00:00Growth is not about hollowing out London, it's about making sure that everywhere grows.
00:05I'm Paul Swaddle, I'm the newly elected leader of Westminster City Council.
00:09There's already £100 million worth of money been taken out of Westminster by the Fairer Funding Review.
00:15There's already greater taxation in London than anywhere else because of business rates.
00:22That money is already helping contribute to the rest of the country.
00:27Our success does not mean that somewhere else can't succeed.
00:30There are other models for other cities and they should be growing too.
00:34And it's not a question of one grows and the other has to be declined.
00:38That's not levelling up, that's levelling down.
00:41So look, Annie's done a job up in Manchester, people in Manchester have been happy with that and there has
00:45been growth.
00:46He should absolutely continue and take that model and do things with it elsewhere.
00:50But that doesn't mean that that model applies in the same way to London or that the answer is to
00:55move things out and take jobs somewhere else.
00:58The burden that's on businesses in Westminster is already extreme.
01:02So if you take areas like the West End, which already contributes more than Wales in terms of contribution,
01:12then those businesses are suffering greatly with the impacts of business rates already and we need to see actually business
01:20rates reform to encourage businesses not to penalise.
01:25He's talking about taking thousands of jobs and removing other taxes, other taxations on London that will burden us further.
01:34What I want to see is, and my role here in Westminster, is ensure that Westminster continues to shine.
01:40And that's what I'm focused on.
01:42What I'm concerned is that Andy's looking at moving things around and not actually making things grow.
01:47And I want to see real growth.
01:49There's not often that Sadiq Khan and I are on the same side of an argument.
01:53So I think if Sadiq Khan thinks that Andy Burnham may not be good for London,
01:57then I think we should probably all be listening and thinking about the impact on London.
02:04Thanks for all this.
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