Good afternoon, welcome. My name's Colin Mair, I'm a professor at the School of Government, having formerly been at the site business school.
And it's my very great pleasure to welcome you to this.
The third session in this series on levelling up regional disparities in equality and social inclusion.
In the first two sessions, we looked at the subjects of the role of business and skills formation.
In addressing regional disparities.
Today, we turn from looking at issues to looking at places, we're looking at a place in particular South Yorkshire.
And it's my very great pleasure to be able to introduce Dave Smith, who is the chief executive of the South Yorkshire Combined Regional Authority.
Before that, he was chief executive of Sunderland City, and before that he was assistant CEO, something like that of Liverpool Rotherham.
So there are few people who had more experience of place based local regional government than they've had.
And it's a great pleasure to have him talking about this subject this afternoon.
He has been educated in three universities in Sheffield, in Manchester, and he got his doctorate in Warwick.
So perhaps I can just begin after that very brief introduction to your background to ask you to tell us a
little bit about your career development and how you forge this interest in reviving left behind places.
I think for me really began as most things do, I suppose, in the sense of where I was born and brought up,
I lived in an industrial town and as parts of Salford in Greater Manchester and my family were a
mixture of steelworkers and my father was a captain on the talks on the Manchester Ship Canal,
taking ships from Liverpool dock in up to Manchester.
And I experienced firsthand the decline of those industries.
The ultimate closure of the canal as a working canal and the closure of the local steel plants.
And as I as I developed into my into my working career, I experienced the.
The violence rarely changes to the economy in the north of England and in some of the the the consequences, the impacts of those changes.
Of course, people people will remember and and and have seen the images of the impacts on that generation.
A people who were working in the coal mines,
in the steel industry and indeed the shipyards in the North East when they went
and those images are about that particular generation who lost their livelihoods.
But the reality is the impact is far deeper, far longer and far more profound than just one generation.
And I've discovered particularly particularly working in the northeast and again in South Yorkshire more recently.
The effects weren't just profound in the sense of the economic shock of it.
It was profound in the sense of loss of identity. So, you know, people, communities, places no longer knew what they were there for.
In Sunderland, it was so, so dramatic that there was no no sign in Sunderland that the driver being one of the biggest shipyards in in England,
you would not know it ever was there. It had been entirely wiped out and erased from any physical memory.
The same is largely true in South Yorkshire, and when you consider the scale and nature of the steel industry one time and of course, the coalfields.
About loss of identity, as well as the economic impacts to people, has been intergenerational.
And over the years, of course, the dynamic has changed, but only to the extent that the gap between those who forged new,
new identities, new means new futures and those who've not been able to access the grows ever wider.
So there is a real sense in which people in South Yorkshire who've not been able to access the
opportunities that indeed people like me had to go to university and be educated and have choices.
And those who have it just is reflected in the simple dynamics of the place.
The number of people who leave South Yorkshire to to to take opportunities that they've
earned through their education and the number of people who don't have that choice.
And if you look just simply at the movements of people in and out of the region, there's barely any movement.
Which shows how the economy itself, just as what now lacks any sort of dynamic.
Facing up to those sorts of challenges, understanding them, appreciating the relationship between people's identity, their place and of course,
their economic opportunity has become the driving factor for me about why I do the job I do and why I've done the jobs have done.
Well, that's very interesting. And we'll explore a bit further that notion of loss of identity and sense of place in a minute.
But I just want to turn first to a little bit of the history of Sheffield in the South
Yorkshire area and how it's got to where it is today before before I pose that.
Let me just say that we're going to have a conversation for about 40 minutes or so in total,
after which will throw it open to questions from you and also from people who are watching online and those who are watching online.
Please do take the opportunity of posing questions as if you were here and then they'll be read out to us so that we'll be able to answer them.
So do please put your questions into the Q&A function of Zoom.
Could you tell us a little bit about the history of the growth and flourishing of Sheffield and South Yorkshire and then its collapse to the day,
should they?
It is worth recalling that that Sheffield and wider South Yorkshire was really literally at the crucible of the first industrial revolution.
It was at the heart of steelmaking and the developments of the whole steel industry
underpinning the whole period in the 19th century of the growth of the UK's economies,
supported by huge coalfields. It will literally providing the fuels for steelmaking.
Not only in the sense that we understand that we understand it in the post-war
period where where those industries were nationalised and agglomerate hit.
But in the period before the war, before the Second World War,
when when Sheffield and South Yorkshire was a myriad of coal mines and and on steel plants of various sizes and of course,
very specialisms was two people will obviously know because it remains part of part of Sheffield's current
economy about the colliery industry and the whole sense of design and development and delivery of a very clever,
very smart engineering around the use of steel, not just in the big ingots and and Sheffield carried right through in terms of its prosperity.
But what the scale of those industries, both in steel and coal mining, spawned a huge amounts of ancillary industries,
ancillary support economy, what we call now Sammies galvanised on the back of those major industries and innovated,
formed, formed different companies, different types of sectors, different opportunities,
not just, of course, in the region or even just in the UK, but worldwide.
And it created a massive sense of pride,
pride to the extent of it captured in these developments in terms of in terms of the massacre in in Sheffield.
So the whole industry is is galvanised around a history that's captured in the in the in
the in the institutions that are being formed as part of the civil society in Sheffield.
So it went far more far deeper than individual industries, far deeper than this.
The spin outs that created it, it became the core core of the institutions of civil society.
And that was equally reflected in the coal mines in terms of the workers institutions, the nature of the community resilience that was formed.
To support communities and to help people, those communities to support themselves in and after all, what was a very dirty,
unhealthy industry that caused huge amounts of impacts on people's life expectancy and health and for which communities
have forged the means of their own sort of public health institutions that supported those people in Midland lights alive.
