Imagine us walking down here in the 80s when you and I were growing up.
And then turning this corner where we are now near the famous Temple Bar, and then seeing that...
No, no, no. They're all new and built in the last, or finished in the last five or so years.
It would have been hard to imagine back then, wouldn't it?
No. And how many of these sorts of buildings are we talking? Because it's totally changed the cityscape of central Manchester.
If you go back about seven, eight years, we had more cranes on the skyline of Manchester than anywhere else in the world, I believe.
Clearly across the UK economy there's growth, but it hasn't been spectacular for a decade, decade and a half now since the financial crisis. People are looking at Manchester, looking at the numbers, looking at the number of cranes, and thinking something's happening. Obviously you're going to say yes, of course there is, but what tangibly can you point to, and how much could this be some sort of lesson for the rest of the country?
So we've had a decade of devolution in Greater Manchester, and in that decade we have had on average roughly double the UK growth rate, average annual growth of 3%. And it's because with that ability to do more for ourselves, to set an ambition for ourselves, we've really kind of pulled this place together. And increasingly it is a success story that people are buying into. You know, when we were in the last century, if you like, Whitehall and Westminster had no ambition for Greater Manchester; it didn't set a vision for us. And it's only with devolved power that we've been able to do that and say, no, we can be much better than this, than what the national level thinks. And this has been done. We've done this ourselves, and not me, but people before me who built Greater Manchester into what it is. And it's a really exciting place to be. And the interesting thing is what the next decade may hold for us on the back of what we've already built.
So let me kick the tires there on this sort of causality. This is quite important if this is to be a lesson. So can you draw a line between the extra powers you've got? I mean, in your own telling of the story, those powers have been more modest than you would have liked. You know, the biggest power has been over, I know, transport, bus networks and things like that. You haven't had a huge amount of borrowing power. So how can it be that it's really down to those powers, down to some of your decisions?
Well, it's about the power of the place before it's about the powers given to us by government. You know, this place was bidding for the Olympics in the late 1980s, and you know, it was always kind of believed that this place could be more than it was in the last century, it could be more in this century than it was then. And it's been built on that principle going forward. And the power comes from the partnership between the public sector, the private sector, the community, voluntary sector, our universities. This place moves as one, and it's an incredible, awesome power when it's really, you know, fully deployed. And we've set an ambition for a reindustrialized Greater Manchester, an innovation-led, research-driven economy, and our universities have played such a huge role in that. I put out a plan recently for that reindustrialization based around five key sectors: creative media, digital and tech, life sciences, advanced materials and manufacturing, and clean energy. The key thing is we already have five physical clusters for those industries either in existence now or being built. And this vision is getting stronger and stronger all of the time, and it's one that we've built ourselves. You know, we set this ambition in a way that the country didn't have an ambition for the north in the last period. Well, we've used devolved power to do that. And is it replicable to other places? Of course it is. And you can see that, you can see Liverpool beginning to achieve a growth rate that's higher than the UK average, and elsewhere in the north as well. And it's all linked to devolution. And that's why it frustrates myself and other mayors that we still have to go on bended knee to Whitehall to plead with them to prise more powers out. The growth story is clear that comes with devolution, and really now the country should be getting fully behind it.
So again, just let me dig down a bit. Is it because you can map out a strategy, and sort of strategies have been a bit of a dirty word in centralized Westminster politics over the past 10, 15, 20 years? Is it that? And does it have a particular politics, like is it statism? Is it left or right? Like, what is it?
So it is absolutely about a long-term vision, which often Westminster isn't good at. It deals in the short term. We have a clear vision for where we want this city region to be by the middle of this century, and actually we're achieving it. We're well on the way. But it is also about a new politics, and I was clear about this when I left Westminster. You know, politics based on point scoring doesn't really get you anywhere. Here it's about place first rather than party first. And when you take a place-first approach, you build a more collaborative politics where all parties work together. The private sector finds it easier to work with us. It's a different political culture that we've built here, and that is a crucial part of its success. And when it comes to right versus left, well, we've always been very pro-business, pro-enterprise here. You know that. But Greater Manchester is not the kind of place where people say, 'Well, I'm all right, Jack, and I'll just walk on by on the other side.' That is completely the opposite of how people are here. We want people to succeed individually and businesses to succeed, but give back at the same time. And that's the brand of thinking and politics that's been built here. And yes, I think some of this is about reversing some of the damaging things of the 80s and 90s that harmed productivity in this country. You know, when transport was broken up and sold off so that people couldn't afford the fares anymore to get into work, or where water bills and energy bills have become too high, hurting both individuals and businesses. Some of these things have been part of the problem, and housing perhaps biggest amongst any of them. The housing crisis is still holding back our residents and holding back our economy here. So yes, we say the vision of the left about making sure these essentials of life are there for everybody at a level they can afford is absolutely part of Manchesterism and the way that we think here. But they are also the drivers and the foundations of a more productive economy, and that is the argument we're putting forward.
