“EDUCATION DEPARTMENT NEEDS A KICKING”.

 

 

EDUCATION MINISTRY HINDRANCE TO SKILLS TRAINING.

As the skills and productivity crisis deepens, the Department for Education has come under savage attack from the mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City region.

Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram are getting into their stride in speaking for the North on a range of issues as was evidenced at a packed Downtown meeting this week. There wasn’t a single reference to strained relations between the core cities of Liverpool and Manchester, just a demonstration of the easy relationship that the two politicians share. This is important for the northern voice. Oh, that it was replicated in Yorkshire where rival councils are knocking nine bells out of each other over devolution models. Or in Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria where to describe progress on devolution as glacial would be to insult those magnificent features of the natural world.

After their election in May both men had very different starts. Burnham acquired a large staff at his Oxford Street headquarters in Manchester, although he said he envied Rotheram’s ability to shape his own team. That was a reference to the “Mary Celeste” situation faced by the Liverpool City Region mayor when he took office. Rotheram inherited no staff and a difficult relationship with Liverpool city mayor Joe Anderson.

Both men were just back from visits to Paris and New York and have realised that they need to impress the world, not just the government, that the North is a great place to invest in.

Raising skill levels is one of their main aims and you’d think the Department for Education would be an ally. Not so apparently. Rotheram said it was the least responsive department in Whitehall and needed a good kicking. The mayors wanted to control skills spending locally and show young people that there are routes to success other than through university by boosting vocational training. Burnham had been to his kid’s Year 9 options meeting where the ICT teacher had no takers while the pupils queued for humanities subjects.

Now in office the mayors want to tone down the politics to appeal to business. They feel firms in the two sub regions would feel more comfortable dealing with them than the highly politically charged Westminster village. They are working with other elected mayors including West Midlands Tory Mayor Andy Street.

Transport is another area where the mayors have given a voice to the North. With Downtown providing the launch pad they had launched a salvo of criticism over the government’s broken promises in the summer. They claimed it had born fruit to some extent with Liverpool City Region getting two “touch points” with HS2 and the Chancellor announcing a £400m cash boost for northern transport at the party conference. All well and good but still small potatoes compared with transport spending in London.

While stressing that their door was open to business, the mayors fired a shot across the bows of house builders saying the emphasis on developers needs had to change to provide the affordable housing that is in short supply. Andy Burnham made a striking remark that may meet with a mixed reception in his outer boroughs. He said they needed to shrink their retail offer and increase the space for housing.

Finally, on Brexit, the mayors had recently met with Brexit Minister David Davis. Burnham had told him that Greater Manchester exported 58% of its exports to the EU compared with the national average of 44%. No deal would be a very bad deal for him. Rotheram, also a Remainer, nevertheless said the port of Liverpool stood ready to welcome global opportunities post Brexit.

It is too early to say whether these politicians will actually deliver their visions, but people can begin to see how City Region mayors might make a difference in the absence of what we really need, which is powerful regional government.

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LIVERPOOL BUSINESS WANTS END OF POWER BATTLE

 

An agonised call for the elected mayors of Merseyside to stop their power battles and get on with promoting the city region was made at a Downtown event in the city this week.

Many of the movers and shakers in the area were kind enough to give their time to look at the city’s development in the ten years since Capital of Culture and what the next decade has in store.

The overriding desire was for Liverpool City mayor Joe Anderson and City Region mayor Steve Rotheram to end their rivalry, agree on who does what, and get on with attracting business and tourism to the area.

The main frustration focuses on the many agencies that are doing bits and pieces to attract jobs and visitors. The demand is for one point of contact, particularly for tourism. The consensus was that this is a job for the city region. Acknowledging that Liverpool is the brand, it was felt that the city region should have this strategic role.

