NEW figures showing the North-East has the highest unemployment rate in the UK have prompted fresh calls for the Government to hand the Intercity Express Programme (IEP) to Hitachi.

According to data released yesterday, there were 124,000 unemployed people in the region between August and October – up 6,000 on the previous quarter.

The North-East’s unemployment rate, at 9.7 per cent, is now the worst in the UK, just behind Yorkshire at 9.3 per cent.

The figures, coming after a week of job losses and funding cuts for the region’s local authorities, have prompted renewed claims that the North-South divide is widening.

Kevin Rowan, regional secretary of the Northern TUC, said last night: “The regional unemployment levels blow apart the increasingly ridiculous notion that somehow ‘we’re all in this together’.

“Only six months since David Cameron became Prime Minister, we face the prospect of an ever-widening North-South divide.”

He said the figures highlighted the urgent need for the Government to give Hitachi the IEP contract to build the country’s next generation of high-speed trains at Newton Aycliffe.

Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson, who has led the campaign to bring Hitachi to County Durham, also urged ministers to make a decision sooner rather than later.

He said: “The next few years are going to be miserable for the North-East “Even though we’re losing public sector jobs, private sector jobs aren’t being created.

Back on Track A NORTHERN ECHO CAMPAIGN By Joe Willis joe.willis@nne.co.uk That’s why Hitachi is so important.”

As North-East councils continued to assess the impact of Monday’s Government grant settlements, Middlesbrough Mayor Ray Mallon confirmed that he had asked Professor John Tomaney, of the Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies at Newcastle University, to look at the likely impact of the cuts on his town.

Mr Mallon said Middlesbrough’s settlement was much worse than wealthy southern councils, such as Elmbridge, in Surrey, which came top in a survey of council areas best equipped to deal with spending cuts.

Middlesbrough came bottom of the same survey.

The mayor said: “We have had the banking recession followed by economic recession – now we are heading for a social recession with all the risks of social unrest which that brings.”

A spokesman for the Department for Transport said a decision on IEP would be made in the new year.