One month on from the Convention of the North 2023 in Manchester, NP11 Chair, Sir Roger Marsh OBE DL, blogs about how the North can build on the momentum generated through the Convention and ensure the North is positioned as the solution to the challenges the UK currently faces.
I was pleased to once again co-chair the Convention of the North, this time in Manchester, on 25 January. Now that the dust has settled from the event, I’ve been reflecting about where we go next.
Last month marked a welcome return to a large-scale Convention post-COVID-19 and it was fantastic to see so many people in one place engaged and talking about the North’s many priorities, united by a common goal of making things happen.
I went into the event wanting a focus on action and how we can work together make sure the North realises its enormous potential as a driving force for UK growth over the rest of this century and beyond.
I feel we achieved this, with a real eagerness among partners in the room to effect meaningful change.
The next year will be crucial for us to build a unified position for the North on devolution. Encouragingly, both the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove and Shadow Secretary of State, Lisa Nandy seemed to share our eagerness, both emphasising their respective commitment to levelling up the North and to further devolution of funding and powers to local leaders.
Now we have this cross-party commitment to levelling up, we need to keep working, and working together, to make it real. There are strong partnerships between business and the public sector across the region and the drive to ensure our potential is realised, but it’s only with Westminster working hand-in-hand with us that we can fully unlock that potential.
I am hugely optimistic about the North’s future and know from my conversations at the Convention and subsequently that there is a shared commitment to ensure our people, our places and our businesses succeed. There’s so much to be positive about throughout our region – our people, skills, culture, nature, heritage, industry, energy, ambition and grit can be harnessed to propel the country forward.
The Convention only reinforced my view that the solutions to the challenges we face as a country – including the cost of living, energy security and the need for growth – can be found here in the North.
Look at Net Zero for example. The Government’s creation of a new Department for Energy Security and Net Zero reaffirms its commitment to these areas. As the Skidmore Review made clear, the global transition to Net Zero is a once-in-a-generation economic opportunity; one that the North is ready to lead on behalf of the UK.
That same Review also reinforced the need for us as a country to go further and faster in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions and reshape our key industries, our infrastructure and our workforce for a truly Net Zero future. The North provides a ready-made solution to this challenge. More than half of England’s renewable energy is generated in the North and we are decarbonising 13% faster than the UK as a whole.
Building on this existing leadership and backing a Northern-led Green Industrial Revolution could create 100,000 jobs by 2050 and add more than £2billion a year to our economy, all while slashing carbon emissions by 50% against 2005 levels by 2032.
As the NP11, we are now preparing for a business launch of our work towards a Net Zero North, where we will continue to highlight our ambitions for a Northern-led Green Industrial Revolution. Business is and must continue to be at the heart of driving this work for the benefit of our economy and our communities, working in partnership with local civic leaders and Government.
The challenges the North faces have been decades in the making and won’t be solved by quick-fixes. We need a sustained-long term plan to level up the North – one that goes far beyond a single Parliament – to benefit jobs, communities and people here and for the nation. Levelling up and devolution go hand in hand, and need to be hardwired into our economic approach, with collaboration between local and national government, across boundaries, and vitally with business and industry as real partners.
It was hard not to come away from the Convention feeling reinvigorated to seize the huge opportunities we have here. The central question I found myself asking again and again isn’t why back the North, but why wouldn’t you, when the scale of the opportunity is so great? The next year will be crucial for us to build that unified proposition for the country, so let’s stop talking and make it happen.
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