The way in which successive governments have devolved power in the UK is partly to blame. At the Downtown meeting, it was pointed out that the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly could put major funding into attracting business and tourism. Aberdeen and Cardiff are building new conference centres on the back of that. In England, limited power and money has been given to a complex model of Local Enterprise Partnerships and Combined Authorities. In Merseyside and Greater Manchester, the structure of elected city regional mayors over the top of the proud cities of Manchester and Liverpool is a recipe for rivalry. There are some signs of tension in Greater Manchester but the ten districts generally rub along together. Merseyside on the other hand has had a controversial history at local government level with Wirral and Southport wanting to break away, not to mention the Militant era. The business community had hoped all that was well in the past. Liverpool is transformed compared to twenty years ago but this model of city and city region mayor couldn’t have been better designed to revive the old dysfunctional problems.

Added to the structural problems we have two strong personalities. Joe Anderson, passionate for his city, has done great work since 2010 but he wanted to move on to the wider city region stage. In his way was his old friend Steve Rotheram. A way out would have been for Joe to take over from Steve as MP for Walton. That elegant solution was blocked by Unite The Union who wanted their man in Walton.

Now business people in Liverpool are confused about the powers of both mayors at a time when they know that more will be expected of them in terms of promoting jobs and tourism as the cuts continue to bite in the public sector.

The Downtown event concluded that the next ten years are going to be harder after the rapid progress of the last decade. Specific attention was paid to the continuing problems of accessing the city centre from the M62 and the need to fill hotels during the week. In this respect the city seems to have an opposite problem to many other places who find attracting weekend guests a challenge.

One of the most striking views at the Downtown meeting was that, in respect of tourists visiting Britain, the national image was being tarnished by Brexit. It was thought this could be an opportunity for the Liverpool City Region to promote itself separately.

Let’s hope the mayoral problems can be sorted out because the meeting agreed that the Liverpool City Region with that to-die-for waterfront, friendly people and the enduring power of the Beatles gives it potentially great prospects for the future.

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MAYORAL CANDIDATES FIGHTING TO BE HEARD

 

GOOD TORY CANDIDATES IN MANCHESTER AND LIVERPOOL BUT LABOUR TO WIN.

 

Not for the first time Westminster has disrespected the local election process. The constitutional innovation of electing mayors for some of our great conurbations next Thursday should be at the centre of political attention at the moment. Instead it will be largely ignored as we focus on the June General Election. Theresa May is not the first Prime Minister to do this and won’t be the last.

It is difficult to judge what effect the calling of the General Election will have on the mayoral races in Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region (LCR)but it is unlikely to help turnout. In his blog this week Downtown’s CEO Frank McKenna says a poll of over 25% in LCR will give the winner credibility. It is a commentary on the low expectations we have of local democracy when such a case can be argued.

It has also been suggested that people will vote “down the ballot”. This might help the Conservatives, the argument being that people are making up their minds about where their political preference lies this summer. If they have concluded that Strong and Stable Government (I’m already fed up with it too) is the answer they will vote Caldera/Anstee in the mayoral elections and May in June. May in June! Boom! Boom!

Caldera is Tony Caldeira, the Cotton King of Knowsley. A successful soft furnishings businessman he has impressed people at the hustings. He stresses his contact with government ministers and his call for a register of brownfield sites for housing is a sensible one. Caldera is an example of a Merseyside Conservative in the tradition of David Hunt (ex Wirral West) or Malcolm Thornton (ex Crosby). He’s a One Nation Tory who doesn’t lay on his conservatism too thickly. I don’t think he’ll win but he deserves to be selected for a winnable seat in the General Election.

Victory in the Liverpool City Region will almost certainly go to Labour candidate, Steve Rotheram, representing “the place I love”. His central policy aims are the reregulation of buses, drives for skills and affordable housing and zero carbon city region by 2040. It had been expected that Rotheram’s victory would have started a running battle with the city of Liverpool’s elected mayor Joe Anderson who wanted the city region job. It now looks possible that Anderson will succeed Rotheram as MP for Walton if Labour’s National Executive doesn’t prefer Seb Corbyn, the party leader’s son.

