Council leaders will join meetings of Miliband Cabinet

The Labour leader will today pledge to set up an ‘English Regional Cabinet Committee’, putting himself and powerful ministers around the same table with local leaders.

Seats will be taken by the heads of ‘combined authorities’, including the one covering County Durham and Tyne and Wear – adding to pressure on Tees Valley and North Yorkshire to follow suit.

Mr Miliband will argue the move will give council chiefs a voice at the heart of Government, to “reverse a century of centralisation” in England.

The idea is part of a devolution plan that will also:

* Pass an English Devolution Act “early in the next Parliament” - to carry put previously-announced plans to transfer £30bn of Whitehall funding over five years.

* Allow councils to apply for new powers to seize control of bus services – limiting the ability of private bus firms to launch costly, time-consuming legal challenges.

Addressing a “shadow” meeting of council leaders in Manchester today, Mr Miliband will say: “Our plan already goes further than anything this Government can offer.

“It will devolve funding equivalent to £30bn over five years in areas like transport and housing infrastructure, business support, skills, and employment.

“And it will reverse a century of centralisation so that every region of England can benefit from the local planning and support the last Labour government delivered for Scotland and Wales.”

David Cameron once pledged to hold a regular ‘Cabinet of Mayors’, but the idea was rejected by most big cities which staged referendums – and the get-together never happened.

Under Labour’s plans, councils will retain all of any increase in business rates, instead of the money flowing to the Treasury for redistribution – many hundreds of millions of pounds a year.

And local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) will enjoy extra powers over housing, business support, back-to-work schemes and skills, as well as existing plans for transport.

However, Mr Miliband – unlike recent pledges on immigration and Scotland - is not guaranteeing his English Devolution Act will be in his first Queen’s Speech.

But he will flesh out how councils can grab London-style powers to set bus routes and fares, ending the deregulation “free-for-all” introduced by the Thatcher government.

They will apply for them, under new legislation, frustrating bus firms which have threatened to use human rights laws – the “right to make a living” – to hang onto control.

Mr Miliband will say: “Working people have found their journey to work made harder and more expensive than it needs to be by a deregulated system that fails to serve the public interest - and for too long this issue has been ignored by Westminster.”