John Prescott

Refurbishing I’ve done in the first three years and I’m still giving housing money, of course, to the north.

Why can’t we, with a more intelligent policy, actually have houses that are affordable, built at higher densities than they are at the moment and built on brownfield sites.

You go down some street – no doubt it’s there, and we have to do something about it, and our programmes are designed to do that – but if that’s a picture of Newcastle, it’s not the one I recognise and I bet none in the North East do either.

The choice is not normally between the north and south. It might be between Britain and Europe.

In the north east, there, they have had quite a bit of government offices moving in. It’s not a new policy.

We’ve given more resources. On housing, we are now establishing a regional housing pot.

If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself.

I was the one that brought it in, but not only for the north-east, for every area so we can develop all the regional economies, lift up the national productivity, get greater wealth and share it more evenly.

That’s what I think regions are about, making central government more accountable and fairer.

Down in the south, it’s how we find the brownfield sites without taking too much land take to meet the tremendous demand for housing, and that’s what I’ve done.

We are making the fundamental changes. It was like the decent housing target. We said by 2010, we’d have taken a million houses and refurbished them into decent housing.

We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent.

What government has been doing, we’ve got major programmes now, of billions of pounds, which are directed by central government into these areas of deprivation.

In a sense, what we do with the regional development agencies is to give them resources to look at the deficiencies in the economy in the regional areas, so they can address themselves to that.

I have only been seeking to get them to the negotiating table and, thank God, that’s where they are.

There is progress taking place, growth is better. We’re only talking about two years there.

It’s moving in the right direction. It was in decline under the previous administration.