26.07.17
IPPR petitions for Crossrail North to rebalance ‘scandal’ of rail underfunding
An influential think tank has this week launched a petition to push the government to devolve powers to the local areas in order to construct a ‘Crossrail North’.
The petition follows the government ruffling feathers in the north after transport secretary Chris Grayling publicly announced that DfT was backing plans for Crossrail 2.
This was despite the fact that just days earlier, Grayling had cancelled three major electrification projects outside of London, whilst work on the TransPennine route also looks likely to be scaled back.
Think tank IPPR North has now launched a petition to lobby the government to change its direction to make infrastructure funding more fairly distributed across the country.
New analysis released alongside the report found that had the north received the same level of infrastructure funding per head as London over the last decade, it would have seen an extra £59bn raised. Public spending was around £282 per head in the north compared to the national average of £345.
Researchers also found that the situation was likely to get worse, suggesting that the new figures represented a “scandal” in infrastructure underfunding in the north.
In response, the think tank called for powers to be handed over to northern areas in order to fund the regional infrastructure required to make the north’s £300bn economy realise its full potential.
This amount of money would have been equivalent to a new east-west ultra-quick rail line the same size as HS2.
“This is a national scandal,” said Luke Raikes, IPPR North senior research fellow. “In most other advanced countries, decisions about transport investment are made locally or regionally, where people really in the know about local problems decide exactly what’s needed.
“But in Britain, our Whitehall-knows-best attitude leads to the capital being the government’s default option for more funding.”
Raikes also claimed that devolving funding for regional infrastructure would help fix Britain’s broken economy by closing the regional productivity gap and helping the country to catch up with our competitors overseas.
“If we are ever going to have an economy that works for everyone, we need a federal UK and regional government with teeth, such as a Council of the North, working with a souped-up Transport for the North, businesses and residents,” he argued.
“That means doing what Whitehall has failed to do for decades, and invest in transport so the whole country can benefit from the realised potential of a New North: northern prosperity is national prosperity.”
IPPR’s calls come just a few months after the think tank put forward a report arguing that HS3 should be prioritised over HS2 and Crossrail 2 as a result of the Brexit vote – an opinion later shared by most RTM readers.
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