So it became and was the whole way of being rather than just a means of how people were employed.
So the demise of those things in the starting in the 60s,
but really taking full forward in great pace in the late seventies and into the
eighties didn't just mean that those industries were lost and those jobs were lost.
But it did literally tore those communities apart. The civil society broke down.
And for those of you with long memories of that,
I've look to the history of this will have seen the acute nature that I became in many places in South Yorkshire,
as they did in other regions in the north of England, where communities became no go areas where crime was so high.
Youth crime in particular was so high that there were places that local government offices wouldn't go,
that even police would only go in patrol cars armed and staffed up,
which was simply a product of all the loss of identity,
that loss of purpose in people's lives and in the in the in the in the 90s and during the 2000s,
we spent a great deal of time was spent overcoming the civil rights.
To give people not yet a purpose, not yet a real investment in the future.
But it did at least provide for those communities to have some some sense of belonging again,
some sense of stability, some sense of feeling that it was their communities that they could own and belong to.
And I think that's been the journey today.
OK, so a history of remarkable growth from the industrial revolution, followed by collapse 50 or 60 years ago.
And it's remained in that state basically since then, despite a lot of attempts and regional policies to promote its redevelopment.
Economic simple economics would tell us you'd expect that given the fact that business has collapsed,
the properties of the key to the people don't have jobs means that property prices are low,
cost of labour is low and the supply is relatively high, so that business should be pouring in.
But it hasn't happened. Why, what what what's wrong with that view of the world and.
What's the real underlying problem? I think I think I think the there are, of course, many aspects to the answer to that question.
And there is no one, there is no one reason.
But there are some very significant ones that I think are the ones that preoccupied, preoccupied with my mind.
Firstly, that's clearly with the best of intentions. And to say the desire for change.
And. Solutions to the challenges that I've just described to you, we're seeing in public investments,
largely in the infrastructure within within our communities in South Yorkshire.
So put simply, a great deal of money was poured into local communities, urban centres,
the tip that was about the pulpit rail to make places look and feel better.
But that was a change whilst not seeing. That that was neither.
That wasn't a sustainable solution.
Because the fact that those places did not look good and we're not getting better was fundamentally an issue of prosperity.
This fundamental issue that not enough people could generate enough wealth to lift.
That those places.
So you saw cycle after cycle cycles when the economy in the UK was strong, you'd see public investment in the public realm and communities,
and when and when those cycles were low, ebb investment would fade away, but it would need to come around another cycle again.
And we've had 40 years of that, those cycles going around without fundamental change in the economy.
So it's an issue of public policy, first of all. The second issue is is the issue of the role, the role of the private sector.
So South Yorkshire has the unenviable reputation that it's the only region in the UK.
Well, certainly in England, where during the boom years of the 2000s, the private economy and private sector economy shrank.
And that was on the back of years of private sector decline during the during the 90s.
And they. And the question about why that happened for me was really about the inability to access private
investment at scale in a way that would that would ensure that we not only attracted new investor,
new business into to South Yorkshire, but those business, those indigenous businesses who were there,
which is largely an assembly community left over from the demise of the big industries, couldn't access investment to grow.
Of course, and you said that alongside a national policy that increasingly invested in the certainty of growth that came in
London and the Southeast because this clearly was a period of huge growth and expansion of London and the South East.
Which could attract private investment to give us certainty of return.
A spate of return thefts at an open market in the north of England simply can't match, simply can't match.
So a combination of of an increasingly centralised economy.
And along with a public policy that was based from Westminster seeking to regenerate to drive in infrastructure.
Was a perfect storm for the north of England and without whilst recognising the best of intentions,
simply reinforced and reinforced the position for South Yorkshire,
I meant that the dialogue shifted despite huge amounts of public policy and public investment has gone in over the years.
So let's pursue those different elements of the private and public sector, starting with the private sector and business tech.
Tell us a little bit about the landscape in South Yorkshire, in terms of business, in terms of Assamese and the availability of funding sources.
So we have a number of challenges. We also have a number of opportunities.
The challenges have come in that we don't have the business density we need.
So we're largely in our small economy, but there is nowhere near the level of density or business required to sustain growth and development.
We suffer from a huge productivity challenge that labour is cheap, capital investment is difficult.
And in that context, most SMEs will invest in in cheap labour, not in,
not in the adoption of technologies that would improve its technological opportunities.
That would make it more competitive. So we have a.
So we have a weak, underdeveloped SME sector, whilst that is the predominant sector.
We also we also have the challenge of a developed, underdeveloped,
large scale blue chip sorts of sector that would attract new and developing and competitive SMEs.
So we have a combination of those two issues at play.
We have, though, hugely successful and further developing relationship between our two universities.
And and industry. And this is coming in and in several forms.
All based around our prime capabilities. So in the context of the history of giving you, you won't you will,
you won't find it surprising to say that that one of our prime capabilities is in materials development.
So not just in steel, of course now, but in all sorts of composite materials,
particularly lightweight materials that the University of Sheffield is extremely strong on from a research
and development opportunity for which there is a real hunger in the manufacturing sector worldwide,
particularly in things like automotive sector, particularly in things like the aero sector,
where materials needs to be lighter and stronger, constantly developing.
So the University of Sheffield, in those composite material industries,
in the energy sector and in some and in some particular forms of our manufacturing processes has been hugely attractive to industry and magnets.
Essentially, that has drawn world world leading companies like Boeing, McLaren and the automotive sector.
Rolls Royce and others to be attracted to have significant bases, and in Sheffield, where having the same much younger developments in life sciences,
particularly around health and wellbeing,
drawing on sports technology for elite sports athletes that are being developed in research and development between business and Hallam University.
Translating that lead technology for sports men and women into new technologies that will affect the health and wellbeing of the broader population.
So fantastic developments. But there's a however.
