Public Accounts Committee
7 September 2026
Speaker dots
- Speakers in the chapter
- Colour: political group
- Grey: no group
Tap or click a chapter's dots to see names and groups.
Contents updated on 7 Sept 2026
Legend
Transcript markers
- text Sentence being played
- text Search result
- text Intervention cited by the link you opened
Click a sentence to play the video from that moment. Select text to quote it with the speaker, timestamp and link.
More options
Official source
Offset
Transcript offset
0s
Text size
Export
Replay
Versions of this video
Transcripts may differ slightly from one version to another.
Public Accounts Committee House of Commons
00:04 - 01:44
Speaker 3
Welcome to the Public Accounts Committee on Monday the 7th of September 2026. The government's Rewiring the State policy paper published in July of this year sets out its aim for every area in England to be covered by a strategic authority by the end of 2028. Strategic authorities allow combined authorities to be classified as foundation strategic authorities or mayoral strategic authorities, hereinafter known as MSAs. Eligible MSAs can receive central government funding through a single integrated settlement, bringing together funding from multiple government departments and providing greater local flexibility over spending. Greater Manchester and West Midlands were the first MSAs to receive an integrated settlement last year, and in April of this year a further five MSAs began to receive multi-year integrated settlements which will total 14.8 billion.
However, many questions remain about how the government's ambitious plans for devolution will turn into reality, and today we are very grateful to be joined by local authority leaders who we hope can share their thoughts with us of the insights of working in this area ahead of questioning government officials later this afternoon. If you haven't already heard, it's strongly rumoured that the government is going to delay local government reorganisation, and obviously that may or may not have a knock-on on strategic authorities, particularly new ones being formed. So anyway, you're very welcome all of you. Perhaps I could ask you, and I'm going to use Christian names if I may, Steve perhaps to start by introducing yourself, please.
01:44 - 02:13
Speaker 9
Yeah, my name is Steve Rotheram, I'm the Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. I'm formerly of this parish, I was an MP down here for seven years, 2010 to 17, and then myself and somebody who now is familiar to most people called Andy Burnham decided to leave here and to try to see whether we could pull the Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester together and get the agglomeration effect and benefits of that, and I've been elected three times to that post.
02:13 - 02:21
Speaker 3
Well done. Your perhaps introduce your chief exec, please, sitting next to you. Catherine, would you like to introduce yourself?
The rest of the transcript is for Pro customers
Unlock the full transcript, chat, and every analysis feature with Polyfact Pro.
The video itself stays free to watch, in full, no account needed.