Burnham: The North/South divide is closing and there must be no turning back
Having launched a £1bn fund to drive growth across the city region, the Greater Manchester Mayor turned his attention to next week’s budget, outlining his asks and urging the chancellor to do more to support regional growth.
An “Elizabeth Line for the North West”, fiscal devolution, and backing for Greater Manchester’s £10bn regen pipeline from government agencies including Homes England and the National Wealth Fund, all feature on Andy Burnham’s budget wish-list.
“It is time for the country to give full backing our approach and to the higher ambitions we have for our people and places,” he said.
“The North/South divide is finally closing and there must be no turning back.”
Burnham said that the £1bn GM Good Growth Fund – which will back an initial 30 projects in its £400m first wave – will go ahead regardless of what the government says next week, calling it “bigger than the Bee Network” and “the most coherent approach to regional growth this country has ever seen”.
The fund was also billed by the mayor as a cure for the nation’s sluggish growth that should be replicated across the country.
Its impact on Greater Manchester could be significant. Burnham said that if the fund enables the city region to maintain its 3.1% growth rate – which is already above the national average – it could increase the size of the GM economy by more than a third by 2035.
“That’s 36% larger, adding £38bn of GVA to the city region’s “£100bn economy,” he said at a press conference in Stockport yesterday.
Rachel Reeves will deliver a pivotal budget next week. Credit: Simon Walker, HM Treasury, via Flickr
News of the Good Growth Fund was first reported by Place North West a week ago and fleshed out yesterday less than seven days before a pivotal budget for the Labour government, which has thus far failed to make good on its growth promises.
Read more about the projects that will get a share of the first £400m
When asked whether he had heard from any cabinet members after the announcement of the Good Growth Fund, Burnham said he hadn’t but was buoyed by the fact Tom Riordan, the government’s envoy form northern growth, was in attendance at yesterday’s press conference.
Burnham used the gathering in Stockport as a platform to speak directly to the government to outline his demands.
Budget asks
First up was a call for investment from government agencies including Homes England and the National Wealth Fund to join the Good Growth Fund in a similar capacity to the Greater Manchester Pension Fund, which has pledged an initial £300m.
“We’re confident we can prove this creates a more powerful vehicle for growth and a template which can be taken around the country as other combined authorities move towards integrated settlements,” Burnham said, suggesting the model can be replicated in places like Liverpool and the West Midlands.
He also suggested the impact of the schemes that will benefit from the “pioneering” Good Growth Fund would be blunted if the government did not step up to the plate and deliver improved infrastructure.
Burnham specifically asked for a commitment to a new link between Birmingham and Cheshire after HS2 was scrapped and an “Elizabeth Line for the North West” to be operational by the mid 2040s.
Burnham called on the government to commit to a replacement for HS2 North of the Midlands. Credit: HS2
“We need to spell something out very clearly,” he said. “If the UK decides that the North West of England can have no better than its existing infrastructure…that is an intentional anti-growth policy.”
Fiscal devolution was another ask. Burnham said more control over revenue generation and tax retention – above and beyond “regressive” council tax – would make a big difference and reduce the amount of time he spends “pleading to Whitehall”.
“After a decade of doing more for ourselves than they ever did for us, you would think the system will stop behaving as if it knows best,” he lamented.
He is hopeful Reeves will give regional mayors the greenlight to set up a visitor levy that would charge people staying overnight in cities like Manchester and Liverpool.
“If we can raise more revenue ourselves and have the ability to borrow against it, we can start to go through the gears on the growth journey,” the mayor said.
Burnham also called on GB Energy to work with him through the Good Growth Fund to establish a route towards cheaper bills for consumers and is seeking powers to wrestle assets out of the control of neglectful landlords.
The latter could “turn around towns which have an over concentration of rundown private rents and sector housing stock”, he said.
Looking ahead to May
With local elections across Greater Manchester next May, Burnham ended his speech with a message for voters.
He said that Greater Manchester’s success has come about as a result of “a rare piece of consensus in what have been divided times” and urged the public to use their vote to ensure that continues.
“Greater Manchester’s journey, I believe, is a beacon of progress in what has been a difficult and dark decade for the country,” he said.
“My plea to our residents will be to vote for any candidate who will preserve the Greater Manchester way and not for those who seek to divide and break.”
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Analysis - Commentary
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Every town has its turning point, a project or a moment that redefines its future, writes Aidan Thatcher of Wigan Council. For Wigan, that moment is unfolding now in the heart of the town centre with Fettlers: a £135m regeneration project transforming the former Galleries shopping centre into a new neighbourhood.
The Chancellor is infected with Treasury brain. The misled belief that the country can carry on not spending or investing but there’ll be some miracle which will stimulate economic growth. Most countries around the world consider investment and spending differently – the UK’s politicians are the only ones who are still yet to get their heads around this very simple concept.