And that, however, is where really poor as the UK is outside the sorts of Oxford Cambridge Triangle.
In being able to convert the I pay into scale manufacturing.
So it's absolutely fabulous that universities are a magnet.
The university is a magnet, so attracting those industries, securing them for the purpose of research and development.
But most of that development is then dispersed actually mostly internationally.
Some in the UK, for almost none in the region. So it's not impacting on the region in terms of those new iPads being developed and scaled,
and it's not impacting in the region in terms of an opportunity at scale for those SMEs to occupy a supply chain.
So those primary developments? The key US furrows,
the absolute key for us is to take that next step and capture much more of those
developments for commercial opportunity in the region that will grow not not to scale,
but better jobs with with futures that will increase prosperity for us.
And and for that to occupy a role across South Yorkshire.
So we're so seeing in logistics, seeing in rail industry, seeing in the aerospace industry there,
where we've got opportunities in prime capabilities that exist in Doncaster,
in South Yorkshire, seeing getting construction and and I.T. industries in Barnsley,
where we've got prime capabilities and the universities are now taking the responsibility to reach out to those other opportunities to cluster,
which we can then develop the opportunity to to to to capture those IP, to capture those SMEs and to cluster around those opportunities.
OK, so that that that's a very interesting description.
So some areas of real strength around materials, health,
life sciences and also a recognition of having different clusters in different places and the importance of place.
So what can be done to address this issue of scaling up there?
I think two different elements to scaling up. How would you go from the small start up companies to national and international leaders?
And the second is how would you develop the presence of existing large companies in the South Yorkshire area?
Any thoughts on either of those and a number of thoughts really starting at this, perhaps least measurable elements of this?
Absolutely critical is to capture the imagination of all of entrepreneurs and investors,
to see and understand the opportunity to recognise the validity of what's
happening in in places like South Yorkshire to overcome stereotypical attitudes.
Understandings of certainly South Yorkshire, but the North as a whole.
And to recognise this, these ventures are real and they are captured around ideas and they have a purpose and direction.
That's the first thing. The second element, so a narrative, a real narrative that compels that's compelling.
It brings confidence, it brings a level of commitment and it brings an appetite to take risk.
That's the first element. The second element is really to backed up with the hard and the hard support both
financial and advisory that the our businesses needs to grow and serve and to foster.
And that that really needs to challenge until an address two issues.
We need to overcome. And they.
The uncertainty of the market conditions that currently leads investors to back the the the best and optimum
investment that they can clearly realise in London and the Southeast that they can't yet realise in South Yorkshire.
So we need to create the right incentives and the right supports for those investors to unlock that private investment
that would enable businesses in the form of loans in the form of equity in the in the forms of venture capital.
That would appeal to that broad sector of opportunity, both for start-ups, for developing SMEs and also obviously for bigger businesses.
We will want to realise that investment and that isn't going to happen without providing the right incentives.
It's clearly not going to happen when the best returns.
The biggest returns continue to be available in in particular parts of the UK and not available in all this.
Those those unlocking those opportunities will come from leading institutions and leading investors,
taking those risks and being pioneers themselves to take those opportunities to invest.
It will also need a fresh look of how how we use public money.
So I think we need to do some what I think would be groundbreaking work,
but what work that we're really keen to do and that we're working on with support,
obviously from the likes of yourself, Colin and Paul Collier and Phil McCann and all those from Sheffield University.
Which is to to make the argument that public investment doesn't just need to come in the form of infrastructure investment for transport and so on,
all those things are welcome and needed.
But we need to understand that public investments is required in the forms that support the private investment into business that
begin to de-risk the opportunity for business to grow that de-risk the forms of private investment that go into those businesses.
That enable the private investment to scale to the different types of businesses who would try and sell a lot because that more than
anything will balance the market forces out for us and provide a playing field on which investors and businesses will take the race to grow.
Using the IP that's being developed with the universities and others that will really not just grow the density of business in South Yorkshire,
not just improve productivity, although it'll do both of those things, but will restructure the economy.
Because the the clarity here needs to be that this is about innovation.
This is about building an economy for the future. And we can see what the economy might be in a three or five year timescale because
we're seeing it before our eyes in the work that's happening between businesses
and the universities because as they are working on solutions to Real-Life
problems in manufacturing materials and in energy that they're delivering on now.
Beyond that, three, five year horizon, who knows what it looks like?
I'm certainly not clever enough to make those predictions. But simply growing to the direction of travel, we will then start to disperse, say well,
then start to find his own roots and all routes to market, which will then grow itself.
But it's getting old without home. And that element for me, that relationship between university development businesses,
access to finance and support from the public sector is the key bit for those that will unlock that private
sector growth that we failed to see at the levels we needed to unlock the potential in South Yorkshire.
So that's that's a very important insight in so far.
As you're saying, the key role the public sector can play is not so much picking winners, which always raises concerns,
but backing investors, helping to match funding or underwrite funding that comes from the private sector.
Can we explore a little bit more of the public sphere and let's start at the local level?
Can can you just describe the relationship between the organisation that you run,
namely the regional authority and the city and how well this structure functions and how much of
the agreement and consensus that exists between the different bodies in the South Yorkshire?
The mayoral combined authority, it is an economic body, and it was created along a lot, obviously,
along with the others that have been doing this now 10 in England were created on the basis that.
To have the opportunity to to change and innovate and develop economies that could have an impact not just for the benefit of the region,
that that could be competitive on a national and international scale.
We have to give these things scale. Dealing only at a low, complex level simply doesn't have that scale.
Simply can't bring it together sufficient of economic levers required to make change
happen and to unlock opportunity and competitiveness that's required to move us on.
And that's that's the reason combined authorities were created,
led by directly elected mayors whose responsibility was to understand and develop policy at that racial economic level.
