Has Boris Johnson helped the North East Level Up? The outgoing PM's flagship policy was a promise to tackle regional inequalities and bring living standards in regions like the North East up to scratch..
As he readies himself to leave office, critics have highlighted that key issues such as health inequality are "no further forward" and slammed his legacy, with "partygate" in particular having had "made a mockery" of people here. Others have even questioned how important the PM has been to recent regional successes in business such as the planned new BritishVolt factory in Blyth.
Mr Johnson announced on Wednesday that he would leave 10 Downing Street when the Conservative Party elect a new leader - and as he did so he spoke positively of his own achievements in the job. He told the country how he had succeeded in "getting Brexit done", been behind the UK's vaccine rollout, and led the west against Putin's aggression in Ukraine.
Read more: 'He leaves behind a legacy of lies and incompetence': North East MPs react to Boris Johnson's exit
Speaking early in his premiership, the Prime Minister spoke of plans to "build, build, build" and announced a £5bn "new deal". He said up to 2,500 homes could be built in the North East by 2025, and promised to dual the A1 all the way to Scotland.
He promised billions for hospital maintenance - and his Government laid out plans for what it called "40 new hospitals". How new they actually are, and how that project is progressing is up for debate. There were also plans and improving A&E capacity while a £1bn school rebuilding programme was also announced.
In the North East, his legacy is disputed. Supporters point to investment in places like Blyth and Levelling Up funding being earmarked to revamp Newcastle city centre and the Grainger Market. Tangible progress has also been made thanks to money released for the re-opening of the Northumberland Line which will again provide a transport link between Newcastle and parts of the South East of the county. The ongoing cost-of-living crisis - with families forced to rely on food banks, also looms large.
Boris Johnson has of course been running the country during an unprecedented time - at the helm during a global pandemic. His handling of this has again been contentious - but for many who lost loved ones, his involvement in "Partygate" will be the abiding memory. Bereaved members of the community like Susie Crozier-Flintham from Sunderland told ChronicleLive : "While the great British public rose to the challenge of lockdown and followed restriction guidelines, our Prime Minister and 20 members of his team were found to have committed a criminal act."
While the Prime Minister has not been shy of boasting of the success of the UK's vaccine roll-out, which has no doubt saved thousands of lives, inquiries into the handling of the pandemic have questioned decision-making around when the decision to lock-down was made and how patients ill with Covid were discharged into care homes during the early stages of the pandemic.
MPs felt that lives could have been saved if the PM had made the lockdown call sooner - and given the North has been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, this will have had real consequences for families around our region.
Those who've backed the PM have highlighted investment in our communities. Speaking to ChronicleLive following the announcement that Boris Johnson would resign, cabinet minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said: "Over the last three years, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has led this great country of ours through an unprecedented period. He had a certain magic with non-traditional Conservative voters which gave him the largest mandate of any Tory Prime Minister since the 1980s.
"He was therefore able to deliver Brexit, beyond all the odds, allowing us to take back control of our decision-making as a country. He supported the lives and livelihoods of our people across the UK throughout the pandemic - driving forward a world-beating taskforce to create a successful vaccine, and then a mammoth vaccination programme rollout."
However, critics like Labour's Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness were scathing in their assessment of the Prime Minister's contribution to our region. She said: "[Boris Johnson would] insist that the people just want him to get delivering, well he certainly delivered empty promises, scandal after scandal and constant distraction.
"Meanwhile, up here in the north, in the real world, we’ve seen child poverty rise by over a third. For me, fighting poverty and deprivation is the best way to improve lives and prevent crime so the fact that there are more food banks than youth clubs in your area tells a story of government failure.
"Add to that the simple fact that the PM tweeted the delights of a Teesside trip, when he was in fact in Whitley Bay only proves he neither knows, nor cares about the North East."
Devolution
Passing power back to regional leaders was a central plank of Boris Johnson's policy agenda. A full devolution deal reuniting local authorities on both sides of the river Tyne is now thought to be closer than ever. The plan, which would see a new North East mayor elected will be worth more than £3bn to the region, those involved believe. This is in part as it will unlock the region's share of the £4.2bn City Region Sustainable Transport Fund.
