• 5 months ago
Metro mayors from across England have gathered for a meeting with the prime minister at No 10 for the first time. Report by Alibhaiz. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
Transcript
00:00Morning. Morning. Morning. Are you looking forward to working with the Labour Prime Minister?
00:09Absolutely. Very much so. I'm just thrilled. I can't wait. I can't wait to go.
00:17Morning. Morning. Are you looking forward to working with the Labour Prime Minister, Mr Tan?
00:26Today. Thank you.
00:30The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, and the Mayor of the Liverpool City region, Steve Rotherham.
00:37The other mayors arrived earlier, just his second meeting of the Cabinet.
00:41Then he will go to Parliament, where for the first time he will stand at the dispatch box as Prime Minister.
00:47I think that's going to feel quite striking to all of us.
00:51I'm a great believer in the idea that those with skin in the game, those that know their communities,
00:55make much better decisions than people sitting in Westminster and Whitehall.
01:00I know you already have many of your growth plans in place, some of you have shared them.
01:04That is fantastic. But what we want to do is to build on that with a real partnership,
01:09where you feel that the government is up alongside you, supporting what you're doing and working with you
01:14to achieve what you want to achieve.
01:17It's that partnership we've talked about a number of times before the election,
01:22but what I wanted to do today was to double down on that commitment.
01:25And to do it really early on into the government, so it wasn't weeks or months down the line
01:30before we had the chance to meet like this.
01:32But it was today to get on with that discussion.
01:35I think it's the first meeting like this in Downing Street.
01:38I don't think all the Metro mayors have come together in Downing Street like this, so this is a first.
01:43That growth is so important, everything else hangs off it as far as we are concerned.
01:48We've got quite a lot to get through today.
01:50We've got missions and growth, deeper devolution and working together.
01:55We will set up a council for regions and nations.
01:59Now, I don't want to overly formalise it, but I do want a degree of formality
02:04so that it's a meeting that everybody knows is a meeting where business is done,
02:09where decisions are properly recorded and actioned,
02:12and where people know that we will all be there and we won't be sending substitutes or missing the meeting.
02:19So they'll be serious. We'll follow through on plans and talk to you about exactly how we'll set that up.