A ROW has broken out after the Government was accused of an “indefensible” spending gap when it comes to spending on transport in the North and South.

Think tank IPPR North said its analysis showed that £4,155 was set to be spent on transport per person in London, almost five times the figure in the North-East (£855).

Shadow Transport Secretary and Middlesbrough MP Andy McDonald said spending in the North remained abysmal, while claims of a more equal distribution of cash were unfounded.

But the Department for Transport (DfT) said IPPR North had miscalculated and the figures produced were misleading.

Last month Durham City MP Roberta Blackman-Woods said the Government was attempting to mask discrepancies in investment.

This was after Transport Secretary Chris Grayling wrote to MPs with a regional breakdown and claimed a historical trend favouring the South had been reversed.

IPPR North said the Government had excluded less than half of planned spending, while a deal which had been struck allowing London to keep its own business rates to spend on transport meant the capital would stand to benefit by £240m next year and more in the years after.

Senior Research Fellow at IPPR North, Luke Raikes said: “Despite the Transport Secretary’s recent statements, London is still set to receive almost three times more transport investment per person than the North.

“This is indefensible.

“The North has been underfunded in comparison to London for decades, and our figures demonstrate that ministers have failed to redress this imbalance.

“This failure will continue to hold back the North and the country until the Government acts.”

Mr McDonald said: “In the last year, the Tories clipped the wings of Transport for the North by refusing it any meaningful powers, scrapped long-promised rail electrification and have failed to match Labour’s commitment of at least £10bn of investment to build a Crossrail for the North to link our great Northern regions.

“With its misleading statistics, it’s clear that this Government won’t be upfront about the scale of its under investment in the North.”

A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport hit back and said calculations by IPPR North had been “completely misleading”, compared to its own.

This was because its own analysis focused on years for which departmental budgets had been set – 2017/18 to 2020/21 – and it covered 100 per cent of planned DfT capital spending.

In contrast IPPR North had gone beyond 2021 with its analysis, only focusing on a narrow set of projects which had published long-term spending projections beyond this date, while several very large spending areas had been totally ignored.

The spokeswoman added: “Our analysis of planned central Government transport investment shows that the spending for the North will receive more investment per person (£1,039) than the South (£1,029).”

Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen said: “There has been chronic underinvestment in the North-East’s transport infrastructure for over half a century. Governments of all colours have failed to properly address this imbalance.

“However we can either continue to feel hard done by, or do something about it.

"My priority is ensuring we present viable proposals to Government with proper business cases so we can get the investment we desperately need.

"It is up to us to make sure our bids add up and if they don’t we won’t get a penny.

“If we don’t shout for cash, nobody else will do it for us.”