Though that has yet to be finally agreed, money has made its way to the region. Cash has been available to local leaders from a range of different funds set up by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) - such as the £4.8bn Levelling Up Fund and the £3.6bn Towns Fund. Blyth got a Town Deal, funding has helped the North Shields town centre regeneration, and further South, Teesside has become a Freeport.
Even as Government ministers were resigning by the minute, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng visited a new £400m wind turbine factory in Teesside, too.
Last week analysis by the Northern Agenda found around £1.8bn had thus far made it to the North East. While, funding for the revamp of the Tyne Bridge is not linked to any specific Levelling Up pots, it's another big win for the region.
North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll is sceptical as to Boris Johnson's influence on much of this though. He told ChronicleLive: "I thought Gareth Southgate's England team did really well in the Euros last year – that happened with Boris Johnson in power but I don't think he had much to do with it.
"I was also there for his Peppa Pig speech at the Port of Tyne. We are in the middle of discussions with ministers about getting a fantastic devolution deal for the North East and all I will say is that some politicians are easier to work with than others."
Health and health inequality
40 new hospitals, thousands more nurses and tackling health inequality? In the North East, progress is slow. Northgate Hospital in Morpeth was slated for a rebuild, as was Shotley Bridge in County Durham. The new Northern Centre for Cancer Care run by the Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust did open in Carlisle though.
Whether these projects count as "new hospitals" has been debated around the country, with most simply being refurbishments or new wings built on existing sites. Hospital trusts in our region including the Newcastle Hospitals trust have now also been waiting months for news on bids for further funding. The Newcastle trust has asked for a share of £190m to build its new Richardson Wing project.
Public health in our region - something inextricably linked to deprivation and poverty - remains a huge concern. The Government has set up an Office for Health Improvement and Disparities and funded community diagnostic centres including in Blaydon and North Tyneside to help reduce huge NHS waiting lists and improve access to healthcare.
Dr George Rae, the British Medical Association's North East regional council chair, said measures of ill-health in our region showed we "are in no better place" after more than three years of Boris Johnson as PM. Dr Rae said: "We are in no better place. We need to think about this in the context of the people of the North East. In the last five years there has been no reduction in the number of years people have spent in ill-health. The North East still does not come out well when it comes to healthy life-expectancy.
"For both men and women the biggest decreases in life expectancy have been seen in the 10% most deprived neighbourhoods in the North East of England. You can compare that to the largest increases in life expectancy in the least deprived areas of London."
Dr Rae said, echoing Kim McGuinness, that food bank use was an indicator of a need for "fundamental change". He said: " Too often we hear in the news, or read in the Chronicle or we see on television about rising child poverty, closure of children's centres or rising numbers on free school meals. We are hearing about more and more people turning to food banks. Nurses going to food banks, teachers going to food banks. It's simple, there are too many people in the poorest areas who don't have enough money to live a healthy life."
Dr Rae did acknowledge some of Boris Johnson's successes though, adding: "People do recognise that the vaccine roll-out was a success, there's no doubt about that - it's not all negative. The Government's Levelling Up agenda has been one of its main planks since Boris Johnson took over in 2019.
"As doctors we know this Levelling Up agenda definitely hasn't yet levelled up people's health. The Government needs to make a fundamental change in direction to increase healthy life expectancy."
Crime
Mr Johnson set out plans to recruit 20,000 more police officers during the leadership election campaign. Speaking in the House of Commons the day after he became Prime Minister, he said: "To address the rise of violent crime in our country I have announced that there will be 20,000 extra police keeping us safe over the next three years, and I have asked my Rt Hon Friend the Home Secretary to ensure this is treated as an absolute priority."
But Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness said the PM had "fallen far, far short" of his promises. She said: "Aside from the mockery he made of policing by breaking his own Covid rules, his promises to protect and put more police on the streets have fallen far, far short.
