Starmer tells metro mayors he will set up ‘council for regions’ in move welcomed by Burnham as ‘very positive’ – UK politics live | Politics

The government department in charge of housing and local government is dropping levelling up from its title, the communities minister Jim McMahon has said.

McMahon is a minister in what is still, on its website, called the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. But, in an interview with BBC Breakfast, he said this was changing.

Asked if levelling up would remain part of his job title, he replied:

No, it was firmly tippexed out of the department yesterday, so we are now the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Why that is important for me is levelling up was only ever a slogan, it wasn’t a thing that people felt in their communities.

He also said it was important to include local government in ministry’s title, describing that as “a refocus, but frankly … also just grown up politics”.

In a separate interview on LBC, asked if the government remained committed to levelling up, he replied:

We certainly believe in addressing the regional inequalities that are holding our communities and our economy back.

But we don’t believe a slogan fixes it, we believe action fixes it, we believe building 1.5m new homes fixes it, we believe investment in the NHS does, investment in our schools system, investment in transport and skills does.

Boris Johnson popularised the phrase levelling up, and he described it as the one of the main missions of his government when he became prime minister. But it was never entirely clear whether the main focus of this mission was reducing inequalities, or promoting infrastructure spending in left-behind areas in the north of England, and there have been reports suggesting that in practical terms the levelling up programme achieved little.

Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has said setting up a “council for regions and nations” will be a very positive change. Speaking to the BBC after the meeting with Keir Starmer in Downing Street, he said:

That, honestl, is music to my ears. People may remember some of the interactions I had with previous governments. It was always struggling to get heard and struggling to get our perspective, from the north, under stood in Whitehall.

To have a council of the regions and nations, meeting regularly, just means we can be sure that the voice of Greater Manchester, of the north of England, is heard at the heart of Whitehall on an ongoing basis.

It’s a big change to the way this country is run, and it’s a very welcome change, a very positive change.

Burnham also said he would like to see rail services placed under local control in Greater Manchester. Using the trains in many parts of the country was “daily misery” under the current system, he said.

Keir Starmer has confirmed the government will set up a “council for regions and nations” so that ministers can meet regularly with metro mayors. He was speaking at the Downing Street meeting this morning attended by almost all of England’s metro mayors.

Starmer told them:

I’m a great believer in devolution, I’m a great believer in the idea that those with skin in the game – those that know their communities – make much better decisions than people sitting in Westminster and Whitehall.

We will do regular meetings, probably around the country, because I think it’d be good to do it in different areas.

And referring to the proposed council for regions and nations, an idea put forward by the former PM Gordon Brown in his Commission on the UK’s Future report, Starmer said:

We will set up a council for regions and nations.

Now I don’t want to overly formalise it, but I do want a degree of formality so that it’s a meeting that everybody knows is a meeting where business is done, where decisions are properly recorded and actioned.

And where people know that we will all be there and we won’t be sending substitutes, or missing the meeting.

Starmer said the forum would be used to discuss “shared challenges” and “opportunities”.

Most of the 11 mayors who attended were Labour, but Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor (and the only Tory metro mayor left in England) was also present.

Good morning. During the general election campaign the Institute for Fiscal Studies repeatedly said that neither of the main parties were being honest about the public spending problems the government would face over the next five years. There would have to be higher taxes or deep spending cuts, it said. Today Tony Blair, the former prime minister, is in part endorsing this analysis. His thinktank, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, is holding a conference on the future of Britain and it has published a paper saying that, without change to the way government operates, taxes would have to rise by 4.5 percentage points, as a share of GDP, by 2040. It says a 0.9 point rise is already baked in, another 1 point rise would be needed by the end of this parliament to avoid austerity, another 0.6 point rise would be needed by 2040 to compensate for the loss of fuel duty (as people switch to electric cars) and another 2 point rise would be needed by 2040 because of the ageing population.

But Blair says the government can avoid the need for this if it embraces the opportunities provided by technological change, and particularly artificial intelligence (AI). In his speech at the conference he will say:

Britain is facing an unenviable triple whammy of high taxes, heavy debt and poor outcomes. And worse is to come with the demographics of an aging population against us, deep structural health problems and rising numbers of long-term sick.

The simple and unavoidable truth is that unless we improve growth and productivity, and drive value and efficiency through our public spending, we’re going to become poorer. Much poorer.

This explains the mood of pessimism evident in much of the election campaign.

But I do not share the pessimism. On the contrary I don’t think there has ever been a better time to govern. A better time to effect change. A better basis for optimism and a surer reason for hope.

But only if we understand how the world is changing and how we use that change to change our country.

Stable government and some clear early wins can definitely help.

But there is only one game-changer. Harnessing effectively the 21st century technological revolution.

There is absolutely no doubt that this is an era of transformation. Things which were impossible will become possible; advances which would have taken decades, will happen in a few years or even months; the value we can add, the improvements in efficiency we can make, the radical benefits in outcomes we can secure, could be truly revolutionary.

Blair has also given an interview to the Guardian urging Keir Starmer to “close off the avenues” of the populist right by keeping tough controls on immigration.

Blair provides a good guide to some of the problems facing the government. But the country is expecting the new prime minister to provide the answers, not an old one, and today Keir Starmer will be in the Commons speaking for the first time from the Treasury bench in his new role. It won’t be a major political speech; that will come in the king’s speech debate a week tomorrow, because today MPs are just electing a speaker. But as we see Labour’s 412 MPs try to squeeze onto the government benches, and the 121 Tory MPs barely able to fill the space on the opposition benches, we will get a clear insight into just how dramatically the election result has reshaped the Commons.

Here is the agenda for the day.

9.15am: Metro mayors hold a meeting following their earlier meeting with Keir Starmer at No 10.

9.25am: Tony Blair gives a speech on “Governing in the age of AI” at the Future of Britain conference run by his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change thinktank. Other speakers included Wes Streeting, the health secretary, at 12pm, and William Hague, who is in conversation with Blair at 1.40pm.

9.30am: Keir Starmer chairs cabinet.

10.30am: Suella Braverman, the former home secretary, is among the speakers at the Popular Conservatism conference. Jacob Rees-Mogg and Lord Frost are aslo due to speak.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby conference.

2.30pm: The Commons sits for the first time since the election to elect a speaker. Lindsay Hoyle is expected to be chosen again. There will be short speeches, including from Starmer and Rishi Sunak. Then MPs will start the process of swearing in.

Afternoon: Starmer flies to Washington for the Nato summit.

Also, Streeting is meeting the BMA junior doctors’ committee today.

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