Chancellor joins PM on first day working from No 10 North

Photo : Prime Minister Andy Burnham welcomes staff as he officially opens No. 10 North at Heron House, in Manchester

Andy Burnham has launched the new No 10 North in Manchester, saying the office would get “growth in every corner of the country”.

The branch of Downing Street in north-west England will form part of the prime minister’s aim to shift power from Whitehall and Westminster to regions.

With his new Chancellor John Healey standing behind him, Burnham told staff that the shift north showed he was rewiring the state, saying: “No 10 North is going to take that up to the next level.”

The Lib Dems said the prime minister needed to show No 10 North was more than a “working from home base” and would deliver for the whole country, including coastal and rural areas.

Burnham told the assembled civil servants: “It’s not just a new office – through this place power is going to flow, energy is going to flow, new ideas are going to come through.”

The former Mayor of Greater Manchester said he understood that negotiations with London had been difficult in the past and “sometimes it’s felt like an argument with people in the centre of government” due to the balance of power.

He added: “It’s sending a message to everybody here who has come in to No 10 North in its early days that you’ve got the full support of government from the very top – prime minister, chancellor, first secretary of state – that’s a very powerful message that we’re sending today, that the political commitment is there.”
Other ministers due for meetings at the Manchester hub on Friday include Housing Secretary Angela Rayner, Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden, Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds, Health Secretary Yvette Cooper, Environment Secretary Angela Eagle, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander and Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh.

Insisting the move would not be short-lived, Burnham said No 10 North was not just for north-west England but for every region and nation of the UK.

“There’ll be many voices out there, I can hear them all already, often London based, but not exclusively… They like to say, ‘Oh, this will just be the new levelling up, or another sort of short-lived gimmick’, and they’ll also say ‘What’s it going to cost?'”

He continued: “What does it cost for everybody to troop down to London every time there’s a meeting when you need to make an argument about something?

“What does that cost? So actually, isn’t it better that we have a North Pole that balances the South Pole of our country, where power will always be concentrated?”

Burnham’s first week in power has seen him make a series of interventions aimed at easing the cost of living, including announcing a 20% cut in business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues from April next year.

However, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has criticised his ambitions for being “too small” and urged him to tackle high energy costs for businesses as well as a gap in defence funding.

“Andy Burnham needs to do better — He is behaving like he’s still the mayor of Manchester,” she said on Thursday.

“He is now the prime minister of the United Kingdom, he needs to start acting like it.”

Liberal Democrat MP Calum Miller said No 10 North must be “more than just a convenient Friday working from home base for him and other Manchester MPs”, reminding Burnham that most MPs return to their constituencies on Fridays.

Miller added: “He needs to demonstrate it’s more than just that and that this represents something for the whole country – that rural and coastal communities that have been really left behind are actually part of his plan for decentralisation.”

No 10 North will operate out of Heron House in central Manchester, shared with intelligence agencies, although a new government site is under construction in Ancoats and due for completion in 2032.

Burnham is expected to work from No 10 North every week and today is chairing a meeting of the National Economic Council, a cabinet committee first launched by Gordon Brown in the wake of the 2008 banking crash.

Strategic decisions about devolution and local economic growth will shift from the Treasury and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to No 10 North, although both departments will have input in these areas.

Asked whether Burnham’s messaging was too focused on the north of England, Rayner told BBC Breakfast people understood No 10 North was about driving growth in every postcode across the UK.

Successive governments have sought to move more civil servants out of London and last year a target was set to cut the number of roles in the capital by 12,000.

According to the most recent figures, only about one-in-five civil servants are now based in London, with that figure steadily decreasing over the past four years, although the number of senior roles outside London remains less than half of those in the capital.

Whitehall officials willing to move to Manchester are understood to have been told they will be offered relocation packages.