Prime Minister Andy Burnham says plans for mayors to keep a share of taxes will give them the opportunity to empower their regions, and warns against quick-fire tax cuts
Andy Burnham says he’s “not comfortable” with regional mayors using extra cash from devolution to fund tax cuts.
The government has announced England’s mayors will soon be able to keep a share of income tax generated in their areas, as well as business rates totalling tens of millions. This would allow them to invest in projects to grow local economies under “transformational” plans to shift power out of Whitehall.
Mr Burnham said his plans for mayors to keep a share of taxes will give them “more in their hands” to empower their regions. But, Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley, has suggested he would use the income tax to hand out rebates to local people.
The PM shot down his plans, saying: “No, I’m not comfortable. Because this is not about making them mini Chancellors of the Exchequer, sort of undermining, or rewriting, policy on tax and personal finance.
“This is a policy for growth and investment. It’s a very clear policy of the kind that Greater Manchester has benefitted from over the last decade. Where if you get more growth in your economy, you’re given an incentive to do that, because you can keep more of the proceeds of that, to then keep investing and keep the growth going.
“So, you can’t just get a little bit of growth and then abandon the investment, because then you won’t grow. So this is, it’s a growth policy, and I think, you know, people need to kind of understand what this is and what this isn’t.”
He added: “Britain has got low growth and low investment, and we’ve had that for a long time. This is about breaking that, breaking that cycle. And if they went down that path that they’re proposing, they wouldn’t have any money to give away the next year because the growth would have stopped because they’re not building that growth, they would just have taken short term, and then there wouldn’t be anything to redistribute.”
Speaking at a community centre in Sheffield, Burnham tackled a number of issues, including indicating he will scrap plans to curtail jury trials in England and Wales. He said he had concerns about the proposals – which were proposed under Keir Starmer – and that his instinct was to keep juries at the heart of the justice system.
Citing his experience campaigning for justice over the Hillsborough disaster, he said: “So I want to really look in detail at that proposal, and my instincts are that we need to find ways of not reducing access to jury trial.”
The original plans were met with a fierce backlash from legal bodies and some Labour MPs including Karl Turner, who was suspended over his criticisms of Lammy and Starmer Burnham said he had asked the chief whip, Anneliese Midgley, to speak to Turner about being readmitted to the parliamentary party. The PM also said he would visit Dover soon to see first hand the issues around small boat arrivals.
He said he was open to a discussion about devolving powers on asylum hotel contracts and HMOs, saying: “I’m open to a discussion with regional mayors – and I’m sure the Home Secretary is – where local solutions would be better than the situation that we have at the moment.
“It is a top-down process. It does result sometimes in local partners not being adequately consulted about accommodation, not even notified sometimes, so I can understand why people want to see change and we’re open to that discussion.”
Speaking about his first two weeks as PM he said it had been “intense … but in a good way”.
He said: “I suppose you think you’ll understand what the job will be like until you actually experience it, and it is intense – but in a good way as well.
“I’ve just decided to embrace every part of it, the whole thing, and keep the way I’ve always worked and the way I’ve always done my politics. It would be easy to be changed by it but I’m not going to let that happen.
“It’s an incredible privilege. I feel that I do have to try and make this a circuit-breaker, I feel really strongly about that, changing the way we think about politics, changing the way we think about running the country but not doing it in a confrontational or adversarial way.”