Welcome to the second panel in today’s Business and Trade Committee hearing as we wrap up our inquiry into access to finance. Thank you so much to Mayor Paul Bristow and Mayor Oliver Coppard for joining us today. I am sorry that Tracy Brabin was unable to join us as planned, but we are grateful to you for giving us the regional perspective. Oliver, perhaps I could just start with you? Thank you so much for all the background briefing that you have given us on the extraordinary initiatives that you are helping to lead. Help us set the scene by just telling us how easy you think it is for entrepreneurs in your patch to gain access to start‑up or scale-up finance.

It is not easy at all. It is a common refrain from those businesses that the access to finance that they have is limited compared with colleagues or businesses that are in similar spaces, particularly in London, but also in other finance capitals across both the UK and Europe. Certainly, there is a significant contrast with deals that you might get access to in the States. It is not just the access itself; it is the terms you get if and when you are given access. They would tell us that the term sheets they are offered are often not as good or as competitive as those that you would see in a more mature market here in London in particular. There is an issue there that our businesses will often feel as though they have to grab at that access when it is offered, because it is not so prevalent or not so easy to access it. The deals are worse, but also the access is more limited.

That is an extraordinary state of affairs. You have the most incredible centres of ingenuity in your region. We have had the privilege of spending some time with Sheffield AMRC, for example. What they are doing there is world-leading, but you are saying that entrepreneurs who are working in and around that innovation ecosystem are unable to get either start-up or scale-up finance that people in, say, London and the south-east could perhaps get ready access to.

Yes. It is an ecosystem issue in the sense that it is not just that the finance houses, venture firms and whoever it might be do not want to travel two hours up the road on the train to South Yorkshire. There is an issue that our ecosystem does not promote and support those businesses that are going to know how to navigate some of those systems and places. There is fault on both sides there. We are trying to intervene in that space and offer better support for those high-growth start-up companies, to allow them both to better navigate that finance market, but also to have a set-up that allows them to be more attractive to those finance firms that might want to come in and invest. You have to do both. We are getting some interest in our start-up and scale-up businesses. Northern Gritstone in particular has been really important in that space. As you say, there are some businesses that are particularly attractive to finance firms, venture capital and angel investment. We are proud of those businesses, but we do not always do a great job of going out and talking to some of those companies that could be in that space, could go and access some of that finance and could scale up and grow quite quickly. We do not always do a great job of helping them to understand how, if they came to London, for instance, or were able to navigate the finance markets, they might be able to grow more quickly and do better.

Mayor Bristow, what is it like in your patch? We have also had the chance to stop by and see some of the extraordinary things that are going on there, but what do entrepreneurs tell you about how easy it is to get hold of start-up or scale-up finance?

Cambridge is a very mature market when it comes to accessing finance. We have the ecosystem. What Mayor Coppard was talking about is quite well established, in the sense that Cambridge is the most intense tech cluster in Europe, if not the world. There is a lot of experience of getting access to that sort of national and international venture capital in Cambridge. There is also an organisation called Cambridge Angels that does the sorts of things that Mayor Coppard was talking about, but it is still not easy. A lot of these spinouts come from the university, which is obviously world-renowned, but if you are just starting out, as many organisations are, it is not exactly brilliantly easy, especially the further north you get into Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. My region is more than just Cambridge. The Fens is one of the poorest parts of the UK, and Peterborough, although bursting with potential, has not always realised that potential. It is much more difficult the further north you go in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

One of the issues that entrepreneurs in Cambridge flagged with us was that, even when start-up finance is available through brilliant organisations such as Cambridge Angels, scale-up finance is much more problematic. Do you get a sense of how hard scale-up finance is to access?

We just had the scale-up of the year award in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. It was awarded to a company called Monavate, which is a fintech company. Some succeed; some do not. I was most taken aback by the session you had before. A lot of it is who you know and what you know. That is a very unique challenge. It is not just unique to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. It is not just unique to women, as you discussed in the session you just had before. It is something that all people trying to access finance will encounter.

The short answer is no. It will be much harder to achieve our growth ambitions if we do not get better access to finance. That is a strategic challenge that we have to face.

That is a very important conclusion, Oliver. I just want to crystallise that. You are saying that you have a statutory local growth plan. It is going to be really challenging for you to achieve it if we do not fix this access to finance problem.

