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