The role within those mayoral combined authorities or of individual places of individual local authorities as representing those places is key.
And in articulating and expressing the needs, the identities, the development of purpose.
And on articulating the prime capabilities, both current and future of those local places.
There is a. An evolution required to mature those relationships.
It is in the nature of politics, certainly in this country.
Which tends to and which tends to fall into the trap of applying a zero sum game.
That there there must be an exclusive winner and loser.
And. The risk to the relationship between a combined authority and the individual local authorities that we fall into that trap.
Instead of seeing what we should see as we mature those relationships.
Is that what you're actually describing, essentially layers of an onion?
So we see at a strategic level. What needs to happen to make a functioning, productive economy at a regional level?
Cheney, any particular application to low code bases in local communities that were able at a different level layer of the onion,
articulate those and meld them. So if I have to give you one example of this.
Where we've been working on this in South Yorkshire. Is I've given you the story of growth that we want to see.
But it's equally important in a South Yorkshire context, the individual places in South Yorkshire.
And that they want to see this growth lead to greater levels of inclusivity.
It is not growth at any cost. It is not growth that leads to greater disparity, greater and greater disparities of wealth.
Between those who benefit from the growth and those who don't.
That the common parlance for this is about good growth.
It's about seeing growth where the where those who are least able to access that opportunity
and giving given the opportunity and helped and assisted to access that opportunity.
Which is it about investing in their life opportunities? It's about the practicalities of a skills system that works for those who are accessing it,
not simply for those who are imparting the knowledge and and and with the providers of the skills.
It's about having a transport system. That is both sustainable from an economic and environmental point of view,
but enables people who are in the most disadvantaged communities who are also incidentally in
in those communities that are most isolated because they are generally in the coalfields,
though generally in what was previously coal fields, towns which are primarily in in rural areas.
It's being able to help those communities access decent, reliable, affordable, sustainable transport to get to where the clusters are happening,
to get where the jobs are, to get to the colleges and to the universities to access further and higher education.
So being able to marry where we're taking the economy, where we're growing businesses, where we're growing close to,
where we're where we're developing skills, colleges and other forms of further and higher education.
But ensuring that those who need to benefit from those opportunities do.
And that isn't just about providing those people with life opportunities is all clearly that's massive drive.
It's also about lifting that prosperity gap. So if we want urban centres that are then themselves prosperous that bring the right
range of retail off the right range of leisure off of the right ancillary opportunities.
Then we have to put money in people's pockets.
We have to be able to provide opportunities that don't lead lead to high levels of in-work poverty, which is what we suffer from at the moment.
To actually give people career grades to actually provide opportunities for their future so that
they can grow because those that don't get the realisation that prosperity feeds into the economy.
And it becomes in itself so self-sustaining.
And that's the that's the happy place we need to get to and who who do you think should be leading what you were
just describing it as the creation of a sense of purpose of common purpose amongst different people or return,
as you were saying at the beginning, to a sense of identity and a sense of the importance of place.
Who should be driving this forward? Oh, for me.
We have to see this as dispersed leadership. We have to see this as requiring energy throughout throughout.
Of course, there has to be leadership from from our political leadership in the in the Met and in the individual councils.
There has to be leadership from our civic institutions in the form of our universities, our colleges and other institutions.
But there also has to be community leadership. There has to be bottom drive that has to be belief.
There has to be buying. There has to be that this has to represent the needs and interests, views and aspirations of our communities.
And and it's only when we meld those together,
we create the confidence in those communities that they feel they want to engage and in engaging that we are listening and embracing their views,
needs and opportunities when we bring it together.
And I think at this stage of gestation where we are, a lot of that leadership is coming from,
from the political institutions and from our civic institutions.
And we're beginning to talk and understand and engage with our communities through that,
through those political leadership to begin to to to begin to again that the other element for me is businesses themselves.
They and from my perspective. Local enterprise partnerships, which were formed by the coalition government back in 2010 11.
Which at that stage were simply the amalgamation of business representatives along with local councils to represent and give a voice to
business have developed a great deal since then and they've had a checkered history and they worked in some places and not in others.
And as is inevitable with any new ideas. Speaking from my own experience in South Yorkshire.
The local enterprise partnership, as this source of a partnership between the local authorities,
the mayor and and the business representation has worked incredibly well.
And the articulation of our economic priorities that was probably very poorly
articulated here before is captured in what we call our strategic economic plan.
And that was borne out of two years of really hard work led by the private sector,
supported by the public institutions and the councils and the universities,
the colleges and others that became this article, articulation of innovation led growth.
And where we broke through the barrier of seeing the poles of creating wealth for wealth that captured in an inclusive growth strategy.
So business is a key elements of this,
but it has to recognise that it can only be accessible in its partnership and its relationship with these other civic and public institutions.
And are you getting the right support from central government?
We've heard, as I said at the beginning 60 years of failed regional economic policies in this country, are they getting it right this time?
He's stuttering early stuttering,
and they I think it was it was an incredibly important step that the government took to introduce the idea of devolution to two English regions and.
And to create mayoral combined authorities. And I welcome that move, and I say that as somebody who was not convinced.
That it was the right move at the time, very concerned about the whole issue of morality from the point of view,
what was this about the calls of sort of individual leadership rather than institutionally the leadership?
But I have to say I am a convert to this.
I am a convert to the opportunity that it creates.
However, the government's lost its way on devolution.
And has been has has drawn back to what I was going to say is drawn back to a West Westminster model where it decides policy,
but in some ways it's worse than that. It's drawn back to a model where it asks us to say what we need to say, what the solutions are.
Then it marks our homework and tells us whether we got it right or not.
And that can't be right. That can't be right.
You can't make a judgement about what's right for South Yorkshire through all that Westminster lens.
You know, London is a fantastic economy.
