An interesting take on discussions involving Transport for the North and
regional politicians.
All these discussions and the decisions that follow from them are taking place behind closed doors, with us as passengers and citizens being expected just to gratefully accept whatever our feuding Lords and Masters decide we ought to have.
The North can’t be united and work together if passengers’ interests are excluded from the process.
[Opinion in Manchester Evening News by Jennifer Williams, 18th August 2019, follows]
Jen Williams: Why the dream of a functioning northern transport network
is now at a critical point
As
negotiations ramp up with government over new rail links, last week saw a row
break out among northern leaders and officials. But now, more than ever, one
united voice from the region is essential
Last weekend the Yorkshire Post ran a great exclusive about
what Andy Burnham had been doing the other side of the Pennines.
At the latest meeting of Transport for the North – the
semi-independent body that draws up transport strategy on behalf of all
northern councils – in Leeds, Greater Manchester’s mayor had refused point
blank to support the £39bn high speed rail plan drawn up by officials, which
was due to be submitted to government.
This was because the document
mysteriously no longer included a demand that the planned HS2 terminus at a
rebuilt Piccadilly Station be created underground, a more expensive option, but
one leaders here believe is vital to tie it into better future connections to
other northern cities.
His argument was consistent
with everything Manchester had been saying for some time, both publicly and
privately.
Yet despite having been told
the proposal would be in the document, a week before the meeting leaders
discovered officials had taken it out.
What followed was a ‘fraught’
discussion (big row) that resulted in TfN being sent away to redo it.
Behind that incident sit some
interesting and revealing tensions, between leaders and officials, between
different regions and, as ever, between the north and the government.
They also raise important
questions about if and how we can actually get the transport network we need
here, or whether we are destined to forever beg the Department for Transport
for crumbs.
One of those tensions relates
to TfN itself. Set up as a pan-northern organisation intended to plan and lobby
government for better transport links, increasingly politicians and local
officials across the region feel it is not representing the ambition they had
envisaged. Some are starting to even question whether there’s any point to
it.
In Greater Manchester there is
certainly, as usual, a feeling that there’s no point coming up with plans if
they’re not ambitious – as one politician here says regarding Piccadilly, ‘if
Westminster wants to criticise our ambition that’s for them to do, not TfN’. We
still haven’t had the piecemeal rail improvements we were originally promised,
they point out, but that is no reason not to articulate a vision for something
truly excellent.
Another senior insider here
says TfN did a great job dealing with last year’s northern rail meltdown,
adding that the body had been crucial in helping to ‘untangle the chaos’ of
what had fundamentally gone wrong – unlike government.
However, in the last year or
so, since becoming a statutory body, they said it had become more like a
‘broker’ between the north and the government, as opposed to a voice advocating
for ambitious transport upgrades. Leaders find themselves demanding one thing,
they said, before finding the plan had slipped back towards the DfT’s position
by the time they next met.
“That ain’t going to work, because in that case why not deal directly with the DfT?”, they add, not the only person I hear make that point.
Another insider on the other
side of the Pennines points to a difference in mindset between the northern
politicians overseeing things and the civil servants charged with drawing up
the plans. While mayors and leaders, for the most part, want to think big and
transformative, officials lean towards the traditional Whitehall thinking of
going for the cheaper, more conservative option.
One senior politician here agrees with that analysis, adding darkly:
“There needs to be a conversation within TfN about reminding them who they work for.”
TfN would consider that unfair.
Doubtless they would point out that whatever case they put to government, it
still needs to go through restrictive Treasury processes at a time when
finances remain perilously uncertain and Boris Johnson will see little
political gain in giving Manchester a better station. Universally, everyone
agrees TfN needs to be given a proper budget, with coherent spending decisions
made in the north.
But a senior figure elsewhere
in the the north says TfN has so far failed to make the case to government
about what we need and deserve.
“There’s not many pan-northern organisations that can put pressure on government and TfN have the mandate to be far more demanding,” they argue.
“Instead they leave it up to individual mayors like Andy Burnham. The problem with that is that under Theresa May, every time Andy or Steve [Rotherham, Liverpool city region mayor] or Dan [Jarvis, Sheffield city region mayor] opened their mouth, Number 10 would retreat because they worried about negative headlines.”
We are now in a new era, of course, and one in which
advisers to Boris Johnson are eyeing up an election.
At his speech in Manchester a few weeks ago the
new PM committed only to the Manchester to Leeds part of the ‘Northern
Powerhouse Rail’ plan, envisaged by leaders here as an entire network. In
fairness, I’m told DfT officials hadn’t even wanted him to do that, arguing he
should just upgrade the existing line. “You’d have to shut the main line from
Manchester to Leeds for about five years if you did that,” points out one
transport insider, neatly highlighting what the region is up against. Even so,
Boris Johnson’s promise is still actually less than what George Osborne had
pledged in 2014.
“The evidence is clearly there that they are not delivering,” says one senior Merseyside figure of both the government and TfN’s approach to the state of the transport network. There was no mention of Liverpool in the speech.
“You get Boris here announcing Manchester to Leeds, a regurgitation five years after George Osborne first mentioned it. I rest my case.”
Meanwhile Tees Valley’s Tory
mayor Ben Houchen caused further ructions at the last TfN meeting. Some have
detected the hand of government in his comments to fellow leaders, asking why
the rest of the north should support Manchester in arguing for a more expensive
station.
“This is what TfN has been good at avoiding,” says one senior politician here, “which is picking off one bit of the north against another.” There is a suspicion government wants to start trimming back HS2 and is pitting areas against each other as a result, undermining that northern voice.
The same goes for fun and games
around the Northern Powerhouse in general. Many senior figures report
speculation that minister Jake Berry wants to set up a statutory body to
oversee that, too – chipping away at the growing autonomy and advocacy northern
leaders have crafted, by instead putting government in the driving seat.
So northern unity can still be
a fragile unity.
Yet it remains,
agrees everyone I speak to, essential to finally upgrading an archaic transport
network in an era where most of the time, London still cannot hear us.
That will require the north to continue articulating
its case as effectively as possible , including for power over its own
transport budget, rather than endlessly going cap in hand to Whitehall,
applying for piecemeal bits and bobs.
One thing that struck me when researching this piece was
that every single official and senior politician I spoke to, anywhere in the
north, made the same points, in the same language. Their analysis is
consistent: we are being held back here by Whitehall’s abject failure to
recognise our needs, or just how much the whole country – but especially the 16m people living here – could
benefit if they just took their heads out of the green book.
These are points you rarely see
made on national political programmes or in the comment pages of national
newspapers, unless you make some serious impact.
Any hopes of doing that, of
truly upgrading our hopeless transport network, are at a ‘critical juncture’,
says one Greater Manchester figure, and represent a ‘crunch moment’ for TfN. If
northern voices allow themselves to be undermined, tearing lumps out of
northern officials at the same time, ‘the north will make a big mistake’, they
suggest.
“But which government, of any colour, can ignore the whole of the north at this juncture, if we’re united?” they pose. “We have got to the business end of some of these transport schemes and compromises and trade-offs are probably going to be required. That gets a bit messy. But let’s not let that messiness break the whole.”
The unity is there. In reality,
everyone here is on the same page. The question is whether we can carry on
shouting loud enough for government to read it.
https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/jen-williams-dream-functioning-northern-16775581
