Liverpool City Region

Um, there's two other things important happened, um, last week.

And one, we're not gonna spend much time on it, but it's important to recognize that Liverpool City Region became the latest places to take franchise in control of their buses and start to roll out the franchised, um, system.

There'll be others to follow, but they, um, they follow on the, the heels of, um, Greater Manchester.

Been doing it for a couple years.

Liverpool City Region next.

That's an important block.

It's about building transport networks that work for the economy in those places.

Speaker, I am aware of the potential, uh, office, uh, closure by British Telecom, uh, in Liverpool, and the level of job losses, I believe up to, up to 600.

I do believe that Steve Rotherham, uh, the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region and MPs have been, uh, in meetings, including with, uh, Number 10 North yesterday, discussing this and other issues.

So we will continue, uh, to work to support, uh, those, uh, jobs.

And can I just congratulate the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, uh, for bringing buses across his city region back under public control at the weekend after 40 years of deregulation? That is change in action, protecting services for local communities.

Liz Saville Roberts.

Diolch yn fawr, Ion, Lywydd.

In his speech, Healy announced a $150 million allocation from the British Business Bank for scale-ups in the North and the creation of the Northern 500 growth community of Northern mid-sized businesses led by the Great North Partnership of Mayors.

South Yorkshire, Liverpool City Region, North East England and the Cardiff Capital Region will also become the latest strategic partners of the National Wealth Fund.

The National Wealth Fund will get hands-on, Healey said in his speech.

It'll help these areas build their own investment pipelines, Because I know that strategic authorities are only as strong as the local authorities that compose them.

Mm.

And they hadn't had a penny, so quite rightly was saying, you know, "We need our chunk for being in, in the top tier." Liverpool City Region is now going into it.

Steve Rotherham has told me that they're getting...

And every time we went backwards and forwards, he'd get a more substantial offer, and I'd go back and say, "Well, hang on a second, because you're asking us to...

Mm.

"But we don't know when it's gonna end, so we need X amount." And it was that that really, I think, scuppered Johnson, 'cause he thought that he could play games.

He actually went out, uh, in a Downing Street conference, press conference, said, um, "I've done a deal with, uh, Mayor Steve Rotherham and the Liverpool City Region," blah, blah, blah.

Basically, Andy's on the naughty step.

for example.

But it's how we work across that wider urban geography and what we call the Liverpool City region.

So when you rightfully talk about places like Wirral, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens and Halton, because actually it's that scale across the wider conurbation that is of global importance.

It is the fact that we're 1.6 million people as a region.

Right

... sing from the hilltops, "Look, this is fantastic." A place like the Liverpool City Region, we got Objective One monies when we weren't getting anything 'cause of the Tory government at the time.

We didn't get anything, and that Objective One monies was a facilitator and a catalyst-

It was big