Businesses and the Regions

If my Treasury colleagues are ready to issue guidance, they will do so, but the statements from last week stand. As I said, we are not about to give up on the great cities, the smaller industrial or market towns or the rural parts of our country, as the report over the summer suggested that we might. We believe that action at national and international level is necessary to respond to the current problems, given the global nature of the crisis, but so too is action at regional and local level. One important lever in that process is the network of regional development agencies.