With the inaugural election for the Mayor of West Yorkshire scheduled to take place on Thursday the 6th of May this year, we shall be writing to each candidate to ask specific questions on how their policies relate to the goals of YDM and to matters important to our Members, supporters and followers. We have, today, written to the four candidates who have already been declared and shall write to any others as they are declared before the official candidate list is issued on the 8th of April.
All responses will be published as received along with a report on which candidates have not yet responded. The aim of this is to assist readers from West Yorkshire in deciding who to vote for in the election and to apprise readers generally of how the eventual winner may influence devolution and environmental & economic development in Yorkshire during their term of office.
The specific questions asked are::
- What are your policies on transport infrastructure, particularly in respect of HS2 and links across the North such as Northern Powerhouse Rail and Beeching Reversals?
- Where do you place these in order of importance to ‘levelling up the country’?
- What policies, other than the above, do you have to ‘level up the country’?
- With a South Yorkshire Mayor already existing, do you want the creation of a West Yorkshire Mayor to be a stepping stone toward Yorkshire being devolved as one?
- If not, why?
- If so:
- What will you do toward achieving that?
- With a population and economy more like Scotland than like Manchester, should the model of devolution for an All-Yorkshire government be more like Scotland’s (Parliament) than like Manchester’s (Mayor)?
- And should the powers transferred to Yorkshire be more like Scotland’s than like Manchester’s?
- Now that we have left the EU, do you believe the EU Regions imposed on England, such as ‘Yorkshire and The Humber’, with which very few people identify, should be scrapped in favour of Traditional Counties, such as Yorkshire (or clusters of Traditional Counties, e.g. Westmorland, Lancashire & Cheshire)?
- If not, why?
- If so, what will you do toward achieving that?
- What are your policies on electoral reform and constitutional change?
- What are your policies in respect of energy, environment and planning?