good afternoon Birmingham and indeed
good afternoon to everyone watching I
hope around the world so I know you've
had lots of wonderful members of the
local community showing the talent that
there is in this place over the course
of the day I'm gonna tell a bit of our
story about what I think is important in
a story of economic revival so it's have
a little look then the West Midlands
those of you in the room probably know
this but others might not so I need to
explain where we are we're at the heart
of Britain West Midlands is about 3
million people seven boroughs current
coloured orange in that map and
Britain's second city from where we are
doing this broadcast is right at the
heart of the West Midlands Birmingham of
course and if you looked in our economy
it would be about the size of a small
middle sized European country and we got
a wonderful history this is that in the
sense where the whole modern economy
starting it's the birthplace of the
Industrial Revolution the image on the
screen behind me is of the Thomas Dudley
coal fields in Dudley in the Black
Country and of course the place got the
name the Black Country because all of
the chimneys the foundries whatever
belched out the smoke and the soot it
was literally a black place with that
suit and it was said in history but
Queen Victoria when she travelled
through the black country by train she
would close the curtain on her train
window so she did not have to see the
pollution in the atmosphere but of
course industry made this place an
incredibly wealthy place that fire and
brimstone that was the way in which
wealth was made in the 19th century and
you see it in the architecture of the
place some of which some of the images
on the screen there have been lost but
many are still here today and the
architects would have made the statement
of affluence particularly our Civic
buildings but also of course the private
buildings of those industrialists so
they were good times
in the 1960s this place was the richest
city in Britain people were paid more
here than in London unthinkable now a
British government policy in the 60s was
actually to sort of dampen down the
economy of Birmingham in the West
Midlands to move businesses away
actively so that this place did not
overheat they were good days but sadly
they didn't last where the
deindustrialization came the loss of
jobs and this simple graph shows the job
situation in the rest of the country the
top line against Birmingham the bottom
line and you see that we did badly not
just for a few years but for 40 years so
for a long time we under performed and
in fact we moved from having the best
pay rates in Britain to the time we got
to the 2010 general election to having
the highest unemployment anywhere in
Britain so from great success to a
premier like me still has to say some
failure and that part you saw it in the
social problems another saw it and wrote
about it this is the Economist magazine
an article I hated it said Birmingham
second city second class the date 2012
they were writing about our demise and I
remember at the time trying to persuade
him it was unfair they shouldn't publish
this but they were having none of it The
Economist said that's what the Davis
says that's what we're writing and they
did and you had to ask yourself at that
time I was lucky I was working for
another company I'd been brought up here
but then when I was 18 I went off to
university and then I went into work for
journalist and many of you will note
onerous Britain's most successful
workers cooperative big department store
group but I wasn't here but I was
looking at it from afar saying how is it
that my home city has so declined from
what we knew before and you saw the
origins of it when I was a child growing
up you could see the factories closing
you can see the derelict spaces but you
stood back and you said what
lain behind it and I thought there were
four things that had lain behind them
and I do just want to go through them
because I think they tell us something
not just about Birmingham in the West
Midlands but something that's much more
widely applicable the first problem was
that we've been too dependent on
traditional industries this image is the
inside of the old MG Rover Factory at
Longbridge in South Birmingham when I
was a child it was the biggest factory
in Britain employed about 40,000 people
went bust in 2005 it's now begun to come
back to life but that was a huge shock
when that went and we were too dependent
on those traditional industries and
alongside that we've been dependent on
them for training people so actually
we'd not develop the skills for new
industries this is probably the most
damning slide of all this looks at
various places across the country and
looks at the skills of our workforce and
in 2007 we were the worst qualified
workforce of anywhere in Britain a real
correlation without economic performance
the worst quality and then there was
question of leadership there was nobody
who was shouting up for a place like
this Dimmick is of a very famous chap
Mayor Joe Chamberlain he was mayor of
this city back in 1870 he was a
wonderful champion he fought for us but
he was a figure of history and what had
happened is Britain had become much more
centralized power had been taken away
from places like this
there was nobody really shouting up for
us and it was illustrated by the fact
that David Candler said to me was Prime
Minister in 2010 he said to me you know
what Annie but I wanted to talk to
London
I talked to Boris Johnson he was then
Mayor of London but when I'm going to
talk to the West Midlands I don't have
one individual I want to talk to and
then equally damning the country had put
all of its resources into London this
graph shows the relative spending on
transport and
her head between London the big blue
chart and everywhere else so no surprise
that if we invested in one level
transport in London and not done so in
the West Midlands you've got an
internationally competitive city in
London and other places have been a bit
left behind if I can use that political
phrase and is it right that Londoners
have twice thrice four times five times
as much investment as other parts of the
country it's not and just to exemplify
this little map shows how this was so
damaging to us internationally this
shows the metro systems West Midlands on
the right and then Leon Frances second
city on the left the story is clear
they've got on and invested we'd not and
there's lots of academic research
written about how this meant that this
region and it was the same in Leeds in
Nottingham maybe other cities had just
not moved forward with the same
investment and they we were not
conductive in the same way as those
cities where you just think about if
you're in one of the tough poor
communities away from the city centre
how do you move in for the jobs that are
available so I stood back from me all
and I said there's four ingredients that
are causing this relative failure we've
been too reliant on the historical
industries we've not trained our
workforce for the new ones
nobody's shouting up and we haven't
invested in our infrastructure we've got
an unbalanced country as a result 2010
the incoming coalition government led by
their B Cameron and George Osborne they