It is going to be very difficult for us to meet the scale of ambition we have for South Yorkshire. On a technical basis, can we deliver a growth plan? Of course we can. Can we meet the ambition that we have for South Yorkshire without being able to access some of those financial markets and to get the support we want for our high-growth companies? No, it will be very difficult. What we are doing in that space, though, is trying to take more of an interventionist approach. For instance, we are bringing in Lord Jim O’Neill to work with us. Jim is working with us on a business ecosystem review, helping us to understand what those businesses need. At the moment it is a very fragmented, fractured system. If I am honest, I do not think many businesses would necessarily look at the MCA and say, “You are the people we will go and talk to when we are wondering about how we might better access financial markets, support and growth capital”, but we want to be able to position ourselves in that space and help them to navigate those finance markets, get better access to deals, and therefore grow. That is what we are doing to intervene. South Yorkshire’s economy is going great in lots of ways, or at least the momentum is great. Our tech sector has gone from £325 million in 2017 to £3 billion today. Sheffield is the fastest-growing core city of any in the UK since 2017. Rotherham’s subregional growth has been at 64% productivity growth over the last 20 years, the second-highest in the country. There is huge potential and huge growth. We are not seeing that matched by an overwhelming desire from people in London coming up to Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham, and Doncaster, and saying, “We want to invest in your companies. We see that you are doing something really exciting”.

What is going on there? Why is that happening?

It has been described to me in a number of different ways. Some people would say it is just a zeitgeist. They typically use the example of Finland. They say that, at one point, Finland was the place everyone thought they had to go for tech start-ups, and all of a sudden everyone floods into Finland. There is an element of people seeing South Yorkshire growing, but not quite hitting that tipping point where those companies will say, “Actually, this is the sort of place where we need to be”. Manchester may have gone through that moment. I would argue that Leeds may be in that moment. South Yorkshire is still approaching that moment. There is something about those companies understanding the opportunity in South Yorkshire. Some of that is on us. We have to be better at going to the market and saying, “Look how exciting this is”, repeating those stats that I have just laid out before you. Some of that, though, is on the market saying, “Actually, we are going to take a bit more of a risk by going and looking at some of these places where we have not previously been”, and wondering whether there is opportunity there that they have not yet explored.

Similar to what Oliver said, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough are open for business. We have produced our own growth plan. It is unashamedly ambitious. The Government have given us the task of doubling GVA. We have gone one step further and argued that we could, as an ambition, treble GVA. That is a mighty ask, and I am not saying we are definitely going to do it, but in our growth plan what we have prepared is like a shopping list: “If we had all these transport and infrastructure investments in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, this is what could be achievable”. Lobbying 101 is showing how the Government can achieve their objectives by doing what you want them to do. If the Government want to build 1.5 million homes and grow the economy, Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is the place to go. We are one of the few areas that contributes significantly to our national economy. We have to make that case. That is what we try to do all the time. Our growth plan is not just focused on Cambridge. It is about what could happen if we had this investment in transport, infrastructure, and so on. Yes, there are constraints around power, water and all these other things that you see, but one of the biggest challenges we face in order to achieve that growth plan is our own capacity in preparing these investable propositions. We are asking officers to do things that we have probably never done before. I can talk about the ambition of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough until the cows come home, but if I am in front of someone who wants to put private investment into an infrastructure project in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, we have to have a lot more than just the mayor’s ambition. We have to have that investable proposition, and we need the capacity within our authority to actually develop those investable propositions. I will give the Government credit, in the sense that the Office for Investment is something that we are closely working with. We have taken them to Cambridge. They are very excited about what we can achieve, but we need that capacity within our organisation.

I just wanted to build on that, because that is a really key point that most MCAs would recognise. I would argue that MCAs are the organisations in regions that are there to promote growth. Councils these days just do not have the capacity or skillset. Clearly, a lot of attention, time and money is spent on things like adult social care. We all recognise that challenge. MCAs, though, are built around the idea of creating growth, and yet what we do not have in our teams—and we do not have funding for—is a team to develop growth. There is no capacity that we are given that says, “This is your pot of money to create growth”. It was SPF funding. We know what has happened to SPF funding, and now we have the follow-on, but it is declining. We do not have a discrete pot of money that allows us to bring in expertise, and people with that expertise, who can help us then go out to the market and design systems that bring in additional funding. We would all recognise that challenge. There are some MCAs that sit outside of that. Manchester has probably escaped that challenge because of the revenue it has been able to bring in through things such as the airport and the transport network. Business rate retention has been key. In South Yorkshire and other parts of the country, we have not had that opportunity. We do not have a business rate retention deal. We are probably the poorest-revenue MCA in the country because other MCAs’ gainshare deals have included much more of a revenue-capital split. We do not have the revenue, we cannot hire the people and therefore we cannot get into that virtuous cycle of growth.

