Nick Clegg: We will give our great cities a new opportunity to become Britain’s powerhouses again

It feels counterintuitive to argue that a powerhouse of the last Industrial Revolution could help drive the next. But Sheffield, and Britain’s other cities, can realise their global ambitions by drawing on their great industrial traditions.

We need to rebalance our economy: drawing on the strengths and talents of our cities and industries. In Sheffield alone, we already employ 95,000 people in advanced manufacturing, contributing £3.5bn to our national wealth. We must now magnify and replicate that success.

There are three ingredients to that: our people; our know-how and our long-term vision for growth shifting our sights to the horizon.

First, our ambitions start and end with our people. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, cities like Sheffield drove the Industrial Revolution that shot Britain to global pre-eminence. By taking decisions themselves, they governed their own fate.

Yet, despite that heritage, for too long these cities haven’t been allowed to innovate, haven’t been free to make their own luck. They’ve had to go cap in hand to Whitehall, which has jealously guarded whatever power it has.

That has to end. Whitehall has to give that power back. This is what our City Deals are all about: giving our great cities back the freedom to manage investment, make sure they get the skills they need and guide their own transport and infrastructure. Together, the first eight deals will create an estimated 175,000 new jobs and we’re already putting more deals in place.

It simply cannot be right that so many businesses tell us that they can’t fill the vacancies they have, because the talented people that apply don’t have the right skills for that job.

Sheffield’s City Deal gives the city the power back to manage its own £72m skills budget and develops new ways for local councils, colleges and businesses to work together. That will create thousands of new apprenticeships in growing local businesses and retrain thousands of people, who are finding it hard to bridge the gap – whether in engineering, or IT, or management – between the skills they have and those businesses want.

Second: the know-how. Only a few weeks ago, I was stood on site watching Sheffield’s new University Technical College – one of the first of its kind in Britain – being built. That college reflects one of this city’s greatest strengths: the synergy between our old and new industries and world-leading universities.

On our doorstep, we have the University of Sheffield with its world-class reputation for engineering and Sheffield Hallam, one of the UK’s most innovative universities – internationally recognised for its facilities.

Down the road, it’s a competitive advantage we’re exploiting at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. It’s that creativity, expertise and genius that make the “Made in Sheffield” brand such a mark of quality. It’s a standard of excellence that sets Sheffield apart and puts it ahead. And I’m determined that Sheffield’s special status should be protected.

As to the long-term vision, businesses need certainty to sustain excellence, invest and create jobs – certainty that in the past, governments have been reluctant to give them: embarrassed, perhaps, by the State’s previous failed attempts to pick winners.

This led to inconsistent polices that contributed, alongside more long-term global pressures, to a decline in manufacturing’s share of UK GDP since the 1980s.

Our long-term industrial strategy, launched last year, doesn’t pick winners. But it sets out our plans to help businesses across high-growth sectors boost investment, strengthen partnerships, improve skills and maximise opportunities like public sector procurement.

It’s backed by our £33bn a year commitment to invest in infrastructure, including modernising the transport, energy and digital networks that connect and support our cities. That’s a bigger investment and a bigger commitment to our regions, than the previous Government ever made, even before we start HS2.

Take transport. In the future, you’ll be able to catch a HS2 train from an upgraded Meadowhall station that will get you to London in just over an hour and Leeds in less than 30 minutes.

Across the region, you’ll be using quicker, more efficient and 
sustainable public transport – with 
the electrification of the Midland Mainline, Northern Hub rail modernisation, Sheffield’s revolutionary tram-train network and improved bus routes and rolling stock.

We want to ensure that businesses can gain the maximum possible benefit from investments like this. Development of the infrastructure of the future is a necessary pre-condition for long-term growth here and across the country.

What I’ve realised is that if you want to give more power back locally – such as the freedom to drive local enterprise, more power to retain business rates and generate investment – you’ve also got to change what happens at the centre. We need to break down the silos that exist in Whitehall, with the right hand not talking to the left hand.

You can’t devolve responsibilities to local economies, without giving them real control and the tools to use it. Take a project to kick start local business growth, where a Local Enterprise Partnership might have plans for some big commercial development. At the moment, they can’t just talk to one person in Whitehall to get that first hole dug.

They’ve got to talk to the Department of Communities and Local Government about planning. Check with the Department of Transport that local roads will be accessible. And the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to ensure there’ll be broadband businesses can use. That’s even before they’ve met with the Department for Business or UKTI to discuss potential support for the businesses themselves.

That’s why I’m a chairing a new committee, working with the Chancellor, that will knock down these walls and bring all these departments together. So that where there’s an opportunity locally, you can rely on us centrally to deliver what we’ve promised. And change once and for all the Whitehall culture that says devolution is good, as long as it’s not my department you’re talking about: with faster decisions, a joined-up conversation about local growth and even greater ambitions to hand power back.

Working together, we’re stronger – locally and nationally.