THE North-East should market itself as the place of water, energy and space as it bids pull itself out of the Covid crisis, a speaker at a pandemic-beating webinar said yesterday.

Another speaker said the coronavirus was plunging us headlong into the digital industrial revolution which would bring great benefits, as the North-East discovered in the 19th Century, but also immense disruption.

The mood of the webinar, though, was of deep concern for the future as the second wave of the pandemic hits at the same time as a potentially no-deal Brexit.

The online gathering was a fund-raising event for the Open North Foundation, which is a voluntary organisation collecting money from the private sector to give out as grants to help local businesses survive the pandemic.

Three speakers – David Smith, economics editor of the Sunday Times, William Hobbs, chief investment officer for Barclays Wealth, and James Ramsbotham, the chief executive of the North-East Chamber of Commerce – laid out how they saw the future of the regional economy.

Mr Ramsbotham called for leadership with a clear vision and an honesty to admit that it was now going to be Easter before we could get our heads above water, and he worried about the profound change that was being wrought.

“We might be facing the hollowing out of our cities and town centres,” he said.

But the North-East should market itself to water-intensive industries, as a place of renewable energy with affordable office space aplenty.

Mr Smith said the pandemic could be compounded by a no-deal Brexit. “Boris Johnson’s ambition is to pull something out of the hat, but it will be a pretty narrow deal,” he said. “I hope it looks after parts of the country like the North-East, where 60 per cent of exports go to the EU.”

Mr Hobbs said the pandemic had catapulted the region into the digital age. He said: “With an industrial revolution comes significant labour market disruption, jobs are created and destroyed and there’s a lag between the jobs being destroyed and new ones created.” With low interest rates, he said the country could sustainably borrow more to ensure there was a social safety net to help people caught between jobs.

Scores of businesspeople paid to attend the webinar, raising money for the foundation, which hopes to be able to announce its first grants in a few weeks.

“We are all about donations from individuals and companies of both cash and services, boosted by fund-raising events such as this,” said foundation chair Richard Swart. "We were delighted with the most informative, concise and expert input from our three guest speakers dealing with economic impacts of both COVID and Brexit, which combined with a high quality, most enthusiastic audience, so eagerly submitting probing questions made for a highly successful first fundraising webinar.”

For more on the foundation, visit opennorthfoundation.co.uk