RUSHES: Transforming transport in the North: Mark Harper speech

Transforming transport in the North: Mark Harper speech; ENGLAND: Newcastle-upon-Tyne: INT Mark Harper MP (Transport Secretary) speech SOT (part 1 of 4) - It's great to be here in Newcastle, in what is my first visit to the North-East as Transport Secretary. And let me start, first of all, by thanking Martin Tugwell for the invitation. Transport for the North is a valued partner, a tireless champion of boosting connectivity across the region, both in public and in private. And your conference today will be a reminder, to anyone who needed it, that the success of the UK is increasingly tied to the success of the North of England. And, to you Lord McLoughlin, or Patrick as I know you better, although frankly for the first large number of years that I knew him, he wasn't called Patrick, he was called 'Chief', as we call the Chief Whip. It was a job he carried out so effectively overseeing party discipline. That it all but guaranteed my attendance here today. There seems to be a theme of former Chief Whips becoming former Transport Secretaries. Like Patrick, I was part of the government that, almost a decade ago, actually launched the northern powerhouse. The idea that by pooling the region's talent, leveraging its fantastic academic institutions, and connecting its great urban centres, we wanted to turn individually strong northern cities into a collective unit, that was greater than the sum of its parts. It was an unashamedly ambitious target. And we knew it wouldn't happen overnight. Yet despite the turbulence of recent years - from a global pandemic to now a war on the continent of Europe - there has never been a question of our commitment to the North ever being placed on the backburner, as some have claimed. In fact, we redoubled our efforts to boost connectivity, accelerate devolution and revive former industrial heartlands into new engines of economic growth. The spirit of that original mission, which we launched 9 years ago, is stil...