North of England lost out on £140bn for transport in ‘decade of deceit’-study
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/09/north-of-england-lost-out-on-140bn-for-transport-in-decade-of-deceit-study
Posted by topotaul
North of England lost out on £140bn for transport in ‘decade of deceit’-study
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jun/09/north-of-england-lost-out-on-140bn-for-transport-in-decade-of-deceit-study
Posted by topotaul
10 Comments
Laughs in Welsh…. Welcome to the club! Sucks doesn’t it unless you are London based or it’s beneficial to London, they don’t give a crap about you. See HS2 and the new Oxford to Cambridge rail line being classed as England and Wales projects, to deny Wales comparable investment.
I’m absolutely shocked that the Tories would under-invest in Labour areas, and over-invest in Tory areas.
Running the country for the benefit of the, well, whole country has never exactly been a strong suit of theirs.
If the north had received the same per-person spending as London
That will only happen if the north produced as much GDP per person as london.
>The East Midlands fared even worse, with an average of £355 per person spent – less than a third of that received by London.
I eagerly await the professional northerners to overlook this fact and say how Manchester and Leeds should get all the money.
[The original research is interesting](https://www.ippr.org/articles/on-track-to-prosperity). It bands together the entire South East (who often get little transport investment) with London (who get loads). It also shows that the South West and Northern Ireland get even less than the North, while the North West gets just below the average amount of transport investment of the rest of the country.
Its obvious everywhere outside of London needs investment in transport infrastructure. But this framing of the issue as a “North v. South” thing when its a “London and Everywhere Else” thing doesn’t help.
But, but, Northern Powerhouse! George Osbourne stood in front of a banner and everything!
Money wasn’t spent just because it would have been a huge waste. Ridiculous! Bridges to nowhere are our birthright!
When Tory bias and the dead hand of the treasury conspire to keep poor areas down.
Does this include operating subsidy, or have they once again “forgotten” to include that?
And does Crossrail get spread over the whole southeast, or just London, in the belief no one commutes into London?
But don’t worry, the Tory Tees Valley mayor renamed Durham Tees Valley airport back to Teesside Airport! I mean, that’s just as good as £140bn… right?! I mean, bloody northerners would only waste that cash on roads and trains and other rubbish instead of refilling Ben Houchen’s drinks cabinet and property portfolio!
Nice. Makes sense for the government to invest in areas that give the greatest amount of return to the tax payer. Infrastructure investment should not be subject to pork barrell politics anymore than any other investment.
Of course this problem would be entirely fixed with fully privatising road and rail, so it wouldn’t be subject to meaningless political debates that only distort solutions into problems.