Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham has called for a “wholesale change in the architecture and culture of the British state” to unite the country and drive economic growth, in a keynote speech at the Institute for Government yesterday
Speaking on the day after Greater Manchester’s trailblazing new Integrated Settlement funding deal with the Government came into effect, the Mayor argued for “a new operating principle for the UK Government, recognising for the first time the primacy of place over single-issue policy.”
He said a place-first approach can “provide the roadmap to a more streamlined and financially sustainable state,” in a way that Whitehall is not set up to provide – and that with its Integrated Settlement, Greater Manchester can use new freedoms and flexibilities to deliver more joined-up public services and better outcomes for residents.
In the speech he called for the Green Book – Treasury guidance on value for money – to be reformed and said he would be making a pitch to the government’s Spending Review for a 10-year investment pipeline of specific projects worth between £10-15billion.
“We need to see the rewriting of the Green Book to remove the bias against the North and allow the government and its agencies such as the national wealth fund to invest alongside us in that 10-year pipeline,” he said
The city-region he told the audience,has been the fastest-growing in the UK, with average annual growth of 3.1% over the last 10 years and the highest productivity growth.
Burnham condemned the London Centric decision making
“I have had to spend far too much of my time as Mayor constantly remaking the case for devolution to Whitehall, time which could instead have been spent driving delivery or winning new investment.” adding:
“I have come up against recalcitrant Ministers who simply refused to implement parts of the agreement – for instance, Chris Grayling on rail station devolution – and whole departments which, so far, have refused to play a meaningful role in the devolution journey.“
The Mayor said that he is asking for some big commitments from London
“We need a commitment to the big infrastructure the North West needs, such as: the Northern Arc, the new rail line between Manchester and Liverpool linking two airports, a sea-port and two city-centre investment zones which, the evidence suggests, will achieve even more growth than £78 billion growth of the Oxford-Cambridge Arc” and he added
We need a replacement for HS2 between the West Midlands and the North West, given the symbolism of HS2 trains leaving bat houses, or should I say bat palaces, to trundle North up the congested West Coast Main Line is an embarrassment we should be spared; and major upgrades to the M60 to open one of the UK’s most significant development sites – Atom Valley on the Bury, Rochdale, Oldham border – as a global industrial cluster.
