NORTHERN POWERHOUSE BACK ON TRACK.

 

 

It would be easy to be cynical about this week’s Cabinet meeting that was held in Cheshire. Ministers forced out of their Whitehall offices to gather in the frozen North.A quick photo opportunity, meetings with hand picked business people( but definitely not the public), then back to London.

On this occasion however there was a real point in coming North.After a wobble last summer Theresa May seems to be taking the Northern Powerhouse (NP) seriously.As part of the new industrial strategy,  the NP is getting a £556m cash boost.Much of this will be channeled through the Local Enterprise Partnerships who,its hoped will begin to raise their profiles as engines of growth,productivity and skills. Among the specific schemes are £10m for small businesses in Greater Manchester and Cheshire involved in the new industries around life sciences. Our heritage is not forgotten with plans for a major revamp for Blackpool’s Winter gardens. The resort hopes it will encourage the political parties back from Birmingam and Manchester for their annual conferences. I think the hotel offer will have to improve before that happens.

The main thrust of the new industrial strategy is for government to target help on particular sectors were future jobs will come from. Juergen Maier,the boss of Siemens UK will head up a review into the impact of digitalisation across industry. Other sectors indentified include life sciences,the nuclear and creative industries.

We have seen many industrial strategies come and go and yet UK productivity remains stubbornly behind our competitors. It is an issue that the new leader of the  North West Busienss Leadership Team will be taking up. It is to be welcomed that they have appointed a woman, Emma Degg. The North West business scene remains very male, if not stale. Degg used to work for the North West Development Agency which was doing good work in all these fields until it was scrapped for petty political reasons by the Coalition government.

The Business Secretary Greg Clarke is in charge of this strategy. He is one of the better Tory Cabinet Ministers having gained a good reputation when he held the Local Government portfolio. He has identified ten strategic pillars. We shall see if they are Greg’s ten pillars of wisdom.Besides the obvious ones of skills and science research, there is to be a drive to improve government procurement and deliver clean energy growth. Restoring the subsidies would be a start.

Improving productivity is a long term challenge which requires better management and a better educated and motivated workforce.In that connection let’s hope the specialist maths schools and technical colleges mark a move away from an excessive emphasis on university education. Vocational qualifications will be as useful as a degree in the next few years.

The question remains how robust this industrial strategy will be as the consequences of Brexit and the Trump Presidency begin to kick in.

Follow me at www.jimhancock.co uk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE “MAY” BE DOOMED

 

The Northern Powerhouse had the perfect backer. George Osborne was Chancellor, the second most powerful person in the government. It was his project and he could make reluctant civil servants (they always are when it comes to devolution) do his bidding. Finally he represented a northern constituency.

The new Prime Minister has set up an economy and industrial strategy committee. It held its first meeting this week and the term Northern Powerhouse (NP) wasn’t mentioned apparently. This may be because Theresa May’s antipathy to Osborne is so great that she is indulging in a strategy that has been so debilitating for northern devolution down the years. I refer to the chop change with every passing minister, leave alone government. There is never the long term commitment to one plan to allow business to invest with any degree of certainty. There was a perfectly satisfactory structure of Regional Development Agencies in place but the Tories, with shameful silence form the Lib Dems, tore it all down.

All may not be lost however. It appears Mrs May wants to help all towns and cities in the North. There is a valid criticism that the NP was very city focused. The voting pattern in the EU referendum showed cities like Manchester and Liverpool backing Remain whereas suburban and rural communities voted Leave. They wrongly felt the EU was doing nothing for them but they may have concluded that about the NP as well.

Perhaps the economy and industrial strategy committee will recognise that the Northern Powerhouse needs to address the needs of all the people in the North East, Yorkshire and the North West and restore the organisations designed to achieve some urgent tasks.

They include improving people’s chances of owning a home (this week’s figures were shocking for the North),northern productivity, getting on with transport projects like HS3 east west rail connections and most of all raising our skills. A massive biomedical research centre, the Francis Crick Institute is opening this month…..in St Pancras London. We need the skills base to make it possible for such investments to be made north of the Trent. We have a huge advantage over London in terms of house prices, the quality of life and commuting costs. If only the NP could deliver the skill base.

The NP needs champions at the highest level. Andrew Percy doesn’t do it for me. He is the MP for Brigg and Goole so is (just) one of us but the new Northern Powerhouse Minister is even more unknown than his predecessor James Wharton. We must hope that Lord O’Neill of Gatley stays in the government working on the NP. He was angered about the Hinckley nuclear power station “pause”. Although nothing to do with the north, it seems George Osborne’s “golden age” of cooperation with the Chinese is over. The idea had been for substantial Chinese investment to help finance not just the Hinckley project but the NP too. If that commitment is lessened, Mr Percy will need to deal with the already existing criticism that the NP is all talk and no financial heft.

 

CAMERON: SO RIGHT TO QUIT

 

David Cameron is right up there with Lord North who lost America and Neville Chamberlain who waved his pathetic piece of paper after meeting Hitler, as a contender for the worst Prime Minister in our nation’s history.

His achievement in reviving the British economy is completely overshadowed by his reckless gamble with not only this country’s future but the whole European Union. He only promised the referendum for narrow political advantage to fend off UKIP’s Nigel Farage who is now dancing on his political grave. And before people say he wanted to give the people their voice, there is a widespread belief in political circles that he never expected to have to deliver the promise. He didn’t expect to win the General Election and could rely on Labour and the Lib Dems to stop it.