Greater Manchester also has a good Tory candidate. As leader of Trafford Council, Sean Anstee was a significant broker between the Tory government and Labour controlled Manchester Council in drawing up the devolution deal. While all the other candidates criticise plans to build houses in the greenbelt, Anstee points out that tearing up the Spatial Strategy will allow speculative development to continue.

The likely winner, Labour’s Andy Burnham, says there has been too much concentration on building luxury flats in the city centre and executive homes on the main roads. He wants free bus passes for 16-18 year olds and improved connectivity between the outer boroughs.

There’s plenty of time for the General Election campaign after May 4th. Next Thursday let’s concentrate on who would be best to run the county of Lancashire and the city regions of Liverpool and Manchester.

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WILL THE WHOLE NORTH GET DEVOLUTION ?

 

PATCHY ROLL OUT.

This week saw some significant developments in the roll out of devolution in Greater Manchester at least. It was always going to take a lot to fill the shoes of Sir Howard Bernstein, the retired Chief Executive of Manchester City Council, so it is no surprise that we now have two Chief Executives, Joanne Roney running the city and Eamonn Boylan the Combined Authority(CA).

I was in the new CA headquarters on Oxford Street last week and reflected that exactly 43 years ago I walked into County Hall on Portland Street, the Greater Manchester Council’s new HQ. In 1974, It was felt it was a good idea to have a strategic authority for the whole county. After a costly abolition in 1986, we are now back to square one in some ways, although having an elected mayor may make it different.

While the devolution band wagon is visible in the Greater Manchester and Liverpool city regions, elsewhere in the North the roll out is patchy and incoherent with a great deal of uncertainty about how far meaningful devolution will extend beyond the Liverpool and Manchester City Regions. Lord Porter, the Tory chair of the Local Government Association thinks devolution is dead because the government has encountered petty squabbling in areas of two tier local government or opposition to the concept of elected mayors in more rural areas.

That is an extreme view. Whilst it is true that Brexit is a major distraction in all departments and that the Communities Secretary Sajid Javid remains in an inactive sulk having been moved from his role as Business Secretary, there was enough energy and ideas at the recent NP conference in Manchester to convince me that the project is not dormant. But if business outside the Manchester and Liverpool City Regions want similar packages they need to knock politicians heads together across the rest of the North.

A RAGGED PICTURE.

Leeds is the greatest underperformer so far. This great city should have been electing a mayor this May with a full devolution deal. Disputes with some surrounding authorities have prevented this and the latest idea for a mayor for a Yorkshire wide body across three combined authorities looks set for a ministerial veto as it would need new parliamentary legislation. Sheffield isn’t having a mayoral poll this year either. This is partly because of a row with Derbyshire over whether Chesterfield could be included in a new South Yorkshire authority even though it has no border with it.

Now we come to the town of Warrington which recently flirted with the idea of joining the Liverpool City Region. That would have scuppered the idea of bringing the town together with the two Cheshire councils in a powerful authority at the southern end of the North West. The Merseyside dalliance is now over and Warrington council leader Terry O,Neill is hoping for a devolution deal this summer. However, a new constellation has entered the Cheshire scene…literally. A grouping of Cheshire’s two councils and the Local Enterprise Partnership have come together with six Staffordshire authorities under the Constellation Partnership. They’re starry eyed about the economic potential of the HS2 hub around Crewe. However, the idea of an elected mayor may be a sticking point once again.

Lancashire has suffered for years from having sixteen councils, thirteen districts, two unitaries and the county council. The leader of Lancashire Council, Jennifer Mein, is the equivalent of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the sense that she has used calm and wise leadership to try and bring all the parties together. Wyre Council has stood out against a deal for a long time and Fylde has now joined them. A devolution deal will have to await the result of the closely contested county election next month.

Elections are also due this summer in Cumbria where the idea of an elected mayor for this largely rural county has been a stumbling block. Relations between the districts and county are not good with talk of a combined authority being formed without Cumbria County Council’s involvement.

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