Conservative mayor backs Burnham's devolution plan
BBCProposals by Labour leadership hopeful Andy Burnham to devolve more power and autonomy to a regional level have received support from England's only Conservative mayor.
Earlier this week, Burnham promised the "biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen" as part of his plans if he becomes the next prime minister.
Taking question in the BBC Radio Tees Hot Seat on Thursday, Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen said he would like to see "fiscal devolution", with mayors given more flexibility over how they can spend money allocated by central government.
He said people sometimes overestimated the powers he holds but that government funding is often ring-fenced for specific policy areas.
Houchen said: "People assume I can do everything and I have the control, money, and power, which isn't the case.
"There's a public democracy issue there about aligning people's views of what a mayor is and can do with the reality.
"The more powers and money you can give the mayors, rather than it being dealt with by Whitehall in central London, the more you align those two things."
He said restrictions on the way money could be spent and what it needed to achieve was "not ideal, because a framework that might work for Manchester or Birmingham doesn't work for Teesside, particularly around transport".
"We don't have trams or light rail systems like metros."
In some cases, he said, central government "tell you what to do, you're just the delivery arm".
He explained: "What Andy Burnham's talking about, and what all the mayors have been talking to Rachel Reeves and Kier Starmer about for the last couple of years, is the way you change that is through fiscal devolution."
Instead of "pots of money" being given to mayoral authorities, Houchen said he wanted regional authorities to access income streams which would otherwise have gone to central government - such as a percentage of the income tax raised locally - with the freedom to spend it as they want.
"That would really change things and Andy is a huge supporter of that, as are all mayors, and if he can deliver that it would be huge for us."
