Tracy Brabin hosting a Mayor’s Question Time at the University of Leeds

Josh Elgin on 14 February 2024

The Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin will answer questions in a Mayor’s Question Time event on campus next week. 

Brabin will take questions from members of the audience in an event taking place at the Nexus building on 22 February.

She was elected nearly three years ago as the first West Yorkshire Mayor and leader of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, which brings together Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield. 

She stood on 10 pledges which include creating 1,000 well-paid skilled jobs for young people, putting the safety of women and girls at the centre of a policing plan, bringing buses back under public control, supporting local businesses and tackling climate change.

The mayor, who is running for re-election in May, has already faced questions in events in Wakefield and Halifax in the past month and will bring the format to Leeds.

Hosted by an independent journalist, questions to the mayor have to be submitted in advance of the event and will be chosen by the host to ensure a broad range of topics are covered.

A spokesperson for the West Yorkshire Combined Authority said: 

“The events offer people of West Yorkshire the chance to hear directly from the Mayor, who will answer questions posed by you, her West Yorkshire constituents. We’ll also discuss local, regional and national issues as well as hear about how her pledges are progressing and future plans for West Yorkshire. 

“You can ask the mayor about anything that falls within her role. The mayor is responsible for specific functions of the Combined Authority that are ‘Mayoral Functions’, which include transport-related functions, housing and planning functions and finance powers.”

“She is also responsible for functions of the Police and Crime Commissioner and supported to deliver these by an appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Alison Lowe OBE, who will also be in attendance at the event.”

Directly elected mayors have been introduced in England in the past decade as a way of giving major cities more control over the policies which affect the lives of those who live in them. 

Former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who pioneered the policy, said cities in northern England experienced a “mismatch” between their economic performance and political clout. 

“Wales has its own parliament and can pass its own laws. But the economies of Manchester and Leeds are each individually bigger than Wales [and] they don’t have a single leader who can speak for the whole area.” 

The question time event will be hosted in the same University of Leeds building where the West Yorkshire devolution deal was signed in March 2020.

The event will take place at the Nexus building on February 22 at 19:30 – 21:00 – tickets are available online

Is Network North levelling up in action or more Tory distraction?

Joseph Quash on 21 October 2023

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced a brand new transport scheme for the North of England, known as Network North. The announcement was made on Wednesday 4th at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, and follows the cancellation of the Northern leg of HS2, intended to connect Birmingham and Manchester with high-speed rail.

The Leeds line was scrapped back in November 2021.

The purpose of HS2, as part of the wider Levelling Up scheme across the UK, was to create more opportunity in cities outside of London and boost regional productivity. Furthermore, many hoped that such a large infrastructure project would reinvigorate the stagnant UK economy; more than 30,000 jobs have already been provided by HS2. Speaking to The Civil Engineer, the Civil Engineering Contractors’ Association (CECA) stated that “without commitment to fast tracking [the Network North projects] and getting boots on the ground in the immediate future, they will have little impact on the UK’s economic recovery and future prosperity.”

In an official statement on the Government website, Sunak claims that “every penny” of the £36 billion intended for HS2 will be reinvested into the Midlands and the North, providing for a new programme of transport improvements that will benefit “far more people, in far more places, far quicker.”

Of that total, £19.8 billion has been pledged specifically to the North, “on things like connecting its major cities”, according to Sunak. Railways connecting Leeds to cities like Hull and Sheffield are also set to be upgraded, reducing travel times.

The most notable feature for Leeds residents is the new “fully funded £2.5 billion West Yorkshire mass-transit system, giving the region better connections to Bradford and Wakefield” that has been proposed.

Leeds is renowned for being the largest major city in Western Europe without any kind of mass public transport network.

There have been ongoing plans for a West Yorkshire transit system for some years, part of West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin’s “plans for West Yorkshire to become a net-zero carbon economy by 2038”, reports the Yorkshire Evening Post.

Plans for a Leeds-based tram system were originally proposed in 1991, more than three decades ago. The Leeds Supertram, a second iteration, gained provisional government approval in 2001, before being scrapped in 2005 due to concerns over rising costs.

The Proposed 2005 tram route

Brabin herself described the scrapping of the Northern leg as “yet another betrayal of the North” in an official statement posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. In an interview with Channel 4, she voiced doubts about the proposed Leeds transit system, highlighting that there are, as yet, “no timeframes for the money” and citing previous Government rollbacks: “we’ve been promised so much by Conservative government [that has]… been pulled”, referencing the Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme.

Northern Powerhouse Rail, sometimes nicknamed HS3, was proposed in 2014 and was intended to connect Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds by high speed rail. However, the project was significantly watered down in 2021 under Boris Johnson.

Brabin’s reservations gained credence after the Government withdrew its commitment to reopening the disused Leamside railway line in the North-East just 24 hours after the announcement. The reopening of the Leamside line was one of the Government’s “key transport pledges”, according to LBC.

Asked about the proposed Network North projects, Secretary-General of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) Mick Lynch said this in an interview with PoliticsJOE, at the Labour Party Conference on Sunday 8th: “I don’t think any of that’s going to happen. [The Government] didn’t even consult Network Rail about how it’s going to work. They’re now saying that all the money is not there.”

As of yet, the Government has not announced when these projects will be initiated, or when the funds will be delivered to their respective regions.

The question, then, is whether Network North is a genuine, long-term scheme to bring efficiency and prosperity to a Northern transport system that has been neglected for decades, or, as Mayor Brabin puts it, “pure electioneering” for a Conservative party struggling in the polls with a general election looming on the horizon.