I WAS delighted to welcome Andy Burnham to Scotland last week.
During his visit to Motherwell, Andy invited the Scottish Government to work together with us to push decision-making directly out of London and Edinburgh to Scotland’s regions and cities, to drive growth and reindustrialisation.
The message that devolution should not stop at Holyrood is clear. Scotland has one of the strongest devolved Parliaments in Europe and yet we are still one of its most centralised nations.
Just look at how Scotland is run today: police and fire services run as single national bodies; council tax set from the top; council budgets being squeezed year after year, then the blame passed on to them when local services struggle.
While devolution was the right start, it was never meant to be the finish line. Power devolved must be power used, not hoarded.
Andy has made the Scottish Government a serious offer: work with us in a different way. Help us design a new model of regional power for Scotland, giving our cities and regions a real say over skills, transport, housing and investment.
In particular, we have offered to work together on a devolution initiative on employability.
This could see decisions on helping people into work being taken at a local level, by the people who know the needs of the local economy best. That would be real devolution in action.
Another important issue Andy has been addressing recently is the UK’s relationship with the EU.
Labour is pulling every lever possible to ensure that Britain sees good growth in every postcode and that includes developing a stronger relationship with Europe.
That is why the PM has set out his desire to deepen the UK's co-operation with the EU at next month’s UK-EU summit.
In the weeks and months ahead, there will be further discussion about different options on what our future relationship with Europe could look like.
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