WE may never see the Government’s new high-speed rail line snake through the North-East in our lifetimes, but its impact on local business could be enormous.

The Coalition has been hammered for failing to look beyond the next election when it comes to investing in jobs and business. The Regional Growth Fund is typical of this Government’s short-term, on-the-hoof policies that will do little to solve deep-rooted problems, such as crippling youth unemployment.

However, it deserves praise for pushing ahead with at least one landmark legacy project.

HS2, a bid to connect Northern cities with London, has been billed as the biggest rail project for generations. At this stage, the closest the new network will come to our region is a connection at Church Fenton, near York. By Northern cities, this Government clearly means Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, rather than Durham, Sunderland and Newcastle. But, engineering companies in the North-East could end up building the track and trains on the super-fast line.

Hitachi in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, told me it intends to launch a bid to build the rolling stock and power cars when contracts go out to tender in about 2025 – coincidentally, the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Stockton to Darlington railway.

Following the HS2 announcement, Labour MPs also pressed the claim for Teesside steel firms Tata and SSI to make track and railway infrastructure.

All of this is years ahead. The new line isn’t due to open until 2033 and the contracts will have go out to public tender, but there would be a nice symmetry for the birthplace of the railway to help shape the network of the 21st Century.

David Jones, Secretary of State for Wales, clearly agrees. On Monday, he visited the Aycliffe site where Hitachi’s train building factory is being built. He wasn’t the most obvious choice to check on the progress of a train factory in County Durham.

Nevertheless, he gave his wholehearted support to the project, which was pretty big of him considering the Aycliffe plant is being built because it pipped a rival in Wales to the £4.5bn InterCity Express Programme.

“The North-East was where the railway industry began and it has a proud tradition of engineering, so it would certainly have a strong case,” said Mr Jones.

Some of the trains which the Japanese manufacturer will make in the North-East will eventually travel on the planned electrified railway line to Swansea. Mr Jones’ link to the project may have been pretty tenuous, but after speaking to him it was clear that he had a firm grip on our region’s place in the story of rail.

GREAT to see Sir Bob Murray’s contribution to business and education being acknowledged by his old university.

The former Sunderland AFC chairman was this week named as chancellor of Leeds Metropolitan University. He studied accountancy there when it was plain old Leeds Poly.

There has never been any love lost between Sunderland and Leeds United on or off the football field but Bob is one of the few people who is celebrated by both cities. Quite right too.

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