Dangerous road is also stalling growth across the region

Running through the north of England, circulating trade, tourism and talent, the A1 is frequently described as the economic and logistical "spine" of the UK.

The 410-mile road connects London to Edinburgh and carries the title the “Great North Road." But that title conceals an uncomfortable truth: for much of Northumberland, the Great North Road narrows to a single carriageway, choking traffic and stalling growth across the region. It is also, quite simply, dangerous.

The dualling of the A1 through Northumberland isn't a new idea and it isn't a recent struggle with Westminster either. Full dualling was first proposed in the early 1990s. Thirty years on, that promise still hasn't landed.

We thought we were close. In May 2024, the scheme finally received Development Consent Order approval, with a project cost of around £300 million, funded in part by savings from the cancelled HS2 rail project.

Then, in the Autumn Budget of 2024, the Government scrapped it, citing poor value for money. By that point, £68.4 million had already been spent on design, surveys and professional fees, money spent, with nothing built.

That's not just a wasted sum. It's a symptom of a wider pattern: infrastructure held hostage by planning delays and shifting political priorities, until projects are abandoned after the money has already gone. Communities are left waiting and the region pays twice, once in lost investment and once in the cost of staying unbuilt.

The cost of inaction isn't abstract, and it's measured in something harder to see and easier for the Treasury to ignore.

French economist Frédéric Bastiat identified this blind spot nearly two centuries ago in his parable of the broken window. A shopkeeper's window is smashed, and onlookers console themselves that it's good for the economy, after all, it gives the glazier work. But that only accounts for what is seen.

What goes unseen is what the shopkeeper would have spent that money on instead: new shoes, a book, an investment in his own business. That trade never happens. Nobody mourns it, because nobody can picture what never got the chance to exist.

The same logic applies to the A1. The Treasury can point to the money it saved by shelving the scheme, that's the seen.

What goes unseen are the missed opportunities that investment would have unlocked: the journeys not taken, the customers who choose to take their business elsewhere, the jobs turned down because the commute isn't viable, the firms that quietly stop trading because connectivity failed them first.

None of that appears on a balance sheet. All of it is a cost. And it's one this region is paying every single day the case for investment goes unmade.

So, what can we do? We act as one region. We put party divisions aside and we use a single North East voice, through NEMSA, through our councils, through every MP who represents this route, to make the case Westminster keeps failing to hear. Because the argument that this road "isn't financially viable" doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It never accounted for what it would cost us not to build it.

The North East cannot afford to let the unseen go unspoken for any longer.