Tees Valley mayor Ben Houchen will offer a rebate to residents even if Labour says they won’t allow it. Burnham’s devotion to ‘devolution’ was exposed as a devotion to higher spending this morning as the government claimed new money given to mayors could only be used to spend more…
The government says from next spring “mayors will begin retaining a greater share of locally generated revenues, starting with business rates” with further details at the Budget. Houchen said earlier this week: “If the Tees Valley is handed a slice of local income tax and business rates generated locally, I’ll create a new rebate scheme to put money back into people’s pockets and let families keep more of the money they earn.” Devo in action…
Burnham’s right-hand woman Louise Haigh responded to that this morning saying the government would not allow it: “Those kind of schemes necessitate HMRC to set up full schemes. That’s just not possible at the moment. The way that the mayors are set up and to work is to reinvest the money into their public services, into their local economies.” Scared of a little tax competition?
Guido understands Ben Houchen’s plan is to “do it anyway and dare them to block it.” He said:
“Devolving a pot of cash and then keeping every real decision in Westminster isn’t real devolution. Andy Burnham spent a decade telling Whitehall to let go, but a few weeks into Number 10 and he’s holding on tighter than any minister I’ve I dealt with.
I’d rather ministers just cut out the middleman and lower taxes. But if they’re handing me a share of the income tax raised on Teesside, true devolution means the decision where to spend it is for locally-elected leaders. I want to give every penny back to the workers who earned it through a rebate scheme. If people don’t like that, they can vote for someone else – that’s what real accountability looks like. But today Westminster decided it knew better, as it always does.”
There are numerous methods by which mayors can hand cash back to taxpayers without HMRC’s involvement. Andy’s got a fight on his hands…
Burnham confirms he spoke to Trump last night about drilling in the North Sea:
“I indicated in the phone call that we had a week last Monday that I would take a pragmatic approach when it comes to the North Sea, and that is my intention as we go forward from here. There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that. Hence, me indicating that to the president…”