Kate Fox, the stand-up poet behind the “Lass War” protest against the lack of female figureheads for the Northern Powerhouse, is standing in the drizzle outside Manchester Central in a hard hat and high vis jacket.
“The Northern Powerhouse as a concept is so man-heavy,” she says. “Every photo is just full of men looking so happy with themselves for the things they’ve just signed or the construction site they’ve just looked at.
“You don’t look at those photos do you and think, oooh, it’s so cosmopolitan and creative, I think I’ll go move my trendy internet firm there? No!”
She makes a salient point. Is the Northern Powerhouse concept resonating beyond the walls of conference centres and panel discussions? Ipsos MORI chief executive Ben Page says six out of 10 people in the north of England have heard of it, but probably couldn’t tell you any details about it. Outside the North of England, most people haven’t heard of it.
More importantly, a survey of people on the boards of the FTSE 500 about attitudes to Theresa May’s industrial strategy and the Northern Powerhouse found overwhelmingly that they regard it as important and 39% said it was very important. “They really get the need for economic rebalancing,” Page says.
A panel of council chief executives from Sheffield, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Manchester and Liverpool insisted overseas investors were buying in to the Northern Powerhouse vision and the concept was very important as a branding tool.
“The Northern Powerhouse it seems to me is a very important brand which can encompass all of the places, economic strengths and do trade with different parts of the world,” says Newcastle-upon-Tyne city council chief executive Pat Ritchie.
A scan of the attendees list reveals some overseas investors including China’s Fosun Group and SinoFortune have sent representatives to the conference. Ritchie thinks greater devolution allowing regions to make more economic decisions locally would help the North to navigate Brexit uncertainty and attract investors.
“If we can get much closer to forming decisions about investment, we can respond more quickly to the risks around uncertainty,” she says.
Lloyds Banking Group managing director Nick Williams warns against the Northern Powerhouse becoming an administration in itself that could actually deter investment. “I think we need a common purpose to stand behind but…what we don’t want to create is any further bureaucracy,” he says.
However, Richard Gregory, chairman of Yorkshire Bank, says a political lobby is needed to ensure the North gets its “fair share” of infrastructure investment. An IPPR report in August 2016 found there was a £1,600 per person London-North spending gap.
There is evidence of increasing unity across the North. For the first time, Lancashire LEP and combined authority was represented, which Harry Catherall, a member of the LCA, put down to the region’s 15 councils becoming ready to come together and articulate a single vision for the area.
The view from much of the private sector is positive. AECOM director Richard Green says, “You could look at the way in which political background has changed over that period and think, the Northern Powerhouse is no longer relevant, but it is. And I think it’s relevant because the people of the North and the businesses of the North are taking it on board and they want to see something change, so that’s really encouraging up here.”
The concept will once again look rather different next year, with mayoral elections in May in Manchester and Liverpool which will see the appointment of new figureheads with new agendas for the North of England. The government continues to insist it is still behind the concept and today launched a £400m Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund designed to boost small and medium-sized businesses.
Opening up the Northern Powerhouse concept beyond a niche group can only help sell the area to investors. Leeds council leader Judith Blake thinks the debate has been too dominated by a small group of people. “If anything the debate has been stifled with obsession with their shiny infrastructure. As important as that is, connectivity is the way I’d like to talk about it.”
She adds: “George Osborne has gone, but now it’s time for the North to take over its own destiny and really drive the agenda forward.”
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