Alex Forsyth

speaker

2,054 appearances 20 recordings 3 series first heard Apr 2026 last heard 3d ago

Alex Forsyth’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 20 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

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Newscast · What’s Andy Burnham’s Plan To Move Power Out Of London? · 10 Jul 2026 podcast

And actually, the governments in Scotland and Wales have chosen to exercise the power that they do have to vary the income tax rates to different extents. voice-verified

So in Scotland, you have got six different income tax bands because they can vary the level within the kind of overall bracket that people start paying income tax depending on their salaries. voice-verified

I think there are a couple of kind of challenges there. voice-verified

Just a couple. voice-verified

Just a couple with this sort of model, though, of whether or not, for example, local authorities or mayors, and I think we are primarily talking about mayors rather than local authorities, might have the power to actually change tax rates as opposed to just keep voice-verified

their share of taxation and then choose how to spend it. voice-verified

And actually, there are problems with that as well, because obviously, as I've already mentioned, there's quite a lot of regional inequality in the country. voice-verified

And there are areas which are very urban, which may just by their geography or the way that they are kind of set up, have more ability to raise income tax or business rates or have more, you know, they might naturally attract more businesses because they're great big cities that are sort of voice-verified

you know, with all the infrastructure and roads and places that businesses might want to locate, what does that mean for rural areas that might have less ability to kind of pull on the levers to generate economic growth and therefore receive some of the benefits of it? voice-verified

And then there's also things about how you might manage, for example, voice-verified

If different neighbouring areas set really, really different levels of, for example, business rates, does that mean that all the businesses are going to go to the area with the lower business rates? voice-verified

What does it mean for the kind of neighbourhood? voice-verified

So that's why all of this is quite complicated and needs to be looked at and worked through quite carefully. voice-verified

And we don't know what Andy Burnham is going to do in this space. voice-verified

We just know what he set out, which is his ambition, that there is somehow a much more enhanced transfer of power to the regions in order to generate economic growth. voice-verified

These are some of the questions that he's going to have to tackle. voice-verified

Yeah. voice-verified

And to be fair, like I say, I mean, Andy Burnham hasn't said that he wants to go down the full fiscal devolution route. voice-verified

And it's also just worth bearing in mind a couple of things. voice-verified

So first off, actually, there has been a sort of programme of devolution under successive governments already. voice-verified

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