Has the sort of gleaming skyscrapers and the culture-led development left some people behind? It's a common sort of refrain, obviously. Like Shelter put out numbers about the centre of Greater Manchester seeing one in 61 people are homeless. What measure is that of how successful Manchesterism has been or not?
So we are very conscious of that, and myself and the 10 leaders here, we do talk about that all of the time. And we believe we need not perhaps to do some of the things that London did as it changed when the mayor came in in the early 2000s, and you know, the gentrification of places. Now, there's a degree of that everywhere, and here as well. But what we're trying to do is make sure that we get ahead of these things and put in place the council homes and the social homes to create housing that everybody can afford. So a symbol of that change is right now the first social homes are being built in Manchester City Centre for 40 years on the old Boddington's Brewery site. And credit to Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester City Council, who's really pushed that agenda forward. And as a city region as a whole, we've set ourselves a new target, and that is reaching a tipping point across our 10 boroughs when we are building in one year more council and social homes than we are losing. Net, we're still just about losing more than we're building, but we believe within a year or two we will get to that new tipping point. And only when you've hit that tipping point, when you're building more than you're losing, are you beginning to ease the grip of the housing crisis on a place like Greater Manchester. I don't think we can be everything that we want to be, and I don't think we can achieve everything we want for our residents as long as Greater Manchester remains in the grip of that housing crisis. We have a very serious plan to address it. But I would also want to call for stronger powers and funding from UK government. There are many homes in Greater Manchester in the private rented sector, perhaps that were once in the public housing stock, that are beneath the decent home standard, that damage the health of the people who live within them, that are expensive to heat and to run. And I would like to see more powers to take homes in that position out of the private rented stock with compulsory purchase powers, so that we can move more quickly, if you like, to rebuild the public housing stock.
It gives a sense of what the growth looks like from the metrics that you will have access to, like whether it's, I know, use of the tram, and I know hotel occupancy, number of buildings. You know, what does it actually look like? The growth number is one thing, 3%, but like what does it actually look and feel like?
Well, I saw a change when Co-op Live opened in the city, because obviously I look at the bus patronage numbers and the tram numbers, and they jumped up at that point and have never gone backwards, because more people are coming into the city every week for some of the incredible things that are happening here. And that is a phenomenon that keeps building. It's regularly here a record day on Metrolink, the tram system. Transport for Greater Manchester often say to me, 'Oh, the weekend we just had was another record.' So you know, something is clearly happening here. And obviously we are getting ready to welcome the Brits, first time out of London, taking place in the city. And this is the thing: we have a level of infrastructure in the city region now that supports that growth, both the world-class arena that Co-op Live is, but also the hotel infrastructure that supports it.
That's full up. You know, people saw these property developments in the past and said, 'Oh, they're never full up, no one ever lives there.' You know, in London, for example, you know, along the Thames, often unoccupied foreign owners. Is that the same pattern here?
No, the city is vibrant, and you can see that and you can feel that when you walk around and you see the footfall. And it's really interesting for me, you know, if I go back in my past. So when I was looking for a job here in the early 90s, and the only job I could find here at the time wanting to do your job and work in the media was as an unpaid reporter on the Middleton Guardian. That was my first job out of university. I had to do what so many people of my generation, born in the 60s or 70s in the northwest of England, had to do to get on in life. We had to go south. You know, the really most amazing thing I can tell you about what's changed is that now it's a reverse. No one here has to leave to get on in life. And in fact there's a net inflow, if you like, of young people from London. You know, there are many youngsters...
