Syd Howarth Editor of Newton News was invited to put a question to Prime minister David Cameron at the Hitachi opening last week.
After welcoming him to Aycliffe and thanking him and George Osborne for coming to mark the occasion Syd asked:
“How supportive are you in devolving power to the North East Combined Authority and how soon will it happen?”
David Cameron
“I’m very supportive of it. It’s a really important agenda. Part of the Northern Powerhouse vision is to make sure that combined local authorities can come together and have powers and the resources they need to help transform their areas, and all credit to the Chancellor for helping to drive this agenda.
“It’s very exciting that the North East authorities have come together in this way.”
George Osborne
“The local authorities in the North East have put together a really exciting bid. They made the details of that public today. We’re working across different political parties to change the way the North East is run so that decisions that effect this part of the world are taken here, and not several miles to the South in London. That’s a really important part of the Northern Powerhouse, and at the moment the North East is leading the way amongst some of these Northern cities in coming forward with a really good plan.
I don’t want to pre-empt all the discussions and negotiations, but at the moment the North East is edging out in front. We’ve got to make a decision over the next couple of months, exactly the form of deal.
“The deadline we put on it was a decision by the end of November. But as you saw with Greater Manchester you can move things really quickly, with the elected mayor coming in about 18 months time.
This whole approach has been, you tell us how you want this to be organised, we’re not going to turn up and impose a model on you. This has been a North East idea and we’re working with the North East, the Labour civic leaders and the Conservative councillors in the area to make it happen.”
