More power should be devolved to cities, says UK Minister

At the Global Mayors Summit taking place today in Liverpool in the north-west of England, Greg Clark, the UK Minister for Cities, said there should be a reversal of policy by national governments towards restoring power to cities.

“We should harness the power of central government to boost the power of cities,” said Clark addressing an international gathering of 200 mayors and local government representatives at today’s conference, which was part of the Liverpool International Festival of Business.

Clark said that the UK government had £2 billion earmarked for investment next year. “We are on the verge of a shift from the national to local initiative which is gathering momentum,” he added.

Part of that momentum has led to a deepening of international city-to-city relationships. As Liu Jigang, Vice Chair of the Beijing Municipal People’s Congress, said: “We have to think outside the box and learn from other cities. In order to promote a liveable city and develop sustainably, we have to learn from each other and take advantage of each other’s experience so that we can make common progress.”

Gavin Patterson, CEO of BT, the British telecommunications company, said that in the same way that the Otis safety elevator had transformed 20th century cities, communications were transforming the cities of the 21st century.

“Our world is being transformed by communications and our cities are at the forefront of that and they always have been as they are the places we have always gathered in to connect and trade, to share creativity and to innovate,” said Patterson. “As city leaders you are uniquely placed to harness the power of communications.”

Lord Hesletine, the former UK Deputy Prime Minister who had led efforts to regenerate cities while a Minister, asked how more private capital and investment could be driven into cities.

Iñigo de la Serna, Mayor of Santander in Spain, said it was important to build trust between cities and the private sector and to create the right conditions for investment. “We need to make information and data available to the private sector and generate new services. We need tax incentives and to eliminate bureaucracy and paperwork which impede this type of collaboration. And we need to make legislative changes in order to facilitate these types of partnership and to adapt laws to new processes and technology.”