Michael Taylor meets Sir Howard Bernstein, the chief executive of Manchester City Council, and the man staking his reputation on the congestion charge plan.
Sir Howard Bernstein is the man who is betting everything on a roll of the dice. The prize he’s chasing is – he says – £3bn to “revolutionise” Manchester’s public transport system. And make no mistake; he is the architect of the plan to charge rush hour motorists to unlock that pot of money to improve the trams, trains and buses.
“It’s about what kind of city we want to create. Is it one with a transport system for the next 20 years?” he says. The alternative is “scratching around for a few bob”. Something he’s proved good at, but thinks what’s on the table is worth grabbing first.
Bernstein’s spacious first floor office in Manchester Town Hall is the physical centre of a web of power that extends across the North West. And that’s not a glib anecdote, but a pointed observation on how he operates. This inner sanctum, where allies of the chief executive come to plot, and where friends and detractors alike are called in for a chat over tea, was where this plan was hatched.
Everything he does is personal. His tactile manner. His call for favours. His personal assurances to sort problems out. He’s a fixer, and in a parallel universe he’d be a commercial wheeler dealer. Risk takers like this are rare beasts in local government and among the ranks of career civil servants – of which Bernstein is one – and they rarely speak the dialect of business. But he has built his reputation on that. Take what he’s doing with property developers in underwriting the risk on commercial and residential schemes during the credit crisis.
“The economy means we have to look at how we do things, and the residential market has suffered here as everywhere. As a council we’ll do more in terms of working with developers to bring forward housing in those areas close to the city centre. The city has to keep growing.”
And the run-up to the transport plan involved, he says, intense conversations with businesses. “We did a lot of work as officers, then we had a series of business dinners. It took three months to thrash out our plans and their concerns. We wouldn’t do this unless there was an intellectual grounding in this. It’s a no-brainer when you get your head around it.”
What has followed has been a spiky and personalised debate. On one side are Bernstein, Sir Richard Leese and other Labour leaders alongside private sector allies such as Chris Oglesby of Bruntwood Estates and Ken Knott of Ask Developments. On the other are former Manchester City Council leader and maverick Labour MP Graham Stringer and a consortium of businesses led by Peel Holdings’ managing director Andrew Simpson.
And when you see Bernstein in this arena he looks even more like a big city mayor – the power base, a missionary zeal and street fighting instinct that pulls no punches. Even when it has occasionally got personal and a bit dirty.
“I love John. What John Whittaker has done has been remarkable. And I like Andrew Simpson. Really, I do. When all this is done and dusted we will rescue our strong working relationship. I just think John is wrong on this. It’s not personal.
“I’m disappointed at the quality of the debate. The intellectual base of the strategy has never been questioned. And we have an opposition who are entitled to their views about what is fundamentally wrong with our scheme. It veers from saying there isn’t a problem with congestion to saying the scheme is too big.
“This scheme gives us the best fix for congestion; to tackle it where it occurs and give us the maximum investment capacity for developing a public transport alternative. We’re also looking at labour markets outside the M60. The coverage of the scheme is irrelevant because we’re looking at the direction of journeys.
“There are still too many people who think they’re going to be charged when they’re not. This has been misinformation, but everyone is entitled to have access to the information that can help them make informed decisions.
“I was disappointed the Greater Manchester Momentum Group didn’t even submit comments to the official consultation. It’s subtle, it’s clever, but that means it isn’t easily explainable.”
He blames the level of the debate for the fact that the Manchester councils are holding a public referendum, which was never in the plans. He sweeps away suggestions that Stockholm’s scheme hasn’t worked. “It has worked, and it gave us confidence to pursue our scheme. London was a first-generation scheme, Stockholm was second. Ours will be third generation, using tag and beacon technology. The area charge, like London, wouldn’t work.”
And in thinking big, he’s been around the world. “I saw Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, for two hours. His only regret is not tackling transport in his first year. We’re miles ahead of other cities in thinking through these issues.”
So put yourself in Bernstein’s shoes. One minute he’s developing a “vision for Manchester for the next 20 years” and meeting the Mayor of the Big Apple. The next he’s discussing bus lanes to Bolton with Les from Little Lever on BBC Radio Manchester. He concedes this level of concern and personal anecdote is frustrating and has bogged down the debate.
He’s been asked on radio phone ins and in countless debates about how much it would cost an individual to get from Leigh to Worsley, or Brinnington to Reddish and what the alternatives are. He says there simply isn’t a Plan B. There is no alternative that will unlock this kind of investment,” he insists. “Increasing business rates would be indiscriminate. It also doesn’t encourage business to think through its impact.
“John Whittaker says we should sell the airport. But the likelihood is we’ll expand our interests in airports. We’re looking at Gatwick and one of the Scottish airports,” he says. He admits, too, that the new owners of Manchester City Football Club, the Abu Dhabi royal family could be a partner in any aviation expansion.
The list of the Bernstein’s achievements is immense. His leadership is the city region and the esteem of the city in most league tables for investment and growth is credited to him. But he’s only lost once before and he didn’t like it. That was to John Whittaker and Peel over the relocation of the BBC to Salford Quays.
In October Bernstein was summoned to London to meet with Geoff Hoon, the transport secretary. “He confirmed it’s all or nothing,” says Bernstein.