My Lords, on behalf of the city of Newcastle, I disavow any territorial ambitions in relation to Cumbria, even though we are connected by the Roman wall, part of which runs through and, indeed, is visible in the ward I represent.
I am the fifth consecutive former council leader to address the Committee this afternoon. It was in that capacity that I first made the acquaintance of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, some 30 years ago when he chaired the inner city partnership in Newcastle. At that time, a number of authorities had such a partnership chaired by a senior Minister, and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was chairman of the Newcastle inner city partnership. I recall rather amusing him by referring to the city action teams that were created in those days as “feral cats”. He might remember the phrase. We worked well together, as did other inner city partnerships. It was a process initiated by Peter Shore in the Callaghan Government of the late 1970s.