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Local and Regional Government

: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. In many ways, I agree with him. I, as a Cornishman, do not assume to know what is best for the north-east, the north-west, the midlands or anywhere else. It is not for me to decide. I will come in a moment to the solutions that I think the Government have to pursue. They do not need a control-freak approach, which seems to assume or misunderstand that devolution is about holding on for dear life and controlling the agenda down to the last tee. Devolution is fundamentally about letting go and giving people in the regions as defined by them the opportunity to bring forward their business cases. They should be able to select from a menu of powers and take their cases to the Government, urging support for them, not the other way round. That is why the Government have catastrophically failed.