"Tory austerity since 2010 have seen cuts to Northumbria Police of £148m and a loss of more than 1100 officers. Johnson's promise of 20,000 new cops didn't even try to help Northumbria recover from that - we're still over 400 short with no sign of more. He had no real long-term plan. And all his talk around ending austerity, levelling up and bouncing back was met with a reality world’s apart from the rhetoric. "
In March this year, Ms McGuinness said that though there had been 427 new officers recruited since the PM's pledge, more than 600 more were needed to get the force back to the size it was before austerity. At the time the PCC said Northumbria took the biggest financial hit of all the forces in England and Wales, and has described the budget cuts as "grossly unfair and regionally biased".
The Home Office said then that the Government was on track to deliver the commitment to 20,000 new cops by March 2023. It funding for 615 new Northumbria Police officers had been secured.
Transport
The £500m Restoring Your Railway Ideas Fund, launched to much fanfare last year, invited local authorities to bid for cash to restore lines closed in 1964. The Northumberland Line was one such successful bidder and construction will soon start on six new stations, connecting towns and villages in south east Northumberland to Newcastle.
However progress on other transport projects has stalled or been heavily criticised. Local leaders have criticised the Integrated Rail Plan (IRP), featuring a cut-price Northern Powerhouse Rail which shaved £18bn - and the entire cities of Hull and Bradford - off the original proposal. It was a major downgrade of the hoped-for £36bn high speed line connecting east to west between Manchester and Leeds via Bradford. This would have helped free up track space and make it easier for people in the North East to travel east-to-west across the country.
The eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds was also canned Once labelled ‘a priority’ by Boris Johnson, it would have allowed for more hourly trains and shorter journeys on almost every key northern route.
More locally, transport bosses are strapped for cash. The Metro system has a £33m cash shortage for repairs, while bus routes are being cut around the region.
What Boris Johnson has said himself
Boris Johnson has fervently defended the progress of his Levelling Up agenda. Speaking in November about rail investment, he said: "Look at what we are doing in terms of investment in the rail network, there has been nothing like it for a generation or more. £96billion. Labour had all the time while they were in office and did absolutely nothing like this."
Just weeks ago in parliament, Boris Johnson defended his mission to “unite and level up” and “unleash the potential of our entire country”. He also told MPs: "We are making colossal investments in our NHS, we are cutting waiting times, we are raising standards, we are paying nurses more, we are supporting our fantastic NHS."
"We have the lowest unemployment now since 1974 and we are going to continue to grow our economy for the long term."
A No10 spokesperson said: “The North East has been a crucial part of the government’s levelling up mission to spread opportunity and prosperity equally across the country.
“The new Teesside Freeport started operating in November last year and is expected to contribute £3.2 billion and 18,000 jobs to the region, ensuring the local economy can reach its full potential. We have also backed the UK’s second electric vehicle Gigafactory with government investment, which will create another 3,000 direct jobs in Northumberland, as well as an additional 5,000 in the supply chain.
“There are now 764 additional police officers keeping streets safer, as part of our national programme to recruit 20,000 more officers.
“The region is benefitting from 725 more doctors and 1,552 more nurses working to reduce waiting times, as well as the rebuild of Northgate hospital and a new hospital to replace Shotley Bridge Hospital to be delivered as part of the Government’s commitment to build 40 new hospitals by 2030.
“Our £96 billion Integrated Rail Plan will make Northern Powerhouse Rail a reality and will see the people of Newcastle benefit from smoother, more reliable and faster electric trains. We have also committed £337 million to deliver a new fleet of trains on the Tyne and Wear Metro to improve journeys for passengers and transform local connectivity and pledged £34 million to rapidly progress plans to reopen the Northumberland line.
“This is all part of the government’s Levelling Up mission to unlock growth in the region, which has seen an initial £100 million of investment through the Levelling Up fund of five projects, including the creation of a state-of-the-art health and sports facility in the West End of Newcastle.”
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