Responsibility for economic growth policy is to move from HM Treasury to No.10 North in a “huge transfer of power”, Andy Burnham has announced.
The prime minister said the Treasury’s dual job of growth and control of public finances “sometimes clouds the growth mission” and No.10 North leading on growth will enable “maximum power to unlock the blockages where they exist in the wider Whitehall system”.
The Cabinet Office last month announced a series of machinery of government changes which included the transfer of local economic growth and devolution strategy from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to No.10 North and local economic growth policy from HMT to No.10 North. It said this would establish No.10 North as "the dominant driver of the UK’s economy", while leader of the House of Lords Angela Smith noted that MHCLG and HMT would "continue to exercise some remaining functions in these areas”.
But Burnham has now suggested an even bigger change will take place.
“It is actually a huge transfer of power,” Burnham told The Times. “It’s something that the country has never cracked before. I don’t wish this to sound, you know, a criticism or negative about the Treasury.
“There’s a job to be done around control of public finances. It’s just the dual job of growth and control of public finances [that] sometimes clouds the growth mission. And particularly having No.10 leading on that growth mission means you’ve got maximum power to unlock the blockages where they exist in the wider Whitehall system.”
Burnham said the significance of the No.10 North in Manchester would become “more and more apparent as we go forward”.
He also compared the new No,10 outpost to Harold Wilson’s short-lived Department of Economic Affairs, the then-PM’s 1960s attempt to establish a dedicated growth ministry, adding: “I just wish people might just engage with the seriousness of the proposition.”
Housing secretary Angela Rayner also commented on the plans.
Asked on Times Radio whether the move was Burnham taking power away from the chancellor, she said: “It’s not at all. No, it’s about the whole of government recognising that power that is centralised… we’re one of the most over-centralised economies [which] doesn’t always give the best results for all areas.”
She added: “No 10 North is a delivery mechanism for devolution, for the fiscal support, so that areas can start unleashing and unlocking their own potential.”