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Economic Growth and Employment

No; I am sorry, but I am running out of time. The RGF along with local enterprise partnerships and enterprise zones do not by any stretch of the imagination add up to an economic policy for growth for the north-east, or for anywhere else for that matter, because they are fragmented initiatives with no local coherence. The RGF will not help to narrow the north-south divide, either. As I have acknowledged, a number of companies in the north-east have benefited from the RGF, and according to the Government's own figures that will secure about 8,500 jobs, but in the same RGF round money went to the south-east to secure 30,000 jobs. The north-east's problems are compounded by the fact that the RGF money is not a sufficient injection to the private sector to enable it to make up for the jobs that are being lost in the public sector. To put the figure of 8,500 jobs in context, last month alone unemployment in the north-east rose by 19,000. The Government must do more, therefore. In the past couple of weeks a number of independent commentators, including the North East chamber of commerce and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have said that the Government need to do more to support private sector development in the north-east, and our five-point plan for growth sets out a clear way for them to start supporting the economy.