It is total phenomenal amounts of great and indeed will be, as I think, as an economy in the UK, we'll be in a mess without London's role.
But we have to recognise and the government has to recognise it's not sustainable.
The enigma any economist will tell you that the fact that the increase in
monopolistic dependency on London will ultimately lead to a market correction.
And when so much of the economy is vested in one place on one set of institutions,
when that when that correction codes, it comes in the form of huge problems of the like we saw in 2008.
So for me, we have to see that change, of course.
I'm welcoming the the whole opportunity that the levelling up agenda is meant to bring with those.
Disappointed with the outcome of the spending review, which didn't seem to me to represent a real investment in levelling of.
But hopeful that the white paper on levelling up will bring bring back some of that recognition.
Around the real true opportunity of devolution, which is not all solutions were going to be the thought of or delivered tomorrow.
But that would really embrace that desire.
The coat that came with mayoral combined authorities, I'm bringing the institutions that came with that together about the the the wish to bring
accountability and responsibility in decision making to a local level that respects in place,
but understood the levers of what needed to change to change the economy.
And I really sincerely hope. The levelling up white paper will begin to.
Move back into that space again. One final question before we throw it open to Q&A, if you were here at the session last week on skills formation,
what would you have said was particularly important in that regard in the South Yorkshire region?
Well, I begin by a quote, I'm I, I belong to the Dolly Parton School of Philosophy.
And Dolly Parton said, no, here you are and do it on purpose.
And I absolutely fundamentally believe that that driving change in the economy and understanding how to upskill
the workforce is about grasping that philosophy is about saying we understand at least within the next period,
what's our prime capabilities are and we understand subjecting and the right public policy, the right relationship with the private sector and so on.
How to unlock that capability. But in order to realise it, we have to galvanise a skill system.
That begins from the point of view of some of the of the actual and potential
uses of that skill system that that takes them on a pathway from where they are.
To access the jobs and opportunity that will be unlocked through this process.
So much of our skill system. Is siloed around a set of arrangements, that's it, governed partly by the economy of skills,
so where the money goes and partly by the institutions that occupy the skills landscape.
It is an incredibly. Complex sets of institutional arrangements.
That even those who are steeped in it struggle to understand and make sense of.
So if you are. And an 18 year old.
Engulfed in Barnsley.
Looking to move into the development of a set of skills that take you from level two to level three and three level three to level four,
you cannot plan in a single straightforward pathway.
How to get there. You have to go through various side roles, some of which are cul de sacs,
come back on the road, go John overcome a hole, go down a different side road.
Come out. Go back. Sometimes take three steps back again and move forward four steps.
Are we really, really giving those people a chance?
At the other end of the spectrum. We have fantastically clever.
Undergraduate and postgraduate is working on universities who were inventing phenomenal I-Pace.
Just consider how much of that we just simply lose, not just to the universities or not just to our region, but probably to the UK.
Because we haven't got a system that supports them, finance being one of them.
But real advisers, real angel investors, real systems and processes of successful business people.
That can help those very clever people unlock those ideas to become the enterprises of tomorrow.
So at every level of the spectrum in our schools, we have to begin from asking ourselves some fundamental questions about about about the uses of our
system and how we rarely unlock that potential rather than beginning from where our providers are.
Great. Thank you very much indeed. Let me now throw it open to questions and would like to start.
Hello, thank you for that, I was going to ask you this idea, you said you've been a convert.
Obviously, you've worked in local authorities, in big cities, in different roles. Now you're working in a combined city region authority.
What are the areas of your conversion from your experience, not just ideas, but from your actual experience?
What are the advantages that you perceive from this kind of model,
either over and above or in addition to or complementary to the more Orthodox local government system as you as you've worked from?
Thank you. Hmm. The first big difference is is simply the convening power, the man.
The ability of a morality. To bring together.
And. The interests of of the interest groups across a place like South Yorkshire.
And to begin to build alliances that previously weren't there, both in the public and on the private sector.
And that hasn't existed in that way ever before.
And I've seen the power of that. I saw that in action during the pandemic.
Where, where? The impacts of the pandemic were felt by every private and public institution in South Yorkshire, as it was everywhere else.
But the mayor had such an influence. As to help those bodies to transcend just simply addressing their own institutional challenges,
to seeing how this was affecting the whole of South Yorkshire.
And to put in place a recovery plan.
So, yes, good benefits every institution, but would absolutely benefit the economy and the communities of South Yorkshire.
And that was phenomenal to see that happen, to see that happen in the teeth of a storm where we were all struggling with all those challenges,
so easy for us to turn inwards to our own institutions and identify the.
The second one is is the is the is the creation of a narrative.
Is the ability to begin to articulate the sum total of our aspirations that the people can recognise?
There is an aspirational in the sense of being so far left field that nobody can connect with it.
But what is challenging,
but it's rooted in in the experiences of the people and institutions and communities and businesses that are already in South Yorkshire.
That's a very, very powerful weapon. The third and final one that I'm drawing from experience.
Is the ability is the ability to have real influence on government policy and and attitude.
So making kind of connexion with senior politicians in government to influence their thinking.
Both on an ideas level, but also on a very practical level.
So if I take if I take the current mayor.
Literally doing deals with government and saying, we want to bring this business, this business wants to come to South Yorkshire.
We will put some resources in, we will invest in this business opportunity.
What to make it work, we need you to commit to this to. And if we do it together well.
Well, that's really challenging, not really breaking down barriers, that's really introducing new methods,
ways of working and and and doing that is creates real enablement from my point of view, so that those would be my examples.
Thank you. I think there's a question here. Let me just remind you online to put your questions in the Zoom Q&A.
Yeah, thank you very much. On the back of that, actually,
I was wondering if you could talk a bit about where you think evolution needs to go next and not just in terms of local level,
but also a national level because they have been talking about some ideas floated
about possible replacement of the hybrid model to the whole regions or something.
