Mayor Ben Houchen of the Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA) will face public questions this week live on BBC Tees radio.
Put it in your diary
The event is scheduled to take place on 15 May at 9-10am. It is the start of a monthly Mayor’s Question Time alongside two in-person events which will be free but ticketed. There has been no information released as to when or where these will take place.
Avoidance
Whilst it is very much welcomed that Houchen will be facing the public after eight years in office, let us go back. During his tenure as mayor, Ben Houchen has studiously avoided any form of local media questioning that involves rigorous follow-up questions. Press events and photo opportunities are carefully stage-managed to ensure that probing journalists are excluded.
Spotlight
Houchen also rarely gives one-to-one interviews, except to a small, select band of reporters. On the couple of occasions when he allowed this, due to the scrutiny surrounding Teesworks and the subsequent publication of the Tees Valley Review report, Houchen clearly struggled under vigorous questioning from Victoria Derbyshire.
Gaslighting
On 3 January 2025, Houchen did grant an extremely rare ‘sit-down’ interview with Local Democracy reporter Daniel Hodgson. The Mayor made several unsubstantiated claims which unfortunately weren’t challenged.
There are two examples of this. Firstly, a claim regarding the so-called £1bn in cash from the HS2 cancellation. This had been announced at the start of Houchen’s election campaign a year prior. The eventual announcement was in the ‘low millions of pounds’. The interviewer didn’t push back on the stark contrast between the original claim and the actual amount received.
The second claim was regarding child poverty in which he stated, “thousands of jobs, good well paid jobs.solve poverty”. The interviewer could have fact-checked Houchen here on two counts. There is no evidence of an increase in such jobs in the Tees Valley, and child poverty in the Tees Valley has actually worsened over the past eight years during Houchen’s tenure.
Softball
Closer to home Houchen has done a Mayor’s Question Time at the TVCA Overview and Scrutiny committee, which was also introduced this term, but this has largely consisted of ‘softball’ questions from conservative councillors. The next one will be the day before his radio outing on 14 May. It will be Houchen’s first meeting that will be video recorded by the TVCA and uploaded to the TVCA’s YouTube channel.
Openly ableist
Unfortunately, Houchen hasn’t welcomed public questions in the past. At the last TVCA cabinet meeting he criticised public questions branding them ‘completely insane’ whilst also calling members of the public ‘idiots’ (an ableist slur) for asking them in the first place. You can view this outburst here under the subheading ‘Tirade’. I’d highly recommend reading the rest of the article as it really is a showcase of how Houchen operates as a whole.
Phone a friend?
It will certainly be interesting to see how Houchen manages questions live on radio as this is the first time he has ever been subjected to direct questioning from the public after eight years in office. TVCA meetings do not allow members of the public to speak.
Speak up, speak out
If you would like to take part you can send your name, number and where you are from with your question to tees.news@bbc.co.uk or call 08000 85 95 95 or text 81333 and start your message with the word TEES.
The questions will not be shown to Mayor Houchen prior to the event.
Thank you to Ray Casey for contributing to this article.
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