Treasury is ‘working against the Midlands’

Mayor calls for Chancellor to ‘get to grips’ with mandarins

TREASURY officials “work against” the West Midlands and have stopped it receiving a fair share of funding, the region’s mayor claims.

Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands, said the Treasury’s approach to spending “has also prevented regional investment for decades”.

And he urged Sajid Javid, the Chancellor, to “get to grips” with the Treasury and force it to change its approach.

Mr Street made the comments in advance of the Budget, due on March 11, in which the Chancellor is expected to promise more investment in infrastructure, such as public transport, in the Midlands and the North of England.

Mr Javid is also expected to announce changes to the rules governing how the Treasury spends money. Traditionally, cash has been allocated to schemes expected to provide the most economic growth, but this often means backing projects such as new rail lines in the south of England, where the economy is already strong.

Under new rules, the Treasury will take into account criteria such as narrowing the productivity gap between regions or improving the wellbeing of people living in poorer areas. This will make it easier to justify spending money in areas which have lower economic output, including the Midlands and North.

Mr Street said: “I am hugely encouraged that we have a West Midlands man at the centre of this new financial direction in Chancellor Sajid Javid, whose Bromsgrove constituency shares many of the economic challenges faced by communities across the UK.”

He said Mr Javid has promised to “level up across the UK and usher in a decade of renewal”.

But the mayor added: “However, this can only happen if we get to grips with Treasury mandarins and their financial rules, which often seem to work against us.”

Mr Street said: “In the West Midlands we are working hard to ensure that those areas in Coventry, Birmingham and the Black Country that have been left behind receive the support they need.

“A new era of national investment in infrastructure and skills, supported by rethought Whitehall rules, will help in this much-needed renewal.”

He called on the Chancellor to “rip out the Treasury red tape that holds us back in terms of investment”.

“We don’t want a hand-out, we want to share in the prosperity experienced in the South. If ‘levelling up’ delivers one thing, it ought to be a level playing field for the UK’s regions.”

The mayor’s comments echo the findings of a study published last year which found UK governments have an unofficial policy of supporting London and the South East and running down the North of England and Midlands.

That was the conclusion of a report by the UK2070 Commission chaired by Lord Kerslake, the former head of the civil service, and backed by academics from some of the UK’s top universities.

The inquiry found jobs are increasingly moving to London and, eventually, half of all new jobs in the UK will be created in London and the south east, leaving the rest of the UK to fight for what’s left.

It even suggested the task of closing the North-South divide was comparable to the challenge of re-building East Germany, when it re-unified with West Germany after the Cold War ended.

We don’t want a hand-out, we want to share in the prosperity experienced in the South

Mayor Andy Street