I wonder what you thought are also on the agenda.
I was wondering if you can tell us what your experience your experience has been so
far of the government consulting local authorities on the forthcoming white paper.
On the first elements of that, I think the. I think we have to understand evolution and really start to embrace.
The principle of decisions being made at the lowest appropriate level.
So that question of ensuring. That we are mature enough in our public policy and not our politics.
And the people not only will make decisions at the local level, but will stand accountable and responsible for those decisions.
If we truly to embrace the. And then the natural follow on is that the mechanics of achieving that would follow.
So that so that that would be properly devolved powers and finances.
And to a local level for which local politician would have to account both in taxation terms
and in expenditure terms to the local population for the decisions that they are making.
At the moment, we are locked into a.
Well, I would describe as a parent child relationship,
and depending on the nature of the politics and and the environments in seconds and the top time,
it's either punitive parent with a difficult child or a forgiving parent with an with an accommodating child.
And that dynamic varies over time, but it hasn't really changed the relationship.
And really,
what we've got to get to is a much more adult to adult conversation where where the accountability of a measure of local public institutions is not
back to parliament is not to administer it to the public or South Yorkshire for a properly ascribed and devolved powers and funding and taxation.
We are a long way from achieving the. But that for me would be about bracing, embracing.
Devolution could. Can I just follow up on that in asking?
To what extent do you think giving central government the confidence to do that
depends on increasing the skill base of people in local and regional government?
Or do you think it already exists and that that that trust and confidence should already exist in central?
I think and its core elements, it already exists. I think I think what, of course, is lads is experience doing it is.
And they are. But what if you understand?
You know, you can't, you can't teach experience experience exists.
If we really embraced the idea and recognised skills exist or experienced Tucson,
then of course you overcome those risks by deploying experienced people.
Into local areas so that their accountability is to the local area to provide and support local politicians who were
ultimately accountable to reach the right decisions and to be responsible and accountable for those decisions.
So the child can only get the experience once the parent lets go.
And that's exactly exactly so. Thank you.
The point that you made about. The burden of proof that Darwin was on the rise and so on.
So how do you balance today investing in kind of new industries that may be gone tomorrow?
How do you invest in resilience? That's the key. So what happened years ago would not happen again, for example,
with the introduction of artificial intelligence, the change with the job market and so on,
so that the community and the region is resilient and is able to adapt to the
changing markets rather than go through what what it had gone through before.
I think the key to this is actually one of the words you said, it's about the adaptability, the skills that we generate for people so and so.
The economy, the economy is weak as far as we can predict it is going to lead to further change
is going to lead to increasingly increasing drives around knowledge based services.
And the challenge, particularly those for those with the least skills and those furthest away from the opportunity
is that they they are they are the most vulnerable in terms of the sorts of industries,
the entry level type of work that that's available to them.
So the question for me is is in the nature of the skills that we provide to those people in their development so that
that so that we are equipped with skills that are adaptable and adjustable to changing functions and and workplaces.
We see this a lot already in and relatively well-educated young people.
So I say this in my own mind, my own children who were in their late 20s, that they don't have the same loyalty to individual,
an individual company or organisation that I would have had when I was young.
Because they've got skills that they know are transferable into a number of different companies, sectors and industries.
And we have to learn and adapt those lessons to those who are less skilled to
create those same opportunities because the world of work is not going to be,
you're go into a job when you leave school, all university and you're in the same organisation until you retire.
And that's true whatever your level skill is. So adaptability is key for me.
Absolutely key.
And does that require us to rethink the nature of skill formation as a lifetime passport, which you could be continuously re-educated through?
Most definitely. And it comes back to this pathway. OK.
Thanks very much. Thank you very much. There's so many questions I'd like to ask,
but I just think most profitable is to pursue a line of questioning that's already been there and it
relates to the central concept of the until we get parity of esteem between central and local governments.
We might never make real progress. And in that you've touched on this already, which is the whole issue of fiscal devolution.
It I might have asked you another question about which powers with the mayor like that to his portfolio, and I suspect the answer.
Any sensible bear would say.
Not until you give me the resources, the resources, because all you're doing is transferring responsibility without the power.
So at the heart of this and is a problem that we have and work, I'm involved with it with Philip and others is what model of fiscal devolution in a
country that's so centralised will work without itself becoming part of the problem.
And do you have such a model for the works in South Yorkshire, then it's something that will work anywhere, I suspect.
No, I don't have the model. I wish it did.
I see I see this far cleverer people than me.
Maybe you need to work this out. But but but what I do see is that.
And. We.
We are saying and the local state as well as the central government, have to embrace the model but recognise there are going to be a series of steps.
As we transfer responsibility, fiscal responsibility, and that works for both ways, you know, to be fair to any any government.
One of the challenges, legitimate challenges that's been made of the north of England from a Westminster government is.
And that at the moment. We want the money.
But the politicians locally don't want, don't want government says,
don't want to be held responsible in the electorate for having taxation to take to access that money.
So the government argues, you know that that they're taking the decisions to tax.
So, so facing the electorate on that level, one local government wants to spend the money.
Well, obviously the answer for local government is you don't give us the opportunity to play both roles.
So the real opportunity is to incrementally shift that responsibility in the same sensible way that you would do it about layers of decision-making,
about what's appropriate to tax and spend locally,
but shift the power shift the power of responsibility so,
so so that local politicians are responsible and do have to account to the electorate for the local taxation and local decision making.
And I think just simply doing that would do much to grow experience and and the level of the relationship between central and local government.
Do you want to come back, Vincent, and there's another question.
I suspect. I mean, it's complex and the work we've done, we actually that's with the UK 2070 Commission,
we actually decided it would be wrong for us to come up with the preferred solution because it was so complex and we were trying to budget,
but we felt that there needed to be a collective conversation nationally about how that is done.
