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Comment by sjhuda | Hacker News Reader

Thin air? It was delivered 3 years late and cost £5bn more than it should have. While projects like HS2 to the North are scaled back. The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to fund London projects.

I have a dog in this fight as I'm quite close to the public transport industry in the North and it's pretty disheartening to see politicans use us as some sort of "policy win" and then never follow through with it. Manchester only recently got devolved powers meaning the region did not have to get approval from Westminster on how they use their money and the bus and tram system has completely improved in the sapce of a couple of years (unified tickets, tap and go) with the suburban rail to come into that this year.

What is also interesting is that London's productivity growth is falling compared to Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. So those cities that aren't getting the fancy new train lines are actually performing better.

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> The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to fund London projects.

it's the exact opposite

Although Yes CrossRail was partly funded by a levy on London homes and businesses, London get's more funding per capita for public transport than anywhere else in the country

Imagine what we achieve if we invested London levels of money in transport across the rest of the country

London pays more taxes per capita than the rest of country.

And decisions made in London have drained those other cities of investment and tax revenue.

Imagine if the money spent on transport in London wasn't funding things like fake jobs to carry people to massive pensions because TFL employees can't be made redundant.

What have you got against TfL employees?

This is demonstrably false. The data shows the exact opposite.

Transport spending in London was £1,313 per capita in 2023/24, compared with just £368 per head in the East Midlands[0] - nearly 4x the investment. Over the decade to 2022/23, if the North had received the same per person transport spending as London, it would have received £140 billion more[1]. The East Midlands got just £355 per person, the lowest of every nation and region[1].

Yes, London generates a fiscal surplus, but that's a self-fulfilling prophecy. London receives the highest investment spending for both economic and non-economic areas, relative to population size[2]. In 2022, infrastructure construction spend in London was £8.8 billion, whilst Scotland came second with £3.6 billion[3].

It's circular logic:

* invest heavily in London

-> infrastructure drives productivity

-> higher productivity generates more tax revenue

-> claim London 'subsidises' other regions

-> use this to justify more London investment.

Infrastructure investment enhances productive potential[4], but all other regions are systematically denied it.

London has returns on investment because it's the only place that actually gets proper investment. You can't starve regions of infrastructure for decades, watch their productivity stagnate, then point to London's tax surplus as proof they are subsidising others, that's fucking stupid.

---

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134495/transport-spendi...

[1] https://www.ippr.org/media-office/ippr-north-and-ippr-reveal...

[2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...

[3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity...

[4] https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/what-role-infrastru...

> This is demonstrably false. The data shows the exact opposite.

it is not

> Yes, London generates a fiscal surplus

thank you

the only regions of the UK that generate a net return to the treasury are London, the South East and East of England

(the East of England certainly has reasons to be upset, they have naff all infrastructure AND are a net payer)

> You can't starve regions of infrastructure for decades, watch their productivity stagnate, then point to London's tax surplus as proof the system works, that's fucking stupid.

fortunately I didn't claim that

please put the strawman down

You're confusing cause and effect.

London's surplus exists because the entire country funded its infrastructure for decades. You've just admitted London got massively more investment - then you point at the returns from that investment as proof London subsidises everyone else. That's absurd.

Where did the £140 billion extra that London received come from? National taxation. Including taxes from the regions that got a fraction of the spending. They funded your infrastructure, then you claim the resulting productivity is you being generous.

You're not subsidising the UK. You're taking credit for returns on investment the entire country paid for, but only London received. That's not generosity, that's just spending other people's money on yourself then acting smug about the results.

The 'net return to the treasury' you're celebrating was built with everyone's taxes concentrated in one place. London isn't the benefactor, it's the beneficiary masquerading as an altruistic donor.

> You're confusing cause and effect.

you are arguing against a point I never made

(and no, I don't live in London, I live in an underfunded region too)

You're describing economies of scale — they inevitably happen. London has high returns not only because of investment but also because it's a huge city and big cities generate good returns. If you built the Elizabeth line in the middle of nowhere, you wouldn't get a return. The return is enabled by the fact it's a big city.

Elizabeth line will pay for itself very very quickly. It's entirely possible that investment in say a tram network in the east midlands will never pay for itself. Left with business cases like that it's not really a shock what the goverment choses. I agree it's unfair and self fulfilling, but this is what life is like, success breeds success and failure, well.

I think north of 62% of elizibeth line spending was spent with companies outside the M25, for example building the trains kept a chunk of Derby in work when the factory would have otherwise closed (more than once!) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cew407745jko

> What is also interesting is that London's productivity growth is falling compared to Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. So those cities that aren't getting the fancy new train lines are actually performing better.

What data is this based on?

It's based on the Centre for Cities report: "How productive are the UK's big cities?" which mentions Liverpool's, Leed's and Manchester's productivity growth and The State of London Report 2025 which reports London's productivity decline

https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/how-productive-a...

https://data.london.gov.uk/blog/the-state-of-london-report-2...

3 years late is practically early in UK infrastructure! HS2 was originally due to open in December! We're a decade off at least.

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