David Cameron has defended plans to create a West Midlands regional mayor .

Voters in Birmingham, Solihull, Wolverhampton, Sandwell, Dudley, Walsall and Coventry will elect a new regional mayor in 2017.

Local council leaders have agreed to create the post in return for a £1 billion deal to give more funding to the region, which is also to have a new regional council called the West Midlands Combined Authority.

But critics have attacked the change, and pointed out that Birmingham and Coventry both rejected the idea of creating mayors to run the two cities in separate referendums in 2012.

The Government has insisted it’s not forcing anyone to have a mayor - but says it won’t hand over the cash, and allow regions to have more control over things like bus services, the local road network and training, without one.

Similar deals have been agreed with other parts of the country including Liverpool and Manchester.

Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr Cameron said: “We are currently changing the way our country is run.

“These big devolution deals, first to Greater Manchester but now . . . to Liverpool and to the West Midlands, mean that we are going to have powerful metro mayors who are accountable to local people for the decisions they make.

“That is a very direct form of accountability and that is why we can be confident of devolving health and social care to those authorities.

“For too long, our country has been too centralised.

“The great cities of Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool - and soon to be Leeds, I hope - will benefit from these massive devolution deals, but if we devolve the power and we devolve the money, we have to devolve the trust and the accountability too.”