At least Burnham knows what’s what. We’re lucky to have him
By Anonymous
While Steve lays dormant
By Anonymous
That’s how you proactively address an anti-growth Westminster. The likes of Liverpool and Birmingham use that excuse too much to justify their incompetency and sling mud at cities which are making progress on the scraps which they are also given.
By Anonymous
Burnham does a brilliant job promoting Manchester. Steve Rotheram isn’t even known in Liverpool never mind nationally he needs to up his profile.
By Jeremy
Bit late now surely, the budget was surely fixed weeks ago
By Anonymous
We need to level up the North West because Manchester gets all the investment and opportunities. Andy is very clever when he talks about “The North”.
By Greg Spiers
Give me one example that proves that gap is closing other than plans and visions. Manchester is making its own way in the world and is doing a great job of it without the same support the south gets.
By ML
Manchester worked with the private sector and understood to distribute wealth you need to create it. Liverpool went a different path and they are 20 years behind. Howard Bernstein was a genius who transformed his city.
By Tim
The statistical productivity gap exists because most top-pay jobs in govt. admin., govt. ministries, corporate HQ admin, City of London, etc. cream off money that Trickles Down from North to South. That is where most Fat Cats are. There is no North-South productivity gap. There is an over-paid Fat Cats gap. A Trickle Down Economy! The same thing happens in France, but there the money trickles from South to North. Folk in Paris do not work ten-times smarter than the rest. They are just ten-times smarter in creaming off the wealth.
By Anonymous
Most comments when a story like this is written is why is Liverpool so far behind but so is Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle. Liverpool politics is backwards and hold it back but the MCR comparisons are unhelpful. Manchester is the second city now and its not close.
By T Powell
The divide between Manchester and the South East is narrowing. Do people in Hartlepool and Workington feel the same?
By Elephant
The King of the North is a fraud.
Stop the nonsensical emperors new clothes rhetoric! Burnham ruined Leigh when he was the Mp for that town and he’s done very little for GM…don’t mention the wasted millions on the CAZ and still useless yellow buses!
By Manc
Dig beneath the rhetoric and Burnham is after more and more public funding to subsidise his projects. If Manchester is such an engine of growth why are so many of its schemes still so unviable?
By Anonymous
@Greg Spiers to be fair, when Burnham says ‘The North’, he means Manchester, and when he says ‘Greater Manchester’, he means Manchester city centre. But he is also the only mayor that seems to stand up to London and Whitehall. He is a champion of Manchester, and does try to push the message that more investment is needed ‘up North’, though it is not his job to sort out Liverpool, Leeds and elsewhere. His job is to promote investment and growth in his city region, Greater Manchester, which he is doing a fine job with. It’s up to the other mayors to pull their finger out now.
By Anonymous
I think the Mayor captured the Manchester way of thinking very well with the word ‘coherent’. Manchester projects a very considered, focused and directional strategy. As someone who lives in GM it is refreshing, especially as they seem to be able to deliver most of the time. Great job Andy and team!
By Anonymous
I admire how Burnham fights for Manchester. Steve Rotheram was silent when Astrazeneca decided not to invest in Speke. Burnham would have been on every tv channel demanding govt act. Steve needs to get out of Andy’s shadow and fight for LCR.
By Jon
In the 19th Century Liverpool contributed more to the Treasury than anywhere else. Manchester and Glasgow were not far behind. The South East pilfered our industrial wealth, and our natural resources, and this continued into the 1980s, when North Sea oil revenues, were used to build Canary Wharf and allow London to challenge New York, as the epicentre of world finance. At this time everywhere from Birmingham, northwards was left to rot. If the North again starts to prosper , what is to stop them taking our money again? The answer of course is more devolution. If Manchester and other Northern cities start to flourish, devolution will stall. There will be no large infrastructure programmes for the North in this budget, the two ministers I have heard interviewed have talked only about the Oxford-Cambridge line and the current, doing up of TransPennine, which we know is very disruptive, with very little eventual benefit. Burnham has actually given Greater Manchester its own manifesto. This is a clever but also dangerous move, because this clueless government might just decide that devolution has created a monster, and stop him in his tracks.
By Elephant
The Astrazeneca deal was awful and amounted to blackmailing the NHS. It was absolutely right that it didn’t proceed. I’m not fan of Rotheram, but he shouldn’t take the heat for that.
By Anonymous
Anonymous, 21 Nov. 11:44 Well said. The national economy needs national economics not business accounting. Forget the national debt; mostly privately owned by Brits anyway. If you have the resources to make things you should make them: Keynes said that. Public bodies can borrow to invest and pay back from future higher tax returns. For those shocked by INDEBTEDNESS … Please note: The concept is CAPITALISM.
By James Yates
Manc, CAZ was something the last tory government were imposing on Greater Manchester, Burnham and the local authorities spent money in preparation for it’s imposition but also fought succesfully to have it overturned. On your second point I often use the “yellow buses” and trams which I find to be on the whole reliable, clean and efficient.
By Anonymous