That is incredibly helpful. Thank you.

Alex Salmond, the former First Minister of Scotland, called London the dark star that skewed the economy towards London. His answer, of course, as with everything, was independence. He was wrong about that, but what could the Government do to encourage greater investor interest outside London? What would you like to see the Government do?

As I said earlier, we had a very good trip to Cambridge from the Office for Investment. I was at the mayors’ council in Liverpool last week. It was a very attractive 6.10 am train from Peterborough. When I was at that event last week, I turned around and said, “I have no shame whatsoever in stealing all of your ideas,” in terms of looking at what has happened in Manchester, Liverpool and the west midlands, and trying to apply some of those lessons to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Mayor Burnham talks about 3% growth in Manchester as an example of how devolution has worked. That was prior to Covid. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough grew 2.8% in that same period. Think about what we could achieve in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough if we had the same sort of fiscal levers and capacity that Greater Manchester has.

Do you think that sort of level playing field would be most beneficial?

That is right. We talk about mayoral authorities as if they are all the same. They are not all the same. Cambridgeshire and Peterborough does not yet have an integrated settlement. A lot of that is because we are coming out of an improvement panel and an improvement journey that I will not go into here; that was prior to my time as mayor. As we come out of that, we are able to then apply for integrated settlement. We are able to get extra capacity and all sorts of other things we need in order to develop some of those investable propositions that we have talked about. I am fortunate in a way, and I recognise that, because Cambridge has an internationally renowned brand. People are interested in investing in Cambridge because of that brand, and our mission is to enhance what has happened in Cambridge and to spread that prosperity to the best agricultural land in the country, which is the Fens, and a city just bursting full of potential, which is Peterborough. We need that level playing field, as you put it, Mr Cooper, in order to be able to achieve that.

Oliver, how about you? It is a slightly different challenge for you. You do not have the Cambridge triangle; you are not part of that. What is the situation? What can Government do to help you?

We do not have the Cambridge triangle, but I am very proud of the assets we do have. As we have already heard, there is a huge opportunity to bring in investment based on what we are doing within that space. We are doing a good job where we are focused on that corridor. We are the UK’s first investment zone. We have the defence growth deal. Those are both helpful, from the Government and the previous Government. That has helped us. For every pound that we have received through our investment zone, we are getting £10 of return, so we are using that money effectively, and that is £160 million over 10 years. We are optimistic about that potential. I would point to a couple of things. One is certainly the capacity point. Giving us, as MCAs, capacity that is dedicated to growth would be important, rather than us having to top-slice that from elsewhere or use very precious gainshare funding. That would seem like an obvious thing, as well as potentially offering things such as secondments from Treasury, DBT or anywhere else—you name it—in order to help us bring in the expertise in that system to help us move forward. Secondments are not routinely done in places such as South Yorkshire. We try, but it is quite hard, it seems, to bring in secondments from the civil service, for all sorts of reasons. If that were done on more of a regular basis, that would help bring in some capacity. Things such as the British Business Bank, and the public finance institutions more broadly, need to be a bit more forward-thinking in the way in which they lead rather than copy the market. Certainly, the British Business Bank, based in Sheffield, is a great partner in South Yorkshire, but does not always act like the challenger to the system. It acts as just part of the system. It could do more to challenge the system to be better in that space. Also, look at pension authorities. South Yorkshire Pensions Authority has been really forward-thinking in this space. It has committed £500 million to investments in South Yorkshire, but that is not something it was required to do. It was just required to invest in the UK. If we were being a bit more pushy, we could say, “You have to invest in South Yorkshire”. It might not be quite to that extent everywhere. I do not necessarily want to put a number on that, but requiring those local pension funds to invest in place would help us to have a ready-made place to go for that capital that might help us to grow more effectively.

