Comment: What happened to rebalancing the economy?

THE Green Investment Bank decision is disappointing not just because Yorkshire missed out, but for the lack of vision behind it.

The criteria for making the decision focused heavily on current capacity in financial services and related fields. Given that London is one of the world’s leading financial centres how was any other UK city ever going to compete? Indeed, why bother with a bidding process at all?

Even Edinburgh, which will jointly host the Bank, only achieved a score barely half that of the capital in the Government’s obscure rating system for the bids.

Surely the purpose of inviting bids to host the Green Investment Bank from other parts of the UK was to explore their potential to become a new centre of expertise in a developing sector, an opportunity to put the Government’s rhetoric on rebalancing the economy away from the South-East, into action.

But instead, Vince Cable has played it safe, and as a helpful political byproduct offered the Scots a timely reminder of the benefits of being part of the Union.

The leaders of the Leeds bid, the most realistic from Yorkshire, have insisted the work will not go to waste. One element that should not be lost was the approach taken by the bid team.

From the start, the Leeds bid was focused on making a sound business case for the Bank coming to the region. There was no begging bowl, no talk of unfair funding formulas, no sense of it being Yorkshire’s ‘turn’.

As Yorkshire increasingly looks to sell itself on a global stage it is that hard headed business approach, rather than hard luck stories, that will attract investment.