I have had another busy but productive week as Minister of State as we have continued to work to rebuild our economy and drive up living standards for constituents like mine in Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton.
At the Institute for Government’s annual conference, I spoke about how we are fixing local government with devolution, reorganisation, and £5 billion of new investment which is going into local government this year, getting money to the frontline where it’s needed to support more councils.
I attended the Mayoral Council in Rotherham with the Deputy Prime Minister to discuss our plans for the English Devolution White Paper which will give Mayors more powers to drive growth and improve services because those with skin in the game should have the power to make decisions on the things that matter to them.
With key local audit stakeholders, I hosted a roundtable to discuss the recently published local audit strategy, a strategy to overhaul the broken local audit system in England so we can build an effective early warning system and ensure the sector is fit, legal and decent in order to best support local growth.
I had a great session with the Local Government Association Labour Group’s next generation programme where I spoke about the government’s plans for devolution and local government reform.
In the Commons, I spoke from the despatch box at Oral Parliamentary Questions session on behalf of the government about how we are making reforms in a bottom-up way to enable communities across Britain to take power into their own hands, establishing more directly elected mayors who will have new powers to convene public services.
Jim McMahon OBE MP 