If I may, can I just add to that? We do not have a choice. If you look at disillusionment in politics, a lot of the solution to that is delivery. There are not pots and pots of money around. An example is the Ely area capacity enhancement. I am not going to bore everyone about what that is, but that is a transport and infrastructure need. We have been talking about that for 21 years. The definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I do not necessarily expect the Government to fund this. We have to go out and try to do it ourselves, but without that investment in our capacity in order to deliver those deliverable, investable propositions, to go out and sell those things to markets around the world, to private pension pots and all sorts of other things, we are not going to get the growth that this Government so desperately want to deliver, and that I want to deliver in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough.

Help give us a sense of scale, though. You are not talking about building vast bureaucracies of hundreds and hundreds of people. How many people do you need, Oliver?

My growth team is probably four or five people at this moment in time. That is top-sliced from other funds. That is how we pay for those teams. If we were to double that, I would see that as a win. If we trebled that, that would be a huge success, because there is no shortage of things for us to do.

So 10 to 20 of the right people in a mayoral team would be game-changing?

Yes. “The right people” is the key phrase within that, because it is difficult sometimes. In an ecosystem such as South Yorkshire, where we do not have a big banking or services sector, you cannot always necessarily attract those people to work with you or to allow you to grow the network. We have a brilliant guy, Tom Bousfield, who is leading our growth team. He worked in the Treasury. He worked at No. 10. We are really proud of him. He has done a brilliant job, but we have been lucky to be able to lure him away from London to lead that team.

You want £2 million to £5 million in extra staff resource to help build the growth team.

Revenue funding for staff and teams to be able to focus on that priority would be a gamechanger for all of us. The other bit of that is that, if you wanted to be really forward-thinking on some of these things, at the moment there is the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill going through. It is incredibly prescriptive around the commissioners or deputy mayors that we are able to hire. If we take the restriction out of that Bill and say, “Actually, you can hire the deputy mayor who you think is appropriate for your needs”, and one of them was a deputy mayor for growth who comes with that background, expertise and sole focus to be able to work on this day in, day out, that could be a gamechanger for mayoral combined authorities like ours.

Do you mean the overnight visitor levy?

Yes, it could do. There will be a number of calls on that money. Yes, it absolutely should help us with our visitor economy. In Sheffield, for instance, we have the snooker. In Doncaster we have the racecourse. I am hoping there will be a significant amount of revenue. If the cap is set at £2, we think somewhere in the region of £7 million would come in, but I am more likely to spend that money, if I am given control of it rather than the MCA, on things that improve the visitor experience, such as night buses, night trams, cleaning up some of the streets and support for festivals. Those are the sorts of things I am likely to spend that money on, rather than focusing on an internal team that nobody sees the benefit of immediately and directly.

I am interested in any opportunity to raise additional revenue, whether that be from business rates retention, land gain or all sorts of different things. I will borrow against that and invest in our infrastructure.

Oliver, you have already been talking about how you would like to see the British Business Bank lead the market. This is a question to both of you, but let us start with Oliver because he brought it up. What do you see as the role for the British Business Bank in helping to unlock regional equity?

The way it has been described to me is that it should operate more as a development bank, being able to help economies such as South Yorkshire, one of the poorest places in northern Europe, to develop by supporting those high-growth, high-scale-up businesses to grow. At the moment, we get into a conversation about commercial terms. The British Business Bank would rightly, in terms of the terms of reference it has been given, operate on commercial terms. It offers commercial terms to those businesses, but it does not always help a business in a place such as South Yorkshire to get purely commercial terms, because, frankly, you could go somewhere else and get those commercial terms. That is not the challenge we face. It is about helping specific places with specific challenges by using that capital to come into a place such as South Yorkshire and say, “We are going to be on your side, and we are going to offer you slightly better terms as a result of where you are or what you are trying to do”.

As a slight aside—I do not want to get too far down the rabbit hole—one of the real issues also is that, if you get the capital, do you actually have the skills locally to be able to create the return that you need?

There is certainly a skills challenge. The leadership of those businesses require support. We have had conversations with some of them about things like how we bring in more NEDs to help some of those businesses to get better access to better term sheets. That is one of those challenges. South Yorkshire took over the London Stock Exchange a couple of months ago. We went and opened the London Stock Exchange, and we were having this conversation with the LSE about how it might help us to bring more NEDS into businesses in South Yorkshire that are in that space, want to scale and want to grow, but do not necessarily know what that journey looks like and need a bit of support. Yes, there absolutely is a skills challenge.

Are there other public finance institutions that you would and could be looking to, other than the BBB?

