Communities secretary fends off plea by Andy Burnham for extra cash for locking down Manchester
You’d have thought that if anyone was capable of brokering a financial deal between central government and Greater Manchester it would have been the communities secretary, Robert Jenrick. After all, Honest Bob has a track record of magicking money out of thin air. Just weeks after sharing a table with the pornographer turned property developer, Richard Desmond, Honest Bob had unlawfully overturned a planning permission refusal on the Westferry development to save Dirty Des £45m with just a day to spare.
But this time there was no deal to be had. Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, along with other local leaders, had calculated that £90m was the minimum the region needed to boost the lowest paid workers to 80% of their former salaries after being moved into tier 3 lockdown restrictions.
