Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury speech at the West Midlands Growth Summit
The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury delivered his speech at the West Midlands Growth Summit on 8 October 2026.
Thank you, Elizabeth, for that introduction and for inviting me here today.
It’s great to see so many partners in the audience and it’s great to be in the West Midlands, a region that gave us the industrial revolution, Joe Chamberlain, municipal socialism and best of all, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Today the West Midlands is a place that has its sights set firmly on the future.
You are known not only for world-leading manufacturers - like JLR - but for your rapidly growing professional services sector and for the fast-growing firms that have chosen to start and scale their businesses here.
Much of this work is being driven forward by your excellent Mayor, Richard Parker.
Not the youngest mayor in Europe… as I misread in the brochure. But Mayor of one of youngest major cities in Europe; Birmingham.
And earlier today I heard about your plans for the exciting new Sports Quarter. No10 North is playing a key role in its development and together with Richard, the Combined Authority and Birmingham City Council, we have this month established a new Coordination Group to focus minds and get this project delivered.
This is exactly the kind of collaboration we need to reverse the trend of rising regional inequality.
Since the 1980s and in large part because of changes that happened in that decade, Britain has become one of the most regionally unequal industrialised economies.
This has diminished the stature of great cities, hollowed out industrial communities and put too much pressure on an overheating South-East.
In no small part, this is because of how we have been wired over recent decades. We’ve got so many great strengths, envied the world over, and yet we get something as fundamental as who makes the decisions wrong.
In most major economies, power and resources are much less centralised, with strong local institutions invested in their place and empowered to get on and deliver.
In most major economies, cities are the drivers of growth which create demand and spread prosperity to surrounding areas. Britain – by contrast - is one of the most urbanised countries in the world, but our core cities have been held back. Under strong leadership, recently they have been turning the corner, but there is so much more potential for growth.
There are fantastic firms and assets right across Britain. Other countries nurture these clusters, but in Britain, our public sector has been too distant, too erratic and, frankly, insufficiently strategic about what and where to back.
The solution is our plan to deliver good growth in every postcode, including through greater devolution and public control, creating the conditions for businesses to grow, as set out by the Prime Minister just last week.
Most people are underestimating how significant this shift is. For the first time in years, we have a Prime Minister who has experienced the frustrations of Whitehall bureaucracy. We have a Minister for Growth, working not only in Westminster - but in No10 North too. And we have local leaders who are properly connected into the centre of government.
Together, we are driving forward good growth. And I want to set out briefly how I see this happening, from my vantage point in government.
It begins by shifting power and resources out of Whitehall and establishing a foundation of good growth everywhere.
We are then building on this in a strategic and focused way. We can’t do everything everywhere all at once.
[political redaction] – but in part because it wasn’t focused enough on following up on the economic realities of modern Britain.
Instead, we must be hard-headed about where the biggest economic opportunities are.
Firstly, our large urban areas are doing less well than their international counterparts – but if we raised the productivity of the five largest Mayoral Strategic Authorities outside of London to the national average, we could add around £53 billion to the UK’s economic output.
That is why, working with local leaders, we will have a clear focus on the core cities and their surrounds with the highest potential to grow.
Secondly, we will focus on where our comparative economic strengths are, within and beyond cities, by going with the grain of what we are good at and where there is private second demand – working across the ‘triple helix’, including universities, to support the reindustrialisation of our country.
Taking these components in turn. First – the foundations of good growth. Delivering that starts with retaking control of the essentials that make a place work – transport, utilities and the skills system.
It then means devolving power and responsibility to those places, so they are in charge of their destiny.
No longer will the growth potential of a business in the Wolverhampton Innovation Corridor or the Coventry Green Power Park be overwhelmingly determined by decisions made in Whitehall.
Instead, empowered local leadership will deliver long-term plans which the private sector can get alongside; much like you have done with the West Midlands growth plan.
Recent governments have made progress by expanding the strategic authority model – but we now need a much more radical approach.
That is why we have set out plans for a sweeping devolution of powers to strategic and local authorities in England – and we want all areas to have a mayor as soon as possible, as long as there is strong local support.
Alongside this, we will support local councils to improve their financial stability, to back the high streets, regeneration and local transport that are the foundations of growth.
We will transfer real fiscal firepower out of the Treasury, more on this at the Budget.
And later this year, we will publish the Rewiring the State delivery plan to devolve more powers on skills, housing, transport and innovation, so that places can integrate services into something greater than the sum of their parts.
Alongside devolution and a re-wired state, this government will play an important role in setting up everywhere to succeed.
Be that through good work – and we are delivering the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation,
Affordable travel - the £2 bus fare cap will help more people with their daily commutes.
And an intense focus on high streets as centres of local economic activity.
On this foundation, we must deliver an increase in productivity in our core cities and better connect them with their surrounding areas – in our Northern Growth Corridor, in Oxford and Cambridge and the places in between, in cities across the UK, in our capital city, and here in the West Midlands, where, despite its growing population, Birmingham’s effective size was constrained by poor transport networks and congestion.
This means fewer people with easy access to central Birmingham and to good jobs.
Richard, I know you are putting that right by bringing the buses into public control, supported by No10 North; expanding the metro, and building new new train stations.
But it does demonstrate the impact of years of underinvestment from central government and the attitude it has taken to local leadership for generations.
In the 1960s, the Government actually limited Birmingham’s ability to expand and suppress growth through regional rebalancing policies.
Never again. This government is stepping up to the plate.
We are supporting an integrated transport system, and supporting city density, regeneration and investment. We are supporting development of the Midlands Rail Hub and the expansion of the West Midlands Metro.
And crucially, we are resetting HS2 by putting it on a sensible path to delivery, so that we can speed up journey times to London, release much needed capacity and spur regeneration in Birmingham, Solihull, Coventry and beyond.
Alongside our support for city regions, we must also support the highest-potential growth clusters wherever they are in the country. We’ve seen the value of doing this in the past.
Look to the success of the Advanced Manufacturing Park in Rotherham – built from strong partnership between academia, industry and public-private collaboration.
Twenty years ago, the area surrounding Kings Cross station was tired and rundown.
Today, it is Europe’s leading AI hub. This didn’t happen by accident. It happened because of a blend of private sector ingenuity and government and the local council rowing in behind to back and invest in that place.
That’s just the level of ambition I know Richard, the council and Lendlease have for Smithfield and other areas – and it was great to hear about that earlier today.
To build on successes like this, we must work with local leaders and back the sectors – including those that naturally cluster outside major cities - that are best placed to create the wealth and jobs our country needs.
This is a plan which puts tools in the hands of local leaders and creates the right conditions for businesses to grow, young people to be hired and places to thrive.
For decades now, these tools have been the preserve of a Westminster government that could never drive growth in every postcode on its own. We were set up to fail. And we have been falling behind.
This Government is taking a different approach, based on partnership and built on the success of places like the West Midlands.
We will deliver our plan through the Parliament, including in the Budget, in the Rewiring the State White Paper, and at next year’s Spending Review. And by working together, I know that we will deliver the good growth that our country needs.
Thank you.