I so wish I hadn’t been right in January 2013 when Cameron made the referendum promise. I wrote “if he wins the election he will attempt a major renegotiation. He will fail but pretend the scraps he does get will be a good enough for people to vote yes. He will be ridiculed by UKIP and half the Tory Party egged on by the Murdoch press and I fear the British people will vote to come out.”

Of course people voted on the issue of our membership of Europe but a lot used the referendum to express their total frustration with the political establishment and their expert advisers. That’s the problem with referendums, people use them for a variety of reasons. The binary choice leaves no place for nuance.

Alienation was particularly strong in parts of the North. What is striking is the difference between the large cities and smaller ones. So Manchester had a 60% vote for Remain, Liverpool 58% and Leeds 50%. But outside the big urban areas Labour voters picked up Jeremy Corbyn’s lukewarm approach to the Remain campaign. So Blackpool recorded a 67% vote for Leave, Blackburn 56% (Barbara Castle would have been pleased), Bradford 54% and Preston 53%.

It is true that the economic recovery has not been felt across large tracts of the North. Austerity has been the wider experience but voting to leave the EU is likely to make the problems of the depressed areas of the North worse. The short term damage to the British economy is already being done as the world’s stock markets give their damning verdict. This will be followed by medium term uncertainty as we try to ask our angry former EU partners for decent trade deals. In the longer term what’s left of the UK (Scotland may have left) will have to try and paddle its own canoe in a world which has consolidated around large trading blocs.

Until 2010 the North had the powerful Regional Development Agencies backed up by regional investment from the EU. The RDA’s were scrapped and replaced by the Northern Powerhouse which has clearly not convinced working class people that they are being heard. The architect of the NP is George Osborne who will surely follow the Prime Minister into resignation. As far as regional investment is concerned we will now have to rely on Whitehall rather than the EU.

The Conservatives will probably elect Boris Johnson as leader and Prime Minister. Labour need urgently to replace Jeremy Corbyn who is just not up to the job.

But ultimately these leadership changes will only mask the need for a realignment of politics with the creation of a left of centre party that one day can provide competition for the rampant right.

KNOCKING ON THE DEVOLUTION DOOR

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RED ROSE RISING.

Lancashire and Cheshire want to be major players in the Northern Powerhouse. There is frustration that the project all seems to be about Manchester. I’ve been to Preston and Chester to find out what these areas have to offer the great project to bring power from Whitehall to the North.

Edwin Booth is the dapper boss of that excellent chain of supermarkets, Booths. He chairs the Lancashire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and is just the man for the job. His quiet charm is what is needed in a county notorious for local authority in fighting. If it isn’t Lancashire County Council v the districts, then its Blackburn and Blackpool v Preston. Then we have Chorley’s bid for unitary status and Wyre refusing to join the bid for a Combined Authority.

Mr Booth told me at a Downtown event last week that he is confident Wyre will come on side for the devolution bid although, as in Cheshire, the stumbling block could still be the government’s insistence on an elected mayor despite the more rural nature of these areas.

The LEPs are supposed to be driven by business with local councils playing a supportive role. The trouble was at the beginning the government were so vague about their structure and purpose when they were set up that councils were often forced to play a major role. Edwin Booth told the Downtown meeting that he soon hoped to detach the LEP from County Hall in Preston. There is speculation that he might take the council’s officers involved in partnership matters with him.

Booth is keen on good relations with Manchester and wants to improve connectivity to the M62 but he is also concerned about transpennine connections further north. He wants a new bridge across the Ribble near Preston but above all he wants to raise the county’s prosperity which is 75% of the national average. Enterprise Zones are up and running in places like Salmesbury and Blackpool, Fleetwood is next.

Booth sees the Lancashire LEP as an agent of transformation using city deal and growth funds but would like powers over skills training in secondary schools. The government’s offer at the moment only covers post 18s, when many argue it is too late.

CHESTER’S LEGIONS ON THE MARCH.

The Chester Forum at the impressive MBNA headquarters heard the Northern Powerhouse (NP) described as a sham by property developer Guy Butler who heads the city’s Growth Partnership. He was concerned that the NP was a distraction to cover for the fundamental change going on in local authority funding. The idea is that central grants will cease and councils will be able to keep all their business rates. It is a scheme that will massively benefit London whilst northern councils with much lower property values will suffer. Butler also wondered whether Chester should be part of the NP or should see itself as a hub for an area including North East Wales with its significant employment centre around Airbus in Broughton.

Phillip Cox, the CEO of the Cheshire and Warrington LEP was in no doubt that the area was part of the NP. The fastest growing LEP in the North, Cox pointed out that more people travelled into the area than out. The idea that the sub region was a dormitory for Manchester was a myth. As in Lancashire talks on a devolution deal continue, but once again the issue of an elected mayor may prove a stumbling block.

Sam Dixon, the new Labour leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council made an impressive début speaking out about the disruption that would be caused to local government by a Brexit vote. Rules on shared Town Hall services were in EU directives that would all have to be rewritten, and furthermore the LEP had received £142m in regional development grants.

So on the flanks of the Northern Powerhouse, the debate remains lively about its future.