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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
