Metro-Mayors to leverage power of the public purse to raise employment standards across the North

Procurement opportunities are to become more closely tied to good employment practices in Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region as metro-mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram look to leverage the power of the public purse to raise standards.

The two Labour mayors worked together as they developed their own employment charters and are now supporting new West Yorkshire Mayor Tracy Brabin as she begins to develop her own Fair Work Charter.

Speaking at an event in Bradford convened by Brabin, Burnham highlighted how his major policy of bringing buses back under public control will see a weighting applied to the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter as part of that process.

But he wants to go much futher, and said “all public procurement will be linked to our charter”.

The charters include commitments to secure work, health and wellbeing, and higher health and safety standards.

“This is about the North levelling up itself,” said Brunham. “We are doing this together as three mayors – and we’d obviously want to work with Dan [Jarvis, Sheffield City Region Mayor] and Jamie [Driscoll, North of Tyne Mayor] as well.

“We are using what power we have to make a change and level up our communities without always asking for someone else to come and do it for us.”

Rotheram, who has led the development of the Fair Employment Charter in Liverpool City Region, expects the “carrot and stick” approach to improve employment standards locally.

He said: “Why would employers think this is an onerous burden if what we’re doing is simplifying the process to which we can then identify that they are a good employer, and a good employer therefore can benefit from some of the things that we’re doing in our city region?

“You can have some of our money, as long as you get past the other criteria, which is the assurance framework. You can certainly bid in for some of our funding, but if you treat people really poorly, then you’re not going to be a good employer, and therefore why should you get public support through our funding regime? That’s what we’re trying to do, we’re trying to use carrot and stick.”

Burnham highlighted that the public spending of the city regions of Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire combined is “a big amount of muscle that has not necessarily been fully deployed at the moment, when it comes to improving the lives of our residents”.

“Steve’s doing it, we’re starting to do it, and obviously we want to work with Tracy as well because a lot of these organisations are operational across our three areas,” he added.

“The more we build this together, the stronger it will be. There’s a very big disbenefit – you won’t carry the same chance of winning public contracts if you’re resolutely standing outside of all of this.”