Paul Johnson

Yeah, I mean, I completely agree with you about the problem.

People do feel, quite rightly, they haven't got better off in a generation and nothing's going well.

As I say, my point is, I mean, what could go wrong?

Well, I mean, at one level, look at what's happening in Birmingham.

I mean, it's not going well.

You've got a combination of one of the, I think, the biggest council in Western Europe is going bust.

terrible issues with strikes.

They've now got sort of almost unmanageable sort of non-coalition of parties.

If you suddenly were to give them massive additional responsibility for running the health service or what have you, well, you know, what could go wrong?

Quite a lot could go wrong.

that go up in their areas.

What you just described is a very small bank, actually, in any case.

So in terms of housing and skills and so on, the local areas have already got mail combined authority.

You're then talking about, so one example is keeping the additional taxes from additional building.

Well, there's already a business rates retention scheme, and we could certainly extend that and improve the incentives.

I mean, absolutely.

But that's step one.

I mean, that's not a big bang.

That's a fiddling little bang.

Well, yes, up to a point.