Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [HL]

It is a contradiction in terms Those arrangements can be driven only by the regions and the sub-regions, otherwise they simply will not work. We must address the potential inequalities in the regions and manage and avoid failure as well as mobilise success. All our regions are very complex in different ways, but if we are to secure the sort of investment and the skills that we need, and if we are to deal with the massive changes that there will be in our economies—we have seen huge shocks in our economy in the past six months—we will have to have exactly the sort of arrangements that are obviously working very well in Essex with all its sub-regional partners. However, we also need a regional vision and a process to ensure that we can address the inequalities across regions as well as mobilise potential. These are long-term plans; they are not plans that will suffice for the next five years.