A £15 billion plan to create the “Crossrail of the North” was endorsed by George Osborne yesterday in the Conservatives’ latest attempt to woo voters in the region.

Speaking in Manchester yesterday, the chancellor of the exchequer lent his support to an investment scheme drawn up by representatives from Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield, and said the north could generate an extra £44 billion by 2030 if its economy caught up with the rest of the UK.

There is a huge gulf in the public resources provided to English regions. London receives more than 20 times the spending on infrastructure that the north east gets, some estimates say.

Figures from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) show that spending on transport infrastructure in the government’s national infrastructure plan is £5,312 per person in London, but £420 per person in the northwest and only £157 per person in the north east.

It also found that 80 per cent of the projects in the 20-year national infrastructure plan in London were up and running, compared with less than 60 per cent in the north.

Mr Osborne is leading a concerted attempt by the Conservatives to boost their standing in the north. Some evidence suggests that the Tories are starting to repair their disastrous poll ratings in the region. A YouGov poll published yesterday suggested that Labour had a seven-point lead among northern voters, a 23-point fall from last spring.

The chancellor appeared alongside leaders of the major northern cities yesterday to promise that projects designed to boost the north would be announced in the autumn statement.

A plan drawn up by Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield published yesterday included improved rail links and reduced journey times, bigger road capacity and better links to Manchester airport. Mr Osborne praised the proposals and said they were affordable. “If we can bring these northern cities together with these individual transport schemes that create a collective northern powerhouse, then you might achieve something really important in our country that has eluded successive governments of different colours — a real improvement of economic wealth in the north,” he said.

Sir Richard Leese, leader of Manchester city council, said that the north had been hit by “years of neglect and under-investment”.

“East-west journeys take almost twice as long as equivalent journeys in the south and our rail links are too slow and uncoordinated,” he said. “Our motorways are congested, and there is an over-reliance on the M62.”

Ed Cox, the director of IPPR North, said: “I would say these plans are really important and don’t come a moment too soon because historically the north has fared worse than the south. But in part that’s because we have lacked the kind of leadership and the plan we have today.”

Local leaders have been using Mr Osborne’s campaign to bank pledges before the election and put pressure on Ed Miliband to follow suit in making big concessions to boost Britain’s regions. Labour was criticised last year when its support for the HS2 line between Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and London appeared to waver.

Meanwhile, Labour’s policy to devolve spending power to local councils is in danger of unravelling only weeks after Mr Miliband announced it.

The Labour leader announced proposals to reward groups of councils that worked together to boost regional growth by allowing them to keep all the extra business taxes raised as a result.

Mr Miliband said that the proposals, which formed the centrepiece of Labour’s plan, would help to mend Britain’s “fractured economy” as he announced a review led by Lord Adonis, the former transport secretary.

However, the plan has angered Labour MPs, who warn that it could widen the divide between wealthy councils in the south and those struggling to attract business in the north.

To appease MPs in the north east, the region has been exempted from the policy and told to come up with an alternative plan.

Thousands of French employees are being paid to pedal to work, under a government plan to take cycling beyond the Tour de France.

At present, millions of French people use la petite reine (the little queen), as the bicycle is nicknamed, for weekend rides, but relatively few do so to get to work. The transport ministry wants to change that with a system of financial incentives.

The project has been started on an experimental basis at 19 companies, with some members of staff earning hundreds of euros a month to pedal to the office or factory. If the experiment proves a success, all companies will be forced to offer their personnel the bike bonus, according to the transport ministry.

The initiative follows a study suggesting that bicycles account for only 2.4 per cent of journeys in France, compared with 8 per cent in Belgium and 25 per cent in the Netherlands.

The companies involved in the trial employ a total of about 10,000 people, and have agreed to pay their staff €2.50 for every 10km — about £1 for every three miles — that they cycle to work.

Managers say that many employees have taken to pedalling home for lunch to increase their bonus payments. Some are clocking up dozens of kilometres every day; the newspaper Le Figaro says that one man earned €345 in July.

French law obliges companies to meet 50 per cent of the cost of public transport for staff on home-to-work journeys. The authorities also give tax breaks to companies that offset the cost of petrol for employees who rely on their cars to commute.

