Burnham: give Manchester its own welfare budget

The Labour MP for Leigh is his party’s candidate for the new mayoral role in Greater Manchester and a hot favourite to win the contest.

At a fringe session of the Labour conference in Liverpool today, Mr Burnham called for further devolution to control the millions spent in welfare in the area, which includes housing benefit.

“I’m absolutely certain if Greater Manchester had that DWP [Department for Work and Pensions] budget, I’m certain that we could spend that money better than they do,” he said.

“And I’m sure we could give people who have autism and other disabilities a much better offer than they have currently.”

He also set out a vision for a new ‘Council for the North’ of regional leaders to take charge of policy for the entire North of England.

“Let’s not have this Greater Manchester or North East focus. I think we should come together and have a single council for the North,” he said.

“It would take a brave government to ignore that if it made a submission to a Queen’s Speech or a Budget.”

Inside Housing revealed this summer that Mr Burnham plans to use housing cash devolved to Manchester to fund socially rented housing, as well as compulsory purchase orders against private landlords who fail to maintain homes.

Speaking at the conference today, he said the failure of housing and industrial policy to address issues in the North had been a major contributing factor to the vote to leave the European Union in these areas.