Fewer Regional Development Agencies would be Better

The return of East Midlands MP, and former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Ken Clarke to the Conservative front benches, to shadow Business Secretary Lord Mandelson, is welcome news.
To adapt some recent words of Mandelson : common sense is a quality lacking in the New Labour Government gene bank (and a few other sorts of banks beside !). Ken Clarke has plenty of common sense. Moreover, his namesake Ken Livingstone - when "Purple" in 2000 - once expressed the view to me that if Ken Clarke had been leader of the Conservative Party, things might have turned out very differently. Indeed !

One of the most important achievements of the last Conservative administration was to redress the balance of economic power between the regions and London. The new New Labour Government of the late 1990s looked as it they would build upon this success, with the creation of a Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, but soon relinquished this ambition in favour of policies - notably housing market-based growth - which have made the UK economy particularly vulnerable to the current banking crisis. Therefore, as Shadow Business Secretary, Ken Clarke must focus on the regeneration of the entire UK economy.

Reducing the number of English Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) outside London from 8 to 4 will, in my view, be an important part of any recovery programme, and I would suggest the following combined/existing RDAs are retained :

• South and East of England (with an HQ in the Thames Gateway)
• Central England (based in Birmingham)
• North of England (based in Leeds, or Manchester)
• South West (current structure retained)

This new RDA configuration should focus on sustainable economic development and regeneration, with dedicated operating units focused on key regional issues, like Regen-WM in the West Midlands. Sub-regional assemblies (ie the present regional ones, which are currently being wound up) should be retained to oversee spatial planning, with a particular remit for environmental sustainability. There is also a need to rationalise government/public sector organisations/quangos etc at the County and local levels. Revitalising democracy outside London should be a core part of this process.