Businesses and the Regions

I regularly meet representatives of those organisations and others. The hon. Gentleman is right that it is important that they have a strong voice. However, many of them are extremely good at doing what he suggests and it is important that the Government work closely with them. Indeed, several of my points came directly from the FSB, the CBI and other organisations. Since the second world war, London has become a great world city. However, when we look at our international competitors, it becomes clear that some of our other cities have slipped behind. For example, Manchester, Birmingham and Newcastle, which are fantastic urban centres and have made great strides in recent years, have slipped behind their competitors in many major European countries, especially in GDP per head. That does not mean that we are a poor country, rather that we have become more divided between a Greater London metropolis and the rest. In the past 16 years of growth, the south-eastern economic powerhouse has moved further away from the rest of the UK. Ten years ago, the Government presented their plans for regional development agencies. Yet from the start, those agencies were set two contradictory agendas: one collaborative, the other competitive. On the one hand, they are meant to help national Government close the gap between them, but, on the other, they are meant to promote their own prosperity. The most obvious example of that contradiction is the way in which RDAs compete abroad for inward investment. If one travels abroad to the major centres of economic activity, one almost invariably finds different RDAs, with different offices, staff and budgets, each vying for the same inward investment. For example, in May, I went to Shanghai with nine other Members from different parties. There, we discovered that, in addition to the British consul and the team from UK Trade & Investment, there were four separate RDA teams, all bidding for the same projects. That makes absolutely no sense, and was completely bewildering to Chinese investors and businesses. I made representations to the Minister in May and June and I am told that some progress has been made. I hope that, following those representations, the nonsense has been resolved—perhaps he can tell us.