12 Daily Express Tuesday, July 30, 2019
DX1STINTERCITY PLEDGE: The PM hopes to ‘turbocharge’ rail links between Manchester and LeedsTime to scrap HS
and find new ways
to boost the North
One Canada Square, London E14 5AP
Tel: 020 8612 7000 (outside UK: +44 20 8612 7000)These dementia bills
are a national disgrace
Time for EU to give way
O
NCE again, the Government’s
calamitous inertia on dementia care is
causing agony across the country. As
well as the huge bills being racked up
by those ineligible for NHS funding there’s
now an additional crisis: that the appeals
system set up to fight unfair bills is itself
not fit for purpose.
Pensioners and relatives seeking
compensation for swingeing overpayments
are having to wait so long for their cases to
be seen that many die prior to resolution.
It’s yet another step backwards in the dire
dementia care crisis. In some cases
seriously ill pensioners have been forced to
sell family homes to pay care costs, but
have then found they were wrongly billed
for that care. Evidence uncovered by the
Daily Express has found that some have
fought for years to get a legitimate refund
on money spent on care home fees. Also,
appeal hearings can vary enormously across
the country – and it is a byzantine process.
We know it’s busy, but the new
Government must urgently address the
dementia crisis as such problems will
continue to snowball until more equitable
systems are in place.T
HE no-deal scenario has been
painted as a disaster, but the UK’s
new Government is looking
increasingly bullish. With Michael
Gove forensically overseeing the “war
Cabinet” for an October Brexit, and
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab insisting
that Britain will be in a better position to
negotiate with the EU after a no-deal
Brexit, there’s a sense of renewed
confidence in the UK.
Number 10 has also intimated that as it is
the Irish backstop that has held up Brexit, it
needs to be dropped.
This may be unpopular to some of our
neighbours. But the EU has been obstinate,
and while the Government still wants to
make a deal, it’s time for EU leaders to
re-open talks and be more constructive
ahead of our October departure.
A good Brexit is in all of our interests.You’re a big man...
T
HERE’S a lesson in Sir Michael Caine’s
testimony that living on a farm with
organic food and no sugar helped him
grow strong.
Now 86, the star of Get Carter, Alfie and
other classics was evacuated to Norfolk
during the Second World War and recalls
the healthy, if frugal, diet as something that
helped his long-term health.
It’s true for many of us that if we ate an
organic diet and less junk food it would be
a great boon to our health.
Perhaps Sir Michael should start a Caine
diet and market it by paraphrasing one of
his great film quotes: “You’re a big man- and you’re in great shape.”
‘Everything is based in London,
resulting in a lopsided economy’
Patrick O’Flynn
Political commentator
T
HERE was a famous
comedy sketch written
by the late Victoria
Wood that featured a
television announcer
with a cut glass accent
saying: “We’d like to apologise
to our viewers in the North. It
must be awful for them.”
As a summary of snobby atti-
tudes towards the North of
England it was deadly accurate
and since then no government
has been able to shift the dial.
In fact, few have bothered
trying. Under New Labour and
the Tories alike, while northern
cities were starved of major
investment, vast sums were
ploughed into London-
orientated infrastructure such
as the HS1 rail line, the Jubilee
Line Extension and Crossrail.
All were promoted by a mind-
set that viewed London as the
golden city that could generate
the prosperity needed to fund
public services across the land.
And the trend continues. A
recent study by the IPPR think-
tank found that investment in
transport infrastructure in
London is running at three
times the level per person as in
the North. And now, of course,
we have HS2 – a project with a
vast official budget of £57bil-
lion, which is really expected to
cost £100billion. All to make
getting to London that bit
quicker for people living in
northern and Midland cities.I
TS defenders say it is
needed as much to increase
rail capacity as to cut jour-
ney times. But that only holds
true if one’s economic model
envisages London continuing to
suck talent and business from
the North and the Midlands.
There is, of course, another
way. For while Britain is unu-
sual in the vast gap between the
population of its capital city
(eight million-plus) and next
largest city Birmingham (one
million-plus) it does not follow
that most world-class business
activity must be London-based.
Because our great northern
cities have something very par-
ticular going for them – their
proximity to each other. The
distance between Liverpool onthe west coast and Hull on the
east is only about 120 miles –
approximately the same as
between Swindon and
Southend at opposite edges of
the London travel-to-work area.
Yet this Liverpool to Hull cor-
ridor contains the cities of
Manchester, Leeds and
Bradford, and large towns like
Warrington and Huddersfield.
The South Yorkshire popula-
tion centres like Sheffield are
close by. A network of high-
speed rail and road links knit-
ting together a region 120 miles
across by about 40 miles deep
has the potential to create an
economic zone with a popula-
tion similar to London, and with
many attractions for employers,
including cheaper land and
less congestion.
This notion was, to give him
credit, crystallised by George
Osborne – a rare senior Tory sit-
ting in a northern seat at the
time – in the “NorthernPowerhouse”. So it is exciting
to see the new PM Boris
Johnson reinvigorating it.
In a major speech on
Saturday, Mr Johnson promised
to “turbocharge” plans for a
faster trans-Pennine rail route
between Manchester and Leeds- saying the benefits would be
“colossal”. He has long champi-
oned bold infrastructure,
although some of his outlandish
ideas – a Thames Estuary air-
port and the ill-fated Garden
Bridge – never took off.
He must make sure the same
fate does not befall the
Northern Powerhouse. And
there is one decision he could
take that would signal his seri-
ousness: scrap HS2 and switch
most of its budget into northern
infrastructure projects.
So long as HS2 continues to
soak up massive amounts
of public finance, it is impossi-
ble to see the Northern
Powerhouse becoming a truly
transformative idea. Yet the PM
struck an unusual note of timid-
ity, declaring: “With all the con-
troversy surrounding the spend
on HS2, which will probably be
north of £100billion, it is only
responsible to have a short
review.” A short review doesn’t
cut it, unless it is to be followed
by a bold pulling of the plug.A
S a former Mayor of
London, he’ll know
that, unlike other
countries, Britain does not dis-
perse key economic sectors sen-
sibly. In the US politics is based
in Washington, finance in New
York, film in LA. In the
Netherlands, politics is in The
Hague while Amsterdam is
finance and culture. In Britain,
politics, finance, film and TV is
all based in London. It all
results in a lop-sided economy
that spreads a feeling of being
ignored or left behind across
much of the rest of the country.
If Boris Johnson can start to
tackle that, not only will major
economic benefits follow, but so
may political gains for his party
as it finally proves it is not only
in it for the South-east. That, in
the end, may be the factor that
finally swings it for the North.PACKHAM ON HS2: PAGE 18Picture: PA