Skills, Brexit and Carillion on the menu as Lord Digby and Mayor Andy meet for business debate

Set to meet with new Education Secretary Damian Hinds in the next fortnight, Mr Street said he would be pushing a new regional skills plan targeting advanced manufacturing, construction and digital training.

For the plan to work, however, the region needed "more cash and more power" to hold colleges and schools to account.

But he admitted that pushing forward change to tackle the skills issue was "the single biggest political challenge I face this year."

Mr Street said he supported the idea of the Apprenticeship Levy, but 60 per cent of the money raised was going to the Treasury instead of being spent on training.

Despite facing Whitehall opposition, he said he would continue trying to get Levy money raised in the West Midlands returned to the region to spend on training.

The Metro Mayor was speaking at a breakfast debate between two of the region's leading political and business figures.

Facing him across the table at The Hawthorns was Lord Digby Jones, former head of the CBI and onetime Trade Minister.

Black Country-based property and investment family the Richardsons brought the pair together in front of an invited audience of more than a hundred business people.

Central TV veteran presenter Bob Warman acted as MC, raising a laugh when he dubbed the physically disparate duo "Little & Large".

Lord Jones received a lot of backing from the audience when he called for a new law to stop bigger firms "bullying" their smaller suppliers by forcing them to accept longer payment terms.

Taking questions from the floor, Lord Jones was talking about the damage the collapse of Wolverhampton-based Carillion had caused to its suppy chain companies. Many firms forced to accept longer payment terms would now not get paid at all, he said.

There was a wider problem of bigger companies bullying their smaller suppliers and subcontractors, he said, imposing longer payment terms on them in a process dubbed 'credit stretching' – "It can break small businesses," said Lord Jones.

"We should have a criminal charge so that financial directors face prosecution if they change contracts and payment terms unilaterally. Something big has to happen to help small business get paid on time by big businesses."

And Andy Street took the opportunity to applaud the work of the Black Country Chamber of Commerce in aiding the supply chain companies struggling in the wake of Carillion's collapse.

Despite campaigning to leave the EU, Lord Jones described himself as a 'reluctant Brexiteer' and said negotiating the UK's departure was "going to be damn difficult". But many countries outside the EU were keen to strike new trade deals with Britain, he said.

Mr Street admitted he had voted to remain but said part of his job now was ensuring Government understood what the West Midlands needed from a Brexit deal.

While exports only accounted for eight per cent of GDP in London, in the West Midlands it was 24 per cent. "I think a good deal will be done for the West Midlands, but probably at the 11th hour of the 11th day," said Mr Street.

Lord Jones backed his confident prediction, saying he believed the EU would agree to not to impose tariffs on manufactured goods because it was in the interests of the export-driven German economy.

Mr Street said the West Midlands' export efforts currently were held back by "an incredibly fragmented approach".

"I don't feel we have got ourselves organised in the right way to go about trade," he said. And he called on businesses to give their backing to a new combined export plan that brought together industry, services, education and tourism, which is due to be presented to David Davis, Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, in the coming weeks.