We would look at all of those PuFins, as I think they are called. I do not know them all in detail, forgive me. I know the British Business Bank a little better, because it is based in South Yorkshire and we have had these conversations internally. I am sure there are other institutions, but I probably would not be the best person to talk about them in more detail.

Paul, it is the same question to you. What do you see as the role for the BBB in helping to unlock regional equity? Are there other public finance institutions you would look to as well?

The British Business Bank could help all across Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. We have a growth team within CPCA. Many in the team are reaching out to companies that they see as having huge potential for growth, helping them to access finance and to go through that growth journey. The opportunity for the British Business Bank to play a role is significant. I went to a town called Wisbech, which is right on the very corner of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. It is the sort of town that is full of potential. It is full of hard-working people, with lots of agritech and food manufacturing businesses, but a lot of the time it is so isolated from the rest of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough that it is often missed as part of this Cambridgeshire and Peterborough story. I can see the potential in the Fens for advanced manufacturing and science parks, and I can see how companies like that would be able to grow using the British Business Bank, but a lot of the challenge is about what you know. Do a lot of people within these companies know that they are able to access finance by doing X, Y and Z? That is what, in part, we are here to do.

That is a very good point. Do you think the British Business Bank has gone far enough to help businesses outside of London? Are the ambitions outlined in its new five-year plan big enough for the potential you see in your regions?

The one thing I would say about the British Business Bank is that its engagement with CPCA so far has been pretty limited, if I am being honest. It may be that I will get back to the ranch and my growth team will tell me, “Actually, Paul, we have had this series of discussions”, but my exposure to the British Business Bank has perhaps not been what I would have expected.

Given that you are the mayor of one of the fastest-growing entrepreneurial economies on the face of the planet, that is potentially a surprising bit of evidence.

I know. I am just going to be honest about it. It has been very limited. Oliver Coppard may have a different experience, with it being based in Sheffield, but in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough it has been limited.

What is your experience, Oliver?

I have been on a tour. I have met the top team. I am not here to throw them under the bus. They do some good things. Their work with Northern Gritstone, for instance, has been really welcome. They have done some really positive things that have helped South Yorkshire. I would just argue that their approach is not an approach that necessarily helps us in the way in which it could. It could be much more proactive. They sometimes feel like they are in South Yorkshire but not of South Yorkshire. Understanding the needs of a place such as South Yorkshire is the big benefit and opportunity. Being based in a place such as ours means being able to reach out and understand what the ecosystem, the challenge and the opportunity looks like, and then using that learning to spread out across the rest of the country and say, “We see what a northern economy really needs because we are based here”, or even a growing economy down south. It does not always feel like that is necessarily the approach that they take.

Do you feel like it is not necessarily a lack of ambition on their part, but a lack of connection to your local area?

Yes, a lack of connection to the place.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough is delightfully full of lots of very sharp-elbowed people, especially from the south of Cambridge and Cambridgeshire. They want to see me every five minutes. That has not been my experience with the British Business Bank.

Apart from the membership being different, what do you see as the differences between the Mayoral Council and the Council of the Nations and Regions?

I had quite an interesting experience when I went to Liverpool last week. I was the only non-Labour mayor there, but we have quite a good relationship. I felt like they have adopted me somehow. The really important thing I get from it is that we are quite often asking for the same things. We are asking for devolution to work. I said to some of my colleagues before that we need to demonstrate that what devolution allows us to do is to deliver. What any Government want is delivery on the ground, and evidence that they are making a difference. I treat the Mayoral Council as an opportunity to learn from my colleagues. I have only been in post for six or seven months, so I get the opportunity to learn. As I said, we quite often get the opportunity to speak with one voice. I really appreciate that. As for the wider meeting where we meet with Ministers, the Prime Minister, the Council of the Nations and Regions and everything else, again, it is important that the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, or Steve Reed, the Secretary of State at MHCLG, gets an opportunity to talk to us. I find that invaluable, because often we speak with one voice, and we get to make the case for devolution. Mayor Burnham probably makes the case for devolution better than anyone, because he talks about how Manchester has grown as a result of devolution. As I said earlier, Manchester has a growth of 3%, as opposed to 2.8% in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. If we want 3% and 2.8% across the board, devolution needs to be leant into. The Mayoral Council and the Council of the Nations and Regions are where we get to make that case.

I would just like to take this opportunity to say, Paul, that it is not too late to switch to the Labour party, if you enjoy the relationships with Labour colleagues.

There will be none of that.

