Treasury technicalities plus party politics bring more attention for the North East
The Chancellor's big ticket items for the North East came early - which is somewhere between encouraging and disconcerting when we're talking about public transport projects.
Around £2.8 billion from the Spending Review was announced last Wednesday for infrastructure in our region, including extending the Tyne and Wear Metro to Washington.
By comparison, Rachel Reeves' big speech today was a bit of an anticlimax.
In the small print afterwards, we found that areas of Newcastle, Middlesbrough and Stockton that 'have been too easily left behind' are to receive up to £20m over the next decade for things like improving parks and tackling graffiti.
The government are calling them 'trailblazer neighbourhoods', which sounds a bit like a spoof initiative from The Thick Of It, and a lot like the Conservative governments' various funding pots for local regeneration schemes.
The Tories talked a lot about what they called 'levelling up', with mixed results.
Labour have talked less about tackling regional inequalities, but have made a technical tweak that might make a big difference.
They've revised the Treasury's 'Green Book', used to judge value-for-money for investment.
London and the South East normally deliver bigger bang for your buck, so have often been prioritised for new infrastructure.
The government says: no more, wider impacts will be considered, so regions like ours will be able to compete.
Despite some government departments having their budgets squeezed when it comes to day-to-day spending, there is money around for investment due to another tweak to government rules, around borrowing.
Rachel Reeves made a passing promise today to set out the government's plans for 'Northern Powerhouse Rail' in the coming weeks.
Campaigners say it should mean a high speed rail line from Liverpool to Hull, and up to the North East.
It's hard not to be sceptical, given it's been talked about in many forms over many years.
The Chancellor spoke quite a bit today about the government being focused on ensuring there's economic growth, and people have opportunity, in every part of the country.
She also dedicated a fair amount of time to attacking Reform UK, reflecting the threat they pose to Labour, after their local election successes in places like County Durham.
The Chancellor has been accused of doom and gloom in her first 11 months in office, focusing on what she claims has been a horrible inheritance from the Conservatives.
With this Spending Review she tried to change gear and set out a more positive plan for the years ahead.
The North East will hope to play a big part.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
One of these mining specialists is up 90pc from when I first tipped it. Now the MIDAS investment guru reveals how YOU can cash in on soaring value of rare minerals the world is rushing to grab
In the midst of World War One, the American government made a disturbing discovery – several vital metals needed for the military effort were increasingly hard to find. Officials swiftly drew up a critical mineral list, alongside a policy to help secure these commodities. Similar policies have now been drawn up across the Western world, focusing on minerals that are essential for defence, energy and technology. The Tories devised a strategy for the UK too, an update is overdue from Sir Keir Starmer and should be delivered imminently.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
UK's military and spy services set for £330m AI tech boost to help track enemies
Hundreds of millions of pounds will be invested in cutting-edge drones and artificial intelligence for the military as part of Rachel Reeves ' attempt to revive the flagging economy. The Chancellor's new industrial strategy will include a £330 million investment in technology used by the Armed Forces, such as 'next-generation drones' to be developed for joint use on the battlefield and by the emergency services. Money will also be ploughed into ultra-powerful computers for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ as well as artificial intelligence (AI) applications to track enemy targets. The investment, part of the strategy being launched tomorrow, comes as Ms Reeves is struggling to boost the UK's flagging growth prospects, which the Confederation of British Industry last week slashed to 1.2 per cent for this year and 1 per cent for 2026. In addition, government borrowing hit a non-pandemic record for May and retail sales last week were down. Without proper growth, the Chancellor will likely have to make the unenviable choice between hiking taxes further in autumn's Budget or breaking her fiscal rules. Ms Reeves has promised that the ten-year infrastructure strategy will lead to a 'decade of national renewal'. The Government is putting £15.6 billion into transport upgrades, £39 billion into social and affordable housing and £14.2 billion for the Sizewell C nuclear power station. Money will also be ploughed into ultra-powerful computers for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ as well as artificial intelligence (AI) applications to track enemy targets. pictured: MI6 headquarters Ms Reeves told The Mail on Sunday she intended to 'pull together a plan to exploit new opportunities, whether it's AI, energy technology, a whole range of parts of the economy'. She added: 'I'm really optimistic about Britain's future. We've got great businesses, we've got great trade deals... I don't see any reason for Britain not to be leaders in these jobs and industries of the future.' But Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride said: 'We have to put the public finances back on a sustainable footing. A future Conservative government will have to contend with a bloated national debt after Labour's reckless borrowing splurge. 'We will never make promises we cannot afford, and our plans will always be fully costed. Labour's "spend now, tax later" approach is utterly short-sighted. 'It mortgages Britain's future for short-term political convenience and leaves ordinary families to foot the bill.'
