Original text
Thank you, everyone. We’ll make a start. I’ve got colleagues from the meeting just for the very opening part of the meeting, but you’re all very welcome to this meeting with the National Economic Council, with the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, and colleagues as well. It’s a shame that we do not have colleagues from Northern Ireland, but obviously we’re working with them on the same agenda. And that agenda be...
Thank you, everyone. We’ll make a start. I’ve got colleagues from the meeting just for the very opening part of the meeting, but you’re all very welcome to this meeting with the National Economic Council, with the First Ministers of Scotland and Wales, and colleagues as well. It’s a shame that we do not have colleagues from Northern Ireland, but obviously we’re working with them on the same agenda. And that agenda being: how do we get growth up to where we all want it to be? But not just any kind of growth, good growth in every postcode, and that means every postcode of Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and England as well. So, looking forward to a really positive discussion with everybody about that today. What I want to do is set, if you like, the tone, which is one of a positive offer to work with both the Scottish and Welsh Governments in terms of looking at a model of deeper devolution in Scotland and Wales that’s right for Scotland and Wales. Obviously, it’s for the devolved governments to determine the shape and the structure of that, but then how we then can back it jointly and get those, get those powers down into all communities. Obviously, speaking as a former mayor, I saw how Greater Manchester was able to go on a very different track to the one that we’ve been on pre the arrival of devolved powers in Greater Manchester. I’ll be honest and say I looked at the world differently, and perhaps saw it more from Scotland and Wales’ point of view when we were making that case for a greater devolved power. But having got it down to that level, what happened was that ability to set our own path, set high ambitions for industry, and a decade on, the results are there to see. We think we’ve got to get to a point where we draw a bit of a line. And I’ve talked about problem solving rather than point scoring; I hope you’ve seen enough so far to know that is how I work. I think we all owe it to all of the people of all nations to come to a point where the UK Government is working in a more collaborative way with the devolved governments to then drive that growth agenda, but particularly to drive it down and then allow places to do more for themselves, to pursue an agenda of re-industrialisation in all parts of the UK. And I know those are very live questions here in Scotland. John, I know you’ve obviously got issues related to the steel industry, same in Wales, and we’re working with you on those, around oil and gas. We had the Jackdaw decision last week. There is a need for industrial transition all over the UK, and it’s not something I don’t think we’ve done particularly well if you look in the past. I was at Motherwell, as you know, making a speech setting out some of this agenda from the UK Government’s perspective with the Secretary of State for Scotland a couple of weeks ago. And I was on the site of Ravenscraig, and you’ll know it well here, but I used to hear that word in the news when I was growing up, and I only then, when I was there, understood the scale of what that industry once was, and how the country didn’t help those communities through industrial transition back then. And a similar story could be told about Port Talbot and what we’ve seen there. Obviously, there is a model of industrial transition that we want to see more of. So that’s the agenda for today. Good growth in every postcode, and that applies, as I say, as equally to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland as it does to England. How do we build it together? How do we drive deeper devolution? Because we think that is a real driver of economic growth. And we’re very pleased: not just the two Secretary of State in Wales, but the Business Secretary with us today, Work and Pensions Secretary, and we want to have a conversation about employment support and how that can link to this agenda. But I’ll probably just, given it is Budget recall, we’re at the end of Budget week, probably just hand over to the Chancellor to have a word.
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