Evening Chronicle 10th March 2025 by Rob Parsons – read the original article here.
Your can read the full article by Rob Parsons in the Evening Chronicle here.
The Government unit set up to promote the UK to global businesses has been accused of encouraging Saudi Arabian firms to ignore the North East and instead focus its investment on the more affluent South East of England.
Tees Valley Conservative mayor Ben Houchen told business and political leaders in Newcastle the apparent snub by the Office for Investment (OFI) was an example of the decades-long government reluctance to invest in the North.
Speaking at the launch of the True North think-tank – a new organisation dedicated to the North East and Cumbria – Lord Houchen suggested the North is owed “reparations” from the rest of the UK after decades of under-investment.
Most political leaders in the North say the region has been held back by Treasury orthodoxy dictating that public funds and investment are better directed to the already-affluent London and the South East. And Lord Houchen had a specific example of how the Treasury’s view of investment in the regions had apparently filtered through to the OFI, the government unit set up to promote the UK to investors and businesses around the world.
He said leaders in the North East were hoping for more investment from oil-rich Saudi Arabia, adding to the money that’s already flowed into Newcastle United Football Club and from Saudi firms like SABIC and Aramco.
But he said: “I know there was a meeting with the Saudis [and OFI] last week. The Government said to them ‘We don’t want to talk to you about the North East. Don’t go to the North East. Come and talk to us about the Oxford-Cambridge Arc [the area between Oxford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge]’.
“So when you‘ve got the Saudis who are desperate to invest in the North East of England, they keep talking to me and [North East mayor] Kim McGuinness saying ‘Can we talk to you about pulling a plan together, about what would you invest in?’.
“When they speak to central government, central government say ‘forget the North East, come to Cambridge, because that’s where the growth is going to be’. That’s the problem we’ve got.”
The mayor’s wider point at the launch of the think-tank is the need to change the Treasury’s mindset to equalise the decades-long lack of investment in the region.
Approached by The Northern Agenda politics newsletter, the Department for Business and Trade has not disputed his characterisation of the meeting last week.
But a spokesman said: “To say this Government doesn’t want investment in the North East is a nonsense. In just six months this Government has brought £20 billion of investment and 9,000 jobs to the region in everything from engineering to offshore wind.
“Our Plan for Change will ensure more investment and jobs flow into every region in this country including our world class industry in the North East.”