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
ALEX BRUMMER: All that Lady Thatcher achieved will now go up in flames like an oil drum brazier on a picket line...
's Employment Rights Bill, hurtling its way onto the statute books, threatens to turn Britain's economy back 50 years. Then, the all-powerful trade unions brought the nation to a shuddering halt, offering a foretaste of what is to come over the next few years as Labour's Bill will light the match for widespread strikes. The potential damage to an already stuttering economy, weighed down by the Chancellor's growth-sapping £40 billion of tax rises, doesn't bear thinking about. Passage of the Bill – a project long cherished by former union chieftain Rayner – would be a shattering blow to the bitterly won reforms of the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher 's embrace of lower taxes and the free market, and her crushing of union power, ushered in decades of rising living standards and prosperity. That Tory legacy, unchallenged by the 1997 Blair-Brown government, is set to go up in flames, like an oil drum brazier on a picket line. We have already seen how Chancellor Rachel Reeves 's award of inflation-busting pay rises to railwaymen, NHS staff, employees across the public sector – without any productivity agreements – have done nothing to assuage the greed of some workers. Resident doctors are leading the charge, their sense of grievance and entitlement stoked by the rabidly Leftist union, the British Medical Association. Barely a day now passes without union groups threatening to bring vital sectors of the economy to a standstill, from oil rigs and trains to healthcare. As a young financial journalist in the 1970s, I witnessed firsthand the appalling damage done to Britain by unchecked union power. As inflation soared after the 1973 oil embargo imposed by Arab countries, the Labour government was bombarded with demands for double-digit pay increases. Binmen let the streets of London pile up with rat-infested rubbish, and quaysides were stacked with essential imports waiting to be loaded onto lorries, as dock workers joined in the chorus of strikes. It would be wrong for me to suggest that anything so calamitous is approaching. The cold embrace of the IMF seems a long way off. However, the spectre of a general strike, which Angela Rayner's Bill brings us closer to, will jangle nerves in boardrooms and the Treasury alike – as it will in homes across the country. Many commuters hold bitter memories of shivering at stations and being unable to get to work as rail staff went on strike last year. Similarly, nurses and junior doctors undid the post-pandemic goodwill when they cancelled appointments and left accident and emergency wards skeleton staffed while they banged the drum for absurdly high pay rises. Those strikers were paid off by Starmer on coming to power, and inevitably they are now grumbling for more. There appears to be no understanding among our union brothers and sisters that the UK faces dire budgetary problems, a legacy of the shocks caused by the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Reeves added to the woes with her tax on employment when she raised National Insurance Contributions on businesses. The result has been predictable, with 276,000 more people unemployed and a return to stubborn, above 2 per cent, inflation. The Employment Rights Bill, which allows for bullying strike powers and attacks flexibility afforded by part-time work and zero hours contracts, will be the latest blow to business confidence. And Labour wonders why its growth mission has failed. For Rayner, extending the right of trade unions to strike by lowering the 50 per cent turnout rule for ballots and allowing instant notice of industrial action, is her reward to a union hierarchy that helped her rise up the greasy pole. In her biography, she boasts: 'I was mouthy and would take no messing from management.' Let's see if she takes any 'messing' from the public on whom she is about to inflict her socialist agenda. The Deputy Prime Minister and her party are embarking on a course that will add to business costs, sap the willingness of companies to invest and devastate efforts to reboot the economy.