“This trial will enable us to evaluate whether the system can be extended to the bicycle,” Frédéric Cuvillier, the transport minister, said. “I want the bicycle to become a means of transport in its own right.”

A recent report for the Ministry for Sustainable Development said that France used the bicycle until the Second World War, but then abandoned it in favour of the car.

Although the French still buy three million bicycles every year — the third highest rate per person in Europe, behind Germany and the Netherlands — they use them largely for leisure, according to the report. The result is that the average French person covers 55 miles a year on a bicycle, compared with 500 miles in Denmark.

James May doesn’t rock, long hair and leather jackets notwithstanding, but he does roll. He rolls on special occasions in a Ferrari and on airport runs in a Rolls-Royce Phantom Drophead. For longer urban errands he uses a small new BMW, and for shorter ones a folding Brompton bicycle.

Mr May’s admitted use of a bike is not the only thing that sets him apart from Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond, his fellow Top Gear presenters, who call him Captain Slow. He is also, from today, the first of them to endorse The Times’ campaign for safer cycling.

This counts as progress — for the campaign, which emphatically shares the May view that “the roads belong to everybody”, and perhaps for Mr May himself. For it was barely five months ago that he took part in the presentation of four Top Gear cycle safety videos to Westminster Council. One suggested: “Work harder. Buy a car.”

Not everyone got the joke. In Oregon, where green radicals mingle uneasily with monster truck racers, there was earnest debate over whether the three British petrolheads might actually be serious. Back in Britain, one two-wheeled hill-climbing evangelist said he was “so angry I could put my fist through the TV”. The truth is Mr May is much more than a car guy. He is a former choirboy, a competent flautist and a well-read oenophile. It is hardly surprising that he sees the health benefits and the sheer common sense of cycling , which include the fact that more people on bicycles means more space left for driving.

In the manner of Rodney “can’t we all get along” King after the Los Angeles riots, he asks for an end to “road sectarianism”. He even backs our call for 4 per cent of the transport budget to be spent on better bike paths, which some believe should include “pootling” paths for slower riders. Captain Slow, meet Mr Pootler.

James May, the Top Gear presenter, has called for an end to “sectarianism” between drivers and cyclists on the roads and has given his support to The Times’s Cities Fit for Cycling campaign.

The presenter is best known for his motoring expertise and 15-year association with Top Gear, but he also owns three bicycles and uses a folding bike to make short journeys near his west London home.

The Times’s campaign calls on the government to create an annual budget for building safe cycle routes, to encourage more people to travel by bicycle.

“I’m all for bicycles in cities,” said May, who has never been without one since he was three. “We use bicycles to go around locally and also for fun occasionally. Typically, our bike rides would be three or four miles. I go to the shops on it.”

He said that even Jeremy Clarkson, his Top Gear co-presenter, uses a bicycle for short journeys near his Oxfordshire home.

Cyclists and motorists are often depicted as warring tribes, but May said this was a dangerous attitude.

“We need to get rid of road sectarianism,” he said. “Car drivers supposedly hate cyclists, cyclists hate taxi drivers, taxi drivers hate motorcyclists, bus drivers hate lorries. I just think if everybody was a little bit more pragmatic, that would do more for safety.”

May, 51, dismissed claims from some motorists that cyclists do not belong on the roads.

“I would say that the roads belong to everybody,” he said. “That old argument that ‘I pay road tax and the bicycle doesn’t’ often isn’t true. In any case, roads are funded centrally so the tax [from Vehicle Excise Duty] doesn’t actually go on roads, so no one has a greater right to the road than anybody else, that’s nonsense.”

May said that cycling was “not going to cure the world of all its ills” and was not ideal for long commutes, but he said that increasing the number of cyclists would help to free up Britain’s “ludicrously overcrowded” roads.

“The benefits to driving if people ride bicycles are that there is more space left for driving,” he said. “It’s a simple arithmetic truism.”

This week marks a year since David Cameron pledged a “cycling revolution”. British Cycling has criticised the prime minister for failing to create an annual cycling budget to deliver his promise.

The Commons transport committee called on the government last month to spend £600 million a year on cycling. This is also a demand of The Times’s Cities Fit for Cycling campaign, supported by the AA and British Cycling.