The Mayoral Council has just changed, so we have to give it a bit of space and time, because clearly it was Angela who was chairing that previously as the Deputy Prime Minister.

Just remind us how often it has met.

I do not know how many times it has met, but we meet quarterly.

The UK Council of the Nations and Regions has met with the Prime Minister once.

It has, yes, but it is quarterly. We all meet quarterly, but then we met with the Prime Minister and the other devolved First Ministers once in London.

Yes. I think the Council of the Nations and Regions has met twice. The Mayoral Council meets quarterly, but I could not tell you how many times it has met. We met in Edinburgh and then in London for the Council of the Nations and Regions. At the Mayoral Council there are quite dynamic, powerful conversations about delivery. For instance, we had a conversation about the overnight visitor levy at Chatsworth a few months ago where, collectively as mayors, we put our case for what we thought was an important step forward in terms of fiscal devolution and the tool that that would allow us to then wield. We have since had the Budget, and then we had the Mayoral Council last week, and we have seen quite quick progress on the basis of that conversation. We have been able to get into the weeds of that debate among ourselves, but also with Ministers. The Council of the Nations and Regions feels like much more of a strategic conversation with the Prime Minister where we are able to flag individually, and potentially collectively, some of the challenges and opportunities as we see them. It feels much more structured as a conversation, as opposed to the Mayoral Council, which can feel quite dynamic, messy and challenging to everybody, although that is all for the better.

You are using the Mayoral Council as a vehicle to have collective asks in terms of more power and resources.

Yes.

Have you had much discussion about some of the issues we have been talking about today, and what more the Government can do to assist?

Yes, absolutely. One of the Ministers who came said that we hunt like a pack as mayors. There is some truth in that because, as you would imagine, we have conversations through the UK Mayors and the Great North. There are different configurations. The White Rose agreement allows me to talk with my Yorkshire colleagues. We work together to advance our shared agendas. Certainly, on growth we have had those conversations around things such as SPF and the role it has played in supporting business advisers, and the challenges we have seen as that money has gone on other areas of growth. I would even point to things such as public transport. We look at that as a growth agenda, advancing our own ambitions around public transport and what we need to see from the Government on things such as bus fare caps or anything else besides. We have been able to bring that to the Mayoral Council and have those conversations. There have been a whole range of areas that we have been able to talk to Government directly and say, “These are the things we need to see”. Sometimes we get progress and sometimes we do not, but we are able to have that very direct conversation. I think Paul would agree that it has been quite a challenging but also helpful conversation amongst ourselves about what we need to do together.

Yes. The way politics in terms of regional mayors perhaps differs from Westminster and other Assemblies is that you do not get anywhere without working together. Quite often, a lot of the things that Mayor Coppard is asking for in terms of greater devolution are some of the things that I would want as well. We can replicate some of the messages when we get together. In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, we had a situation for a long time where politics was very toxic, but the only way we are able to work together is if I work with all the other partners on my board. I act the same way in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough as I do with the Mayoral Council. It is quite interesting. In terms of Cambridgeshire growth, we have a national delivery model set by a Labour Government. We have a regional model set by the Conservative mayor. On the ground, we have Liberal Democrat county and district councils. We are all working together to deliver the same thing. I attach the same principle when it comes to the Mayoral Council; it will be region first, party politics second.

If there was one thing that you would like this Committee to recommend to Government to help you transform access to finance in your regions, what would be on that list?

Capacity and expertise is where I would put that focus. For places like South Yorkshire, being able to access people who can help us to do that work, to create that ecosystem and to tackle some of those challenges is where we will see the biggest benefit over time. It is not glamorous. It is not sexy. It is not one of those things that people would necessarily put on a leaflet, but it is one of those things that could make the biggest difference over time to us being able to transform the way in which we engage with capital markets and help our businesses to get access to some of that finance.

I endorse that message entirely. It is the ability to have that capacity within our organisation. We have to produce a spatial development strategy. Ultimately, we will end up having the same call-in powers as the Mayor of London, and that is transformational in terms of the delivery of housing and infrastructure in an area. It has worked in London in the sense that development often goes through because it is not necessarily the London plan and the mayor being able to intervene; it is the threat of it. Developers and councils get together and allow development. We have to produce the same spatial development strategy with the same sort of infrastructure. We do not have the capacity to do it.

That has been an incredibly helpful session. Thank you very much indeed for your evidence and for what you are doing in your areas. That concludes this panel.