Tracy Brabin hosting a Mayor’s Question Time at the University of Leeds
The Mayor of West Yorkshire Tracy Brabin will answer questions in a Mayor’s Question Time event on campus next week.
Brabin will take questions from members of the audience in an event taking place at the Nexus building on 22 February.
She was elected nearly three years ago as the first West Yorkshire Mayor and leader of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, which brings together Leeds, Bradford, Calderdale, Kirklees and Wakefield.
She stood on 10 pledges which include creating 1,000 well-paid skilled jobs for young people, putting the safety of women and girls at the centre of a policing plan, bringing buses back under public control, supporting local businesses and tackling climate change.
The mayor, who is running for re-election in May, has already faced questions in events in Wakefield and Halifax in the past month and will bring the format to Leeds.
Hosted by an independent journalist, questions to the mayor have to be submitted in advance of the event and will be chosen by the host to ensure a broad range of topics are covered.
A spokesperson for the West Yorkshire Combined Authority said:
“The events offer people of West Yorkshire the chance to hear directly from the Mayor, who will answer questions posed by you, her West Yorkshire constituents. We’ll also discuss local, regional and national issues as well as hear about how her pledges are progressing and future plans for West Yorkshire.
“You can ask the mayor about anything that falls within her role. The mayor is responsible for specific functions of the Combined Authority that are ‘Mayoral Functions’, which include transport-related functions, housing and planning functions and finance powers.”
“She is also responsible for functions of the Police and Crime Commissioner and supported to deliver these by an appointed Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime, Alison Lowe OBE, who will also be in attendance at the event.”
Directly elected mayors have been introduced in England in the past decade as a way of giving major cities more control over the policies which affect the lives of those who live in them.
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, who pioneered the policy, said cities in northern England experienced a “mismatch” between their economic performance and political clout.
“Wales has its own parliament and can pass its own laws. But the economies of Manchester and Leeds are each individually bigger than Wales [and] they don’t have a single leader who can speak for the whole area.”
The question time event will be hosted in the same University of Leeds building where the West Yorkshire devolution deal was signed in March 2020.
The event will take place at the Nexus building on February 22 at 19:30 – 21:00 – tickets are available online
