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Responding to the Downturn and Planning the Future Economy

As I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, under the first arrangements, when we had a regional assembly and the regional development agency, politicians of all parties were on the regional agency board and in the regional assembly. We now have a system whereby the regional development agency and the leaders of the local authorities, through the leaders’ boards, sit down together and look at the strategy for the region as a whole. That is what the sub-national review came up with. I assure the hon. Gentleman that many local authority leaders from his party understand what is happening during the downturn and how it has been necessary, at national, regional and local levels, to put together such interventions. Without that leadership—a mixture of business and local authority—we would not have the help that is out there at the moment. If he thinks that that can simply be done at the local authority level, I say that it would be difficult to achieve and businesses in our region would find it difficult to negotiate with the many different authorities, all with different strategies and without an overall regional framework. It is a shame that he does not understand that.