And that she didn't take so long. We talked about whether it should be royal commission and the advice of our chair was don't go down that line.
We should bring the people together and we actually thought we could do it in a year with the right people
around the table because there's so much knowledge there and there's so much experience naturally.
And I actually worked in Scotland a long time with Strathclyde Regional Council.
And that experience for me.
Demonstrated that actually local government can act at scale responsibly, in fact acted so responsibly that the last in its last throes,
the central government tried to get it to set an illegal budget so they can say that's why we're getting rid of it.
And she understood the fiscal rules better the Treasury and avoided having to do that.
But what I'm saying is that people talk about lack of trust because they can't do it.
My experience is actually starting from nothing in Strathclyde.
They created a very powerful response. In fact, it was so powerful is possible, said the government wanted to get rid of it.
As the first thing, the second thing is on this is the thing is actually just being very clear about this issue.
And you talk about incremental and I don't disagree.
You have far more experience than I do of this, but I just think on some things we actually need to have see changes.
You can't do it incrementally. There needs to be something.
And that's something which obviously I would like to explore further because I just feel that we've got to a point that we need change.
I saw it in local government when you started, I think we had 40 per cent control of money when you could put money on the table.
It changed the whole dynamic of the conversations it does.
And I think the other thing that you've not touched on in terms of, I go along with everything you said about that convening power.
As being absolutely critical and having a voice for that region, which even though those hysterical arguments are going on,
the need always will do is actually the importance of dealing at that scale.
You could actually deal with destructive issues within it.
Without it in a way that's managed and not sure you can deal with the issues of
Barnsley and there are some real issues of geography of equality within your area,
which are different to those of Manchester. And it's not a criticism, it's just a fact.
And you could you can deal with those in a way no one else can.
It's usually the that's underestimated in terms of the value that the mayor, a mayor or complex can bring to it.
I agree with all your points and certainly how you and Rob unpack fiscal devolution and.
Is it will rest in understanding the detail and planning?
So the idea of a national conversation and I think is an incredibly positive one.
So long as the principles, what we're seeking to do have been agreed and there is a consensus.
Otherwise, it become a very dysfunctional conversation with the detailed mechanics of the thing that we then have to lead onto.
So it's done in a measured way. Maybe some of it is a sea change.
Maybe some of it's incremental, but we'll only know that when we begin to.
Begin to impact the details of it and which should be the basis of a conversation,
but at the moment it feels like we can't get beyond BACE1 one, which is do we really are we really collectively embracing the devolution?
Go to question a man. This is Ian Taylor from the of ethnic school.
What do you think about the mayoral development corporations as an instrument to stimulate development?
It's an important model, but that's what it is, it's a it's a means of focussing resource people expertise,
finance in the development of certain types of land and property areas.
But but I wouldn't get carried away with it.
The real challenge in a witness and we've seen this over the years, different models being brought forward by in different public policy iterations.
If they quickly become the latest God to pray to. As though the answer to the problem.
Rather than being an answer to certain problems,
so understanding where the benefits of those things come in is really is really the critical issue about deciding when to deploy them,
but also understanding when not to when another another infrastructure.
Our fiscal model would better suit the needs of a community or a or a problem solving issue.
So there are brilliant piece of the armoury in themselves.
That's what they are. Question on online.
This is from Adam Swallow. He says the role of regions in industrial policy setting be via semi-skilled political leadership.
Where is the balance? Could you just repeat the question, so I think I missed that.
So the role of regions in industrial policy setting via be via SMS or political leadership?
I think it's fair to say OK, should it? Yeah. Where is the balance?
Oh, I think I think I think the balances and that we draw, we need to draw on the experience of our armies and.
They the lessons learnt and their intentions and aspirations as businesses.
But that has to be then interpreted in terms of how that might benefit the economy overall.
So so it's more than the sum of the parts.
So the contribution provides and provides the core of a narrative,
but that has to be overlaid with a sense of direction and purpose for places
that are above and beyond the experiences and interests of individual Acehnese.
So there is a role for both.
But there's an overlapping role in terms of place at the end of the day has to be the driver because only in place will we create the confidence,
the energy and the direction against which ultimately A.M.E. can thrive in terms
of its opportunity to workforce its opportunity to its to the in the place.
Question, though. Hello.
Thank you very much for the interesting ideas you talked about,
people knowing what they're there for and narrative and in-jokes about Sheffield and steel and materials is the pitch for Sheffield.
Is there an elevator pitch for Sheffield, which is now mostly about materials?
And maybe, maybe somewhat related to another question about your ideas about how to develop and get to a happy place?
Is there another set of cities that you look to as the examples of of success?
I mean, do you look to Manchester, Preston, Colby or or other places abroad?
And the answer is a second bite your question first.
Yes, of course, we try to draw on the experiences of a range of places in the UK, but also internationally.
The question,
the question that we have to address for ourselves in the analysis of those places and their successes and where and where things have not
worked is is to is to better understand their applicability to us in our circumstances because that's not always evident to start with.
And that's where a lot of unpacking goes.
But yes, in principle, yes, we do. And we find it is really interesting from our point of view that if I take one example,
if I take a man's Manchester who are obviously further on in that journey of maturing by dint of that, they started much earlier.
They they've evolved and so on,
although still they would say a long way to go and how they matured is is a key lesson for us and one that we continue to have to learn.
So for example, and it always strikes me that, of course, at the centre of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority is Manchester.
And I think what Manchester got right. And was was really understanding.
That's in order to be influential in the Greater Manchester economy, sometimes doing it to cede power to increase its influence.
So it's not simply about the core city and controlling things and making the decisions is about the core city recognising the needs and aspirations
and interests of the various towns and urban areas that were part of Greater Manchester and how their needs could be met and in change.