understood and they saw that and they
began to talk about rebalancing the
economy actually getting ahead in these
regional areas not being totally
dependent on London and the first thing
they didn't it's a bit technical this
but it's my story
they asked businesspeople and I was
their chief executive journalist to step
forward and lead what were called local
enterprise partnerships around the
country and the local enterprise
partnership brought together businesses
the councils and academics the
universities to try to drive forward the
economies
of our regions and I said yeah I'll go
back to my home city in 2011 and we'll
lead that institution there and that's
what I did roll the clock forward to
2015 and that rebalancing was just
beginning to work and the government
said we can go a step further we can
learn from what happens in America in
France in Germany in Japan and we're
going to have directly elected mayors
around the country a single person who's
accountable for the performance of these
places and they began to look for people
to stand for these jobs
I said I'd stand it was a political
appointment it is a political
appointment whether it should be is
another matter but for certain it's
directly elected by the people and you
are accountable to the people the map
shows the areas of the country that
chose to go for this colored in green
and the populations the West Midlands we
went for it 2.8 million people the first
election was in May 17 and I just won
that election so I gave up business and
moved into this role and the agenda was
clear if the things that led us down
whereas we said the agenda going forward
was to address those things create a
more diverse economy create a better
skilled workforce find a voice champion
get investment in that critical
infrastructure so that's what we set
about doing we've been really important
a team we came together formed a
leadership team for the region the first
thing of course was to have a plan and
I'm sorry there's a lot of information
on that slide but the idea is simple
what would is Heacock economic sectors
but we were going to be brilliant out in
the future it's not just look back but
let's think what we're gonna be
brilliant at and when I say brilliant I
don't mean against Manchester and Leeds
and Liverpool I do mean against Boston
and Barcelona and Beijing how was this
place going to be superb competitively
internationally and we talked about the
sectors that we would invest in so of
course it was advanced manufacturing but
there's new things like life scientists
there's new things like the green tech
that's gonna power the
to climate change there's new things
like FinTech as well so we got a census
then we were to think about training
people getting them the skills they
needed the imager is a chap who joined
one of our schemes was called
construction gateway to get a new career
in construction so we've done that in
construction we've done it in digital
the sectors that are growing the fastest
and lo and behold over the years and you
see this goes back to that 20 percent
unqualified level
yeah bio we reduce the proportion of our
total workforce with limited skills and
now we no longer the sick man of Britain
in that respect and I think that will
determine our future success the
progress that we've made and then we
also had to have the champions for
people to speak up and the image there
he's obviously myself Andy Burnham mayor
of Greater Manchester elected at the
same time and mayor said he can of
London with the woman on the right hand
side this is deputy mayor or one of
these deputy mayors and we see ourselves
as the sort of regional champions it's
our job to shout up for our place to
bang on the door of Downing Street for
support to bang on the boardrooms of
Shanghai and indeed in New York to get
investment and one of the best examples
of that working whether mayor's came
together when other politicians perhaps
abandoned the field was the case for hs2
the biggest infrastructure project ever
in Britain the biggest project in Europe
at the moment and it puts Birmingham
right at the heart of the UK's future
transport structure and I'm pleased to
say that it was the mayor's we didn't
worry about the political consequences
got forward and lobbied for that to
happen and as we all know Boris Johnson
a prime minister gave the go-ahead up to
that hundred billion pound investment
just a few weeks ago so the powerful
voice of the champion and then we've
been getting on with that local
transport infrastructure as well if we
say limited productivity there's what
we've already done in the city here but
also incredibly
and that's the plan that we want to
achieve for I'm accused of deception
it's not exactly comparable with the
first map because this has got local
rail on as well but it is comparable in
terms of our metro and you see the
ambition it's going to take this time
but the simple point is why should we
not aspire to what London already has
and it needs sea change in the
investment coming through from
government that is following the really
exciting thing is it's that
infrastructure that's linking some of
the toughest communities so we talk
about inclusivity but if you are not
connected to the transport
infrastructure you can't be connected to
the job opportunities of the future so
that's the purpose of infrastructure so
I hope what you take from that is we are
getting on and addressing the four
things that led to our decline we're
addressing them in a planful way going
forward and the good news is it's
working I can't say it's worked full
stop the thing is never over but it's
working as this map shows I showed you
that for 40 years we've been the weak
performer this map shows just before
Christmas this was produced and it shows
the relative growth of different areas
of the country and you can see that the
Midlands the West Midlands is bouncing
back first only to red blobs on that
London on us so we are now right up
there with the leaders and I genuinely
believe that what we've done has turned
that around and the final slide it's
difficult to see immediately what it's
about but it completes the journey this
is a block of offices in Birmingham the
balloons have economists written on them
you'll remember they were the newspaper
that wrote that we were second city
second class this picture was taken last
year when they opened their office here
wisker their digital work and that was
the day I knew that we really had
changed people's opinions most
importantly given opportunities to our
new young people to work in a really
progressive organization like that
that's what it's all about and I hope
the conclusion that we all draw from
this it's the whole notion of regional
economies can the motivator can be
driven forward in an inclusive way and
the key to the way to do it is to give
power to local people yes they exercise
it through the ballot box choose their
directly elected mayor hold them to
account but they also contribute to all
of the plans that we've put together and
once London began to give us a little
bit more authority bit bit more freedom
and we're push for more yet that is when
we've started to turn around and
fortunes thank you very much for
listening
[Applause]
you