Aug 18 (Reuters) – British Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the Times on Tuesday that Number 10 North, the regional government hub, will take over responsibility for economic growth from the Treasury as part of a transfer of power out of Whitehall.
Burnham in July opened the new government base in northern England, in a shift away from what he said was decades of economic decision-making centered in London.
“It is actually a huge transfer of power,” Burnham told the newspaper in an interview. “It’s something that the country has never cracked before. I don’t wish this to sound, you know, a criticism or negative about the Treasury,” he added.
The prime minister, who took office less than a month ago, has previously described the base in Manchester as being “the situation room for making Britain better – the place we use to get power out of Westminster, into the hands of people at a local level, so that they can turn things around.”
Burnham also told the Times that British finance minister John Healey supported the approach, and would outline the government’s economic strategy in a major speech next month, and a “ten-year plan” of economic and constitutional reforms would be published after the budget.
Healey will hold his first budget on October 28.
(Reporting by Sumedha Mukherjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Chris Reese)