Devolution isn’t the silver bullet but mayors need to be fiscally empowered, says Sir Andy Street

Devolution isn’t the “silver bullet” and the success of mayors depends on them being given clear responsibilities and the money to deliver, former mayor of the West Midlands, Sir Andy Street has warned.

Sir Andy believes that while the Prime Minister is right to focus on opportunities around devolution, matters devolved to mayors need to be chosen carefully.

“They can’t just have everything flung at them because they will not have the resources and will end up failing to deliver,” Sir Andy told The Yorkshire Post. “That will actually dent the model.”

The former mayor of the West Midlands is a keen advocate for fiscal devolution. Prosper UK, the Conservative group that Sir Andy co-chairs, published a report earlier this year calling for mayors to be allowed to retain a portion of income tax.

However, he says that guardrails need to be put in place to ensure that the public can be confident that the money will be spent wisely by combined authorities. Sir Andy suggests local audit committees could help provide the necessary oversight of mayoral spending.

He added: “I wouldn’t expect the Chancellor to accept that every mayor around the country should be given the same freedom or cash at an early stage. There may be trials. There may be some limits on it at the beginning. But you’ve got to start and that’s the breakthrough that we need.”

An area of concern around fiscal devolution is that it could widen inequality. Sir Andy believes that “you make everybody level to start with” before going on to reward those areas that deliver growth.

Sir Andy visited Leeds on Thursday to speak to universities and businesses as part of his current role at Prosper UK. The organisation is looking to reach out to disaffected voters across the centre ground.

Leader of the Conservatives, Kemi Badenoch is right to look to shore up the right flank of the party but Sir Andy believes that the Tories need to reach out to disaffected Lib Dem and Labour voters and Conservative voters who stayed away from the polls.

“Yes, you have to secure your right flank but you also have to come back to that broad church,” he said. “The lesson in history is every successful Conservative leader and Prime Minister has done exactly that, for over a hundred years that is the case.”

Sir Andy says it would be naive to not accept that there is a threat to the Tories from Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

“But I think that threat is subsiding actually,” he added, “We can see Reform has passed its peak, nearly all of the polls say that.”

A stronger economy is the key to solving Britain’s social problems, according to the former mayor of the West Midlands.

“A tenet of the Conservative party, certainly since the war, has been that a strong economy enables us to pay for our defence and also pay for a good welfare state,” he said.

Prior to entering politics, Sir Andy was managing director of the John Lewis Partnership. The Chancellor’s priority should be to get the cost of borrowing down to stimulate business investment, he says.

“You need utter confidence that the Government is going to tackle the key issues around public debt because if confidence is not given, the markets will continue to bet against us and the cost of our debt is going up everyday,” Sir Andy added.