Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Manchester and Cambridge are
Speaker 1: trying to build a partnership between the university and business
Speaker 1: organizations to get more investment flowing between the two cities
Speaker 1: to help startups and scale ups, particularly in AI, life sciences,
Speaker 1: materials and manufacturing. This all comes, of course, after chances
Speaker 1: of Rachel Reeves's shocked markets with last week's budget, which
Speaker 1: raised spending by seventy pounds a year on average, and
Speaker 1: investors are now waiting for the Bank of England's verdict
Speaker 1: on whether that budget will boost inflation and therefore hinder
Speaker 1: further rate cuts in the UK. Well, joining us now
Speaker 1: is the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, to discuss Andy.
Speaker 1: Good morning, and thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 2: You're very welcome. Good to be with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, great to have you back on again. Look, can
Speaker 1: we start with the budget? Firstly, the UK budgets only
Speaker 1: led to a small increase in projected economic growth for
Speaker 1: Britain despite the increase in the burden of taxation. Do
Speaker 1: you think that was the right decision from the Labor
Speaker 1: government the same obviously you're being a Labor mayor.
Speaker 2: I think it was a necessary decision to have a
Speaker 2: corrective budget and to put the country back on a
Speaker 2: path towards stability. We've been living through a time where
Speaker 2: nothing has felt like it's been working properly. Everything's been
Speaker 2: going backwards, the transport system in some chaos, but particularly
Speaker 2: the NHS. So I think the government had to act
Speaker 2: to put things back on a stable path. But I
Speaker 2: would look now to very much to the spending Review.
Speaker 2: I think that will be the moment when the government
Speaker 2: really sets out its stall, and that's only a matter
Speaker 2: of a few months away. Certainly, my team in Greater
Speaker 2: Manchester are now fully focused on the spring spending review,
Speaker 2: so I think it's important to see the budget as
Speaker 2: a sort of first big preparatory step. But the spending
Speaker 2: Review I think will determine the shape of this government
Speaker 2: and the course of this parliament.
Speaker 3: Andy, good morning to you that the Chancellor had a
Speaker 3: promise that sorry, she had to promise that she would
Speaker 3: not repeat the huge package of tax hikes. She clearly
Speaker 3: thinks it will be badly received if she hikes taxes again,
Speaker 3: and she promised on Sunday that she will quote never
Speaker 3: need to do that again. Do you believe her?
Speaker 2: Of course, I think she doesn't take decisions slightly. She
Speaker 2: will have given careful up to this. But if she
Speaker 2: hadn't have acted, I think we would have seen a
Speaker 2: serious crisis in the National Health Service. You could already
Speaker 2: say it's in some states of crisis, but I think
Speaker 2: it would have gotten much worse. And of course that
Speaker 2: affects everybody's lives and it affects confidence in the way
Speaker 2: Britain is being run. So she did have to act
Speaker 2: to bring in I think a big correction in terms
Speaker 2: of public spending and public services.
Speaker 1: The startup scene in the UK is obvious dominated by
Speaker 1: spinouts from Cambridge, also from Oxford and London near the
Speaker 1: Golden Triangles. It's known you want to increase the connection
Speaker 1: between Manchester and Cambridge. How do you think it's going
Speaker 1: to work. What do you hope that it will deliver?
Speaker 2: Well, it's a good question because there's a very clear outcome.
Speaker 2: We hope so R and D. I mean, there's a
Speaker 2: very good research base in Manchester, but Cambridge is renowned
Speaker 2: globally for its research. We think that some of the
Speaker 2: spinouts from Cambridge could come to Greater Manchester. You know
Speaker 2: they're very good at the R but we can do
Speaker 2: the d IF I can put it that way because
Speaker 2: obviously we've got more space to develop and that's why
Speaker 2: this partnership is very exciting. We both have strength in
Speaker 2: life sciences. We'll be visiting AstraZeneca today here in Cambridge
Speaker 2: and the potential of this partnership is huge. We have
Speaker 2: a digital health record for all of our residents in
Speaker 2: Greater Manchester. It's one of the reasons why Eli Lilly
Speaker 2: recently chose Greater Manster as the trial for its new
Speaker 2: obesity because we've got that ability to monitor across the
Speaker 2: whole population. So the partnership with cham which could take
Speaker 2: that to the next to the next level, and we're very,
Speaker 2: very excited about it.
Speaker 3: I'm interested your thoughts on the Ryanair CEOs comments yesterday.
Speaker 3: He talked about the increase of taxes on airlines causing
Speaker 3: him to pull capacity from the middle of the UK
Speaker 3: in your bid to try to get more business activity
Speaker 3: attracted to Manchester. Do you see perhaps this higher tax
Speaker 3: when it comes to airlines and a greater risk of
Speaker 3: airline activity perhaps not being as active in the middle
Speaker 3: of the UK in years to come.
Speaker 2: Well, obviously we'll watch that issue very closely. Indeed, Manchester
Speaker 2: Airport is the third biggest airport in the country. It's
Speaker 2: critical to us, particularly our long hal connectivity is crucial.
Speaker 2: I don't know what effect the Ryan Air move will
Speaker 2: will have on capacity more broadly across all the airports
Speaker 2: in the north of England. Would have to look that.
Speaker 2: As far as I know, Ryanair are the only airlines
Speaker 2: to have made that move, so perhaps the impact will
Speaker 2: be limited, but it's certainly an issue for us to watch. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Michael o'lear on Bloomberg TV on Monday saying, the UK,
Speaker 1: and this is a quote, the UK has no chance
Speaker 1: of growing if this idiot Chancellor thinks that the way
Speaker 1: forward is going to be increasing tax on air travel.
Speaker 1: Michael O'Leary's comments as Ryanair talks about redeploying capacity for
Speaker 1: five million passengers from the UK into other markets because
Speaker 1: of the aviation tax, how are you going to deliver?
Speaker 1: It's is it a poison chalice? You know, the integrated
Speaker 1: Funding Agreement, it potentially gives you, we don't know how
Speaker 1: much money more control over that funding from central government
Speaker 1: integrate Manchester, you know, to try to increase economic growth.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, you've then got to deliver and
Speaker 1: that as the chance is now discovering, is really hard
Speaker 1: to boost economic growth.
Speaker 2: It is we know that in Greater Manchester because we've
Speaker 2: worked very hard at it over the last well twenty
Speaker 2: years since we've been on this devolution journey, and we
Speaker 2: now have growth that is outstripping the wider UK economy.
Speaker 2: And that's not something I've been able to say about
Speaker 2: Greater Manster in my lifetime, but it is true. Now
Speaker 2: we've got higher productivity growth and it is critically linked
Speaker 2: to the devolution of power to our city region, and
Speaker 2: the integrated settlement will take that even further so that
Speaker 2: we can act more quickly to bring the improvements in
Speaker 2: infrastructure that we want to see, to change our technical
Speaker 2: education system so that we can ensure the supply of talent.
Speaker 2: So devolution is a game changer for Greater Manchester and
Speaker 2: I think the model of growth that we've developed is
Speaker 2: one that could go to other parts of the country
Speaker 2: as well, so that the devolution is the thing that's
Speaker 2: made the change, and I do think that the Government
Speaker 2: can look to Greater Manchester to see how growth can
Speaker 2: be brought to areas beyond London.
Speaker 1: Andy, thank you so much. For your time,