THE Government has long abandoned its Northern Powerhouse project, rebranding the department as the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, so perhaps it should be no surprise that there has been an expensive attempt to deflect attention from the failure of George Osborne’s supposed championing of the North.

Nevertheless, it is still depressing to learn that a Guardian investigation has revealed that the Government spent two years and £40,000 of taxpayers’ money trying to hide how little time the Northern Powerhouse minister, James Wharton, spent in the North of England during his ministerial tenure.

The Guardian’s Freedom of Information request was ignored, with the Information Commissioner’s Office eventually concluding that the Department for Communities and Local Government engaged in “what appears to have been a strategy of wilful procrastination in order to obstruct a request for information”. It is almost as if the Government knew they had something to hide.

Subsequent FOI requests have shown that £40,000 was spent in an attempt to prevent the information from becoming public, but the Government was forced to come clean and of the 693 entries in Mr Wharton’s ministerial diary, just under half contained an identifiable location. Ninety per cent of those were in London.

The Northern Powerhouse was a shambles from start to finish, but since it was disbanded, the Government has paid even less attention to the needs of the North. Instead of spending £40,000 trying to hide that, it would be nice to see some positive steps to engage with our part of the country.