My Lords, I must follow the noble Lord’s compliments to Greater Manchester by speaking at this point. I need to declare my interests, which I repeat from Second Reading, particularly to mention that I am the chair of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. I therefore support this amendment, which gets to the heart of the Bill’s Title—it is what the Bill should be about.
I took part in the negotiations with the Government over the city deal. It was a very interesting process. Obviously, we developed ideas on our own and in conjunction. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, is absolutely right that it needs to involve not just local authorities but the local business community. It takes a very special skill for many businesspeople to rise above their day-to-day work to have that comprehension of local economic policy, but in Greater Manchester we are fortunate to have many people who can do that. We rely on them and other partners such as universities, which are very important, too. On the key partners, we need to remind the Government that this is not a financial issue for local authorities. We are actually asking for devolution—not necessarily for more money but to have the money spent at a local level, where many of us believe it will be spent more effectively. In some cases, no money is involved at all; it simply gives us permission to do what we currently have to do.
The city deals work. They can harness the strengths of local partners and build on local knowledge, and they can be addressed to the local circumstances. I am sure that the city deal for Greater Manchester is different from the city deal for Newcastle, because the issues are clearly different. We will have some similar issues. No doubt skills are a very important part but, for us, transport was a key issue. As the noble Lord,
Lord Jenkin, rightly said, this amendment mirrors the report of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine. It is really beginning to address this point about freedom. At a meeting of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority on Friday, we were pleased that we were beginning directly to fund local businesses to take on new workers and expand, so the measure is working practically on the ground. It is not a theoretical thing, and I will be very glad to see the rolled-out programme.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, I am a bit concerned about the wording of the amendment because I would not like every local authority to have to have its own deal with the Government. That is not what the spirit of this measure is about. What we did very carefully in Greater Manchester was to think about the functional economics. What is an economic area that makes sense? As important and lovely as the great city of Manchester is, its geography is a very odd shape. It is very long and thin. It is not a functioning economic area. The centre of Manchester and the centre of Salford are very close together, so we need to go over local authority boundaries. I hope that in passing some version of this amendment, we can encourage local authorities to be co-operative, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, said, to work together to think about what is in the interests of their communities and to make sure that we start to deliver what all noble Lords want, which is more growth, more employment and more opportunities in the country.