Midlands needs airport to take on Manchester Labour candidate Siôn Simon reveals vision for Greater Birmingham under devolution
LABOUR’S West Midland mayoral candidate Siôn Simon says turning Birmingham Airport into a major international hub will be a top priority if he wins next year’s election.
Speaking at Labour’s conference in Liverpool this week, he attacked proposals to expand Heathrow Airport and said the Government should be using its aviation strategy to boost regional economies.
Mr Simon also warned that next year’s poll, when the West Midlands will elect a regional mayor for the first time, was likely to have a low turnout because it is hard to interest voters in a post that does not exist.
But the test would be whether voters knew and cared about the regional mayor by the time the second election takes place in 2020. Mr Simon also said: The region would market itself as the West Midlands – and not ‘Greater Birmingham’;
It suffered the disadvantage of having no world-renowned football team with Birmingham or Midlands in its name;
The deal to create a mayor, signed by West Midlands councillors and the government, involved “hardly any money” for the region;
The powers of the West Midlands mayor will grow over time until they take responsibility for the majority of public services;
He wanted to work with mayors of cities such as Manchester and Liverpool, but they must accept that the Midlands matters as much as the North of England.
Mr Simon said the West Midlands needed better transport links to achieve its full potential, including connections with the East Midlands but also more flights from Birmingham Airport adding: “The big issue for me is Birmingham Airport.”
He condemned the Davis Commission, which was set up by the Government to look at how to increase airport capacity in the UK and concluded that a new runway should be built at Heathrow.
“We’ve got a ridiculously failed airports policy from this government. An appalling Davis Commission which asked the wrong question and came up with the wrong answers.
“The question they should have been asking is what do we need to do to rebalance the country, not what’s the best thing for airports.
“We need an airport the size of Manchester Airport in Birmingham.”
Birmingham Airport handles 10 million passengers a year while Manchester’s handles 23 million passengers and is the third busiest in the country.
The West Midlands Combined Authority, the new regional council, and the region’s mayor would need to develop a ‘West Midlands’ brand, he said.
Some Birmingham politicians and business leaders have suggested using the name ‘Greater Birmingham’ to promote the region, on the basis that overseas investors were more likely to have heard of Birmingham.
But Mr Simon said: “It’s true that a lot of work has gone into the Birmingham brand.
“But we start, in terms brand and the name, with vantages anyway.
“It may sound daft but I think we really suffer from the lack of a global football brand with the words West Midlands or Birmingham in the title.
“It gets more and more important every year as football gets bigger and bigger. It’s a massive advantage for Liverpool and Manchester.”
He added: “The only thing we can do is simply start again with a new brand. What we do have is a massive amount of stuff to give value to the brand.
“It is an extraordinary place with an of the disad- extraordinary history.” Highlighting Stratford-upon-Avonborn William Shakespeare – despite Stratford not included in area served by the West Midlands mayor – he said: “We have the most important cultural figure in the history of western art and thought in the West Midlands. “And we have an extraordinary narrative of manufacturing in the West Midlands. “Unlike what some peo-