rail and committing to rolling out HS2 in full.”

The NP11 group of Northern Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) has responded to confirmation of the new Prime Minister by setting out five key offers from the North to help her Government deliver on its ambitions for the whole country.

These focus on:

• developing the North’s green energy strengths to tackle rising energy costs and develop secure, resilient and low carbon domestic energy supply;
• unleashing private sector innovation, particularly in relation to the North’s world-leading life sciences sector, which accounts for over a fifth of UK life sciences jobs;
• building a Global North that exports innovation globally and attracts significant foreign direct investment (FDI) as a key contributor to Global Britain;
• harnessing northerners’ pride in their places by giving the North the fundamental tools to create the prosperous economy it can and wants to achieve; and
• adding at least £10bn to the UK economy by helping digital businesses across the North scale up and create highly skilled jobs.

Sir Roger Marsh, chair of NP11, said: “Prime Minister Truss has a full in-tray of issues needing urgent attention, which is why we have written to her to set out practical ways in which the North can help tackle national concerns such as energy cost rises and the imperative to develop secure, green domestic energy supplies in response to the Russia-Ukraine war, while unlocking new sources of economic growth that will improve opportunity and living standards for people and help build a competitive, Global Britain.

Sir Roger Marsh

“With the right, targeted investment and by working collaboratively with northern elected and business leaders, we can unlock this huge potential, not just for the benefit of the North but for the whole country.

“Our offers and asks are well-developed and based on solid evidence about what the North really needs to prosper.”