Asked if he agreed with calls for this annual budget, worth about 4 per cent of the transport budget, May said: “Yes, I think that is fair enough.”

He added, however, that many cycle lanes found on roads were “complete bollocks” and created confusion rather than improved safety. Urban planners should spend more time riding bikes to understand what was needed, he said.

Asked if he supported plans in London to build segregated cycle routes on major roads, he said: “That would take a lot of brains and thought, but it is an essentially good idea.” May said that the presence of cyclists on roads was now an accepted part of city life. “Cycling is becoming more popular in London, there are a lot of bikes and people are starting to recognise that they need to be accommodated.

“There are so many more bicycles now than there were, say, a decade ago, that people notice them and subconsciously we are modifying the way we drive around town.

“There are people who talk about wanting to make safety clothing mandatory, road tax for bicycles, registering them and insuring them,” he added. “I think all that stuff is utter nonsense. The whole point of the bike is that you get on it and you ride it and you can ride it when you’re a kid or when you’re absolutely flat broke and it’s so agile.”

May encouraged cyclists to find quiet backstreet routes to avoid dangerous roads and suggested that it was reasonable for cyclists to ride “slowly and carefully” on wide pavements

In a less practicable suggestion, he also joked that London Tube lines could be torn up, with the tunnels turned into “bicycle and moped superhighways”.

The Times’s Cities Fit for Cycling campaign includes calls for:

All parties to pledge to create a £600 million annual cycling budget — just 4 per cent of the transport budget.

More than £900 million has been pledged in London over the next decade. More than £300 million has been spent for the rest of UK since 2010, but this is only one eighth of the level recommended by the Commons transport committee and no annual budget has yet been created.

All roads to be made safe for cycling at the design stage and for dangerous junctions to be redesigned

The government is due to release its Cycling Delivery Plan this month, outlining “cycle-proofing” measures. More than 10,000 Times readers identified blackspots on a map which was passed to the government as a guide.

All lorries operating in urban areas to be fitted with sensors, cameras and extra mirrors

The capital will ban lorries without extra mirrors and side-guards. Some supermarkets and cement firms and contractors have already insisted on fleets of cycle-friendly lorries.

Cycle safety to be a core part of the National Curriculum and the driving test

Funding for Bikeability training in schools has been extended to 2016, but many schoolchildren still do not receive it. The AA and BSM have introduced cycle safety as a module for all instructors.

Follow the campaign at thetimes.co.uk/cyclesafety

A family owned bus and coach company that transports war veterans to the D-day landing sites in France fell into administration yesterday, sparking almost 90 job losses and leaving about 1,000 ticket holders in the lurch.

Staff at Hatts Coaches, which has been owned by the Hillier family since 1928, were told that the company had brought in administrators at FRP Advisory after running out of cash.

Hatts, which has sites in Salisbury, Worton and Foxham in Wiltshire, had been operating day trips to destinations in Britain and is popular among pensioners. Its fourth-generation family owners have been struggling for weeks to refinance the business.

It operated a fleet of 90 buses and coaches and provided the coach service for Bath Rugby team, a park-and-ride service on the outskirts of Salisbury city centre and trips to and from Dauntsey’s, the private school.

The administration also affected Bodmans Coaches, which employs 13 people, and Hatts’ direct mail order company, HQT.

However, with the business not thought to be a member of the Association of British Travel Agents or to have travel bonds, customers with pre-booked tickets are unlikely to be able to claim back their money. Those who booked using a credit or bank card should be able to obtain a refund from their provider, the administrators said.

Andrew Sheridan, an FRP partner and joint administrator, said: “The businesses simply ran out of cash. We are acutely aware of the distress and hardship many holidaymakers and day trippers will be suffering right now, particularly as so many of these are of an ‘older generation’.

“Our priority right now is to contact and provide dedicated helpline support for those who have paid for holidays, day trips and other private hire with Hatts.”

FRP said that it would continue to operate the park-and-ride in Salisbury and the Pewsey Vale Connect 2 Bus service with co-operation from Wiltshire County Council while it seeks a new owner. At present that has safeguarded 32 jobs.

The rest of the business has had to stop trading immediately and 89 staff have been made redundant.

The helpline number is 0800 4704633.