Mayors letter to Reeves

Northern mayors have called on Rachel Reeves to abolish the two-child benefit cap and commit to vast railway line upgrades, including the restoration of a mothballed North East route, writes Local Democracy Reporter, Daniel Holland.

Ahead of the Budget later this month, mayors including Kim McGuinness and Andy Burnham have today written to the Chancellor to demand “game-changing investment” in the North of England.

Under the banner of the ‘Great North’ partnership launched earlier this year, the leaders have asked for help to “unlock the North’s full potential”.

They have added their names to the pleas for the two-child cap to be lifted in order to help combat child poverty, with the mayors saying its removal would lift more than 100,000 Northern children out of deprivation.

The mayors write: “Many Northern communities are disproportionately affected by the two-child benefit cap, with higher rates of child poverty. Its impact is most acute in areas of entrenched disadvantage. Reversing the cap would lift around 630,000 children out of poverty nationwide — with the North seeing the greatest impact. It is one of the most cost-effective and immediate levers to reduce poverty and unlock opportunity. We must act. The children of the North cannot wait.”

The letter also calls on the Chancellor to deliver the long-debated Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) project in full to create a “spine that connects the North”.

Part of that huge rail infrastructure transformation would include the full reopening of the Leamside Line, which runs between Pelaw in Gateshead to Tursdale in County Durham.

Funding was agreed earlier this year for a restoration of the northern section of that disused route as part of a new Washington loop of the Tyne and Wear Metro.

But transport chiefs in the North East have long argued that a full reinstatement of the entire line, which was closed to passenger rail services under the Beeching cuts of the 1960s, could deliver enormous benefits.

As well as allowing for new train services through communities like Penshaw, Fencehouses, Belmont and Shincliffe, the route could also provide an alternative path for freight trains and thereby free up more capacity on the congested East Coast Main Line between York and Newcastle.

NPR also includes a new connection between Liverpool and Manchester, which would continue onwards to Huddersfield and Leeds, and electrification of the Leeds-Sheffield line.

The Great North’s demands of the Chancellor also feature “devolved, stable, and long-term support for business growth” through the successor to the UK Shared Prosperity

Fund and a replacement of the Rural England Prosperity Fund for rural areas.

Ms McGuinness, who chairs the Great North collaboration, said: “The North of England has to be at the vanguard of the Government’s mission to unlock the growth the country and communities badly need. That’s why we’re calling on the Government to make game-changing investment in our infrastructure and wholesale reform of business support so we can unleash the potential of people and businesses. We stand ready to deliver for UK PLC, and there is no time to waste – so we can create jobs and opportunity for people we represent.”

The Great North letter was also signed by fellow Labour mayors David Skaith, Tracey Brabin, Oliver Coppard and Steve Rotheram, as well as Reform UK’s Hull and East Yorkshire mayor Luke Campbell. Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of the Tees Valley, is not among the signatories.

Also putting their name to the letter were Reform’s Lancashire County Council leader Stephen Atkinson, Westmorland and Furness Council’s Liberal Democrat leader Jonathan Brook and the Labour leaders of both Cheshire West and Chester Council and Cumberland Council, Louise Gittens and Mark Fryer.