Mayor of the Tees Valley Ben Houchen Speaks to T&G on Levelling up and More

The Conservative mayor of Tees Valley has told Time Radio that time is running out for the government to deliver on levelling up in Red Wall areas.
Speaking to Tom Newton Dunn and Jack Blanchard on Times Radio, he said:
Levelling up won't all happen by the next election.There's a huge divide...between the haves and have nots in this country. It's going to take, potentially 15 or 20 years to try and bridge that GDP gap between the north of England and the south of England. But at the next election, those people who voted Conservative for the first time in places like Teesside need to be able to see progress towards it and time is running out before the next election...The Government needs to set out a clear path of how they're going to start ...levelling up for other parts of the country outside of places like Teesside, so we can win the next election, and continue with that plan to level up the whole country.
And he said it's vital to deliver in order to maintain trust in the Conservative Party:
People want to be proven right so those people that did vote for us want to vote for us again. But we need to give them the excuse and we need to be able to show...progress on levelling up so they can point to something or they can see a physical positive difference in their life to say, I voted for the Conservatives for the first time, my grandparents or my great grandparents would be really upset with me but I knew it was the right thing to do and therefore I'm going to do it again.
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[@claireb9127]

Ben is right, the government should be doing more BUT the private HGV companies have known that they needed more drivers for years, the media have let these companies off the hook by solely blaming government.

[@peterashcroft8058]

This idea that everyone down south is annoyed because the North is starting to receive investment from the Treasury is ridiculous.