Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, pursuant to the Answer of 26 January 2015 to Question 221428, whether he plans to bring forward legislative proposals on the Greater Manchester devolution agreement and the election of a directly elected city-region mayor before Parliament is dissolved for the 2015 general election.

We are currently consulting on draft secondary legislation which would facilitate the transitional governance proposals for Greater Manchester. It is our goal that such secondary legislation would be ratified in this Parliament, subject to Parliamentary approval.

We intend that the subsequent primary legislation that I mentioned in my previous answer would then be introduced early in the next Parliament, to facilitate the first direct elections for a Greater Manchester mayor in 2017.