00:00This should be thought about as almost constitutional economic devolution.
00:05I emphasise that. I've seen a lot of people making reference to the devolution in Scotland
00:11and Wales and their economies haven't done very well.
00:13That's because they don't really have any powers in big places like Glasgow and Edinburgh and Cardiff.
00:21This is all about economic devolution, and I've tried to talk to you and many others about it for many
00:27years.
00:27Greater Manchester, who led it in terms of pushing for some, has demonstrated it can work.
00:35Greater Manchester has grown at three times the rate of London for 15 years.
00:39And if you can replicate that across three or four other big urban places,
00:43it's enough from a weighted population and GDP size to boost the national growth trend.
00:51So I don't understand why the sceptic, I guess the sceptic's always about everything these days,
00:56but if you can replicate the same thing in more places,
01:00it's going to definitely improve the economic performance of the country.
01:06How could funding, for example, more infrastructure in the regions work?
01:12So one of the other things I've been talking about for quite a while and tried to persuade the Treasury
01:19under the current Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, about this, is this entity NISTA,
01:25which is the merged body from the old Infrastructure Commission and the Infrastructure Project Authority
01:31inside the Treasury.
01:32That should be not in the Treasury.
01:35It should be a sort of infrastructure version of the OBR,
01:38in which we have this transparent body that is telling the whole population
01:44and all the financial markets about the infrastructure projects
01:48that are likely to have very strong positive multipliers
01:52on the long-term economic performance of the UK,
01:55and with it, importantly, therefore reducing our debt levels
02:00and raising the OBR's long-term growth projection.
02:04And the government of the day, whether it be one that Andy leads in a few weeks
02:09or others in the future, choose to borrow or not to implement and fund Project X or Y.
02:17And I think the bond markets would be extremely happy with that,
02:20as would probably be the equity markets.
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