How how Manchester City could enable those needs to be met for less mature places like like South South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.
We're still learning that lesson.
We're still learning how to how between the the big conservation of of of Sheffield, how he understands and relates to.
And is energy dependent with the successes and challenges that are faced in the rest of South Yorkshire.
So that's just one example where we needed to learn that lesson lesson, sorry, I've forgotten the first part of your question.
I beg your pardon. It was basically what the elevator pitch for Sheffield.
OK, so and our elevator pitch is essentially around, is around, is around the innovation in our core capability.
So it's saying our history in South Yorkshire.
Is around some key capabilities, which are principally in materials, energy.
And manufacturing processes in health and well-being.
And some elements of logistics. Those are our core competencies.
But what we're doing in the fourth generation industrial revolution is innovating around those same
capabilities that that that generated the wealth and prosperity in South Yorkshire in the first generation.
That's our pitch.
Thanks for the wonderful talk, and you spoke a lot about experience and just thinking about the private sector, you mentioned the SMEs a lot.
And I'm wondering about if you are to bring those industries to scale.
There's inevitably going to be the need for experience from larger companies,
and I was struck by the fact that the idea of attracting large global companies to the region wasn't really discussed that much.
I'm just curious, but you know, what are the opportunities there? What role is there any for collaboration with the central government there?
Is there more active industrial policy required there? Because my sense is that in order for small and medium enterprises to thrive.
Coming from where I come from Dublin, a lot of the companies that I see that are small companies, that's right.
They came from people who left out all the people who left Google to people who left LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.
And I'm wondering if that could be replicated in South Yorkshire.
It is absolutely necessary and integral to our success to be able to attract businesses with scale and on an from on an international basis.
We do some of that in this magnets effect I was explaining before.
Through through the United States, the two universities. But we need to do it far better as a place, but also but also as a country.
And I'll make a couple of observations that struck me from your comments that I think reinforce what you're saying.
The the first one is that we're currently pretty dominated as we are in other areas of public policy.
Bye bye bye, central government, principally food, I'd say in this context of inward investment.
I'm the challenge and the challenge. I would make a do, it is it works on the basis of being placed a call,
it refers to itself as being placed blind so that it won't enter into it, won't enter into a relationship with a company.
He was looking for a he's looking to science in the UK.
And the treaty won't encourage you to go to particular places.
It plays neutral, neutral. Well, for me, from my perspective, in the context of the economy we have in England.
That doesn't lead to a neutral outcome. It leads to increasing density of business in London and the southeast naturally, so for those businesses.
So so you can't be placed blind. Here's my argument.
So public policy at a national level needs to change, but it needs to.
It needs to embrace a stronger narrative from the regions about capabilities.
And what we have to do better and mature in is really describing where are what our capabilities are.
And at our worst, what we do is claim to be capable of anything.
Well, we're clearly not by any by any measure of evidence.
So once you start to say what are our capabilities, it quickly becomes a normal thing instead of really being clear with ourselves what we do offer.
Not my experience, I think I cited an example from previous roles for me when I was in Sunderland.
It was a lot easier because our prime capability was was the automotive industry.
We got a huge car plant called Nissan in Sunderland.
And and a workforce that was massively productive.
Not because it was the cheapest workforce that Nissan got anyway, because it clearly wasn't fake, but because it has such a low level of turnover.
That that mitigated the effects of higher wages and increasing globally the most productive plant globally.
So we have a prime capability that allowed us with Nissan's support.
Two, when Nissan changed its global manufacturing policy and wanted to disperse much more of its
capacity worldwide following following in the nuclear accident and then the tsunami in Japan,
it changed its position to wanting to disperse. And we work with missile.
About bringing two up to the plant in Sunderland.
Much more of a supply chain. And we went up from in five years, we went up from to suppliers who were near Nissan to throw suppliers.
And what we learn in that period is there is for the automotive industry, there is a hierarchy of needs a bit like Maslow's hierarchy.
And understanding the hierarchy. Was what ultimately led to our ability to attract and retain those suppliers so that big industry?
Now, of course, great, we could do that with one big, one big manufacturer.
And in an environment in South Yorkshire, it's much more difficult to do when you don't have.
One big manufacturer, oh, it won't be going in.
So our ability to to describe those prime capabilities and then apply the hierarchy of needs
that would attract and retain those potential investors is much more difficult to tell.
But it is a problem we have to tackle because only when we do that will we really turn the aspiration into a land double a
proposition from a from a footloose business that's looking anywhere in in the UK to to base to base its plan are already set out.
That makes sense. Right, I'm afraid we're out of time, but I'm going to just very quickly use the church's prerogative to ask you a final question.
Looking back in five or 10 years time, what would you most likely,
what are the two things that you would most like to see in the South Yorkshire region around the.
Oh, I think I think a population. Has retained its file, its core values.
And there are some values that despite despite all the decimation I was outlining earlier.
The people retain is really, really important to their identity as being part of South Yorkshire, and they're about thought about fairness.
They're about. The desire to be inclusive, they're about a sense of well-being.
And those things are really important to retain. But to match those.
With a much more sense of optimism and a sense of prosperity, a sense of choice,
a sense of being able to meet more people, being able to make more choices in their lives.
And to do that by having. And education and skills system supporting.
A business landscape. It really provides for people's futures that really makes them not just a job.
The sense of a future and a sense of being part of an economy and parts of a country that
is playing is playing a role globally and being a net contributor to the UK's economy,
if we can, if we can see that happening not necessarily concluded in that period, but see that see that momentum.
And then that would make the hour that would make me happy.
Well, Dave Smith, you've given us a fantastic description of the challenges and opportunities that face the South Yorkshire area.
Thank you very much indeed for having done it. Thank you.