METRO Mayor Dan Norris insists he can “do both jobs” after being re-elected as an MP.
Mr Norris returned to Parliament in July after defeating Conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg in the North East Somerset & Hanham constituency.
He says he plans to combine both offices at least until the next scheduled West of England Mayor election next May.
Mr Norris was the Labour MP for the Wansdyke constituency, covering largely the same area as North East Somerset & Hanham, for 13 years from 1997.
He lost the seat to Sir Jacob in 2010, when the boundaries shifted and it was renamed North East Somerset, losing its South Gloucestershire wards.
The former Leader of the House of Commons held North East Somerset for 14 years, with a majority of 14,729 in 2019.
But on July 4 Mr Norris won the redrawn North East Somerset and Hanham seat by 5,319 votes from Sir Jacob, a notional swing of 19.5%.
Immediately after his election Mr Norris said he would “reflect on what has happened and work out how I can best serve the people of North East Somerset & Hanham and the West of England”.
On July 9 he was at a meeting with the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for England’s 12 regional mayors at 10 Downing Street.
Mr Norris, Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner were the only politicians at both that meeting and an assembly held the previous day for the 412 Labour MPs elected on July 4 in Westminster.
He said: “Until at least next May I will do both jobs. And that makes sense, because to call a by-election when you’ve got an electorate of about a million people is a hugely expensive thing.
“To have an election only to have it a few months later would be nonsensical.”
In an interview with ITV, Mr Norris said he needed time “to work out how I can do both jobs and whether that’s possible in the longer term”.
He said he would be “taking soundings” but there were precedents for people having two political jobs, such as MPs being ministers, which was “very similar”.
Dan Jarvis, who has been an MP in Barnsley since 2011, was also the Metro Mayor of South Yorkshire between 2018 and 2022.
Mr Norris said: “I’m not going to make a decision now. I don’t have to do that. I think it’s important to get a real sense of it and make an informed and sensible decision.”
Metro mayors are expected to be given more power by the new government – those at the July 9 meeting were asked to draw up “local growth plans” to identify local specialisms to contribute to a national industrial strategy.
By John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporting Service
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