Allister Hayman,
Regeneration & Renewal,
10 October 2008
The Tories are confusing business with contradictory statements over the future of the regional development agencies, according to a business chief.
David Frost, director general of the British Chambers of Commerce, told Regeneration & Renewal that the Conservative Party was sending out "mixed messages" on whether the agencies would be scrapped as part of a cull of underperforming quangos.
He said: "They've very clearly not resolved their policy direction. Business is worried that there's all this talk of a bonfire of the quangos without a proper evaluation of their worth and without an indication of what might replace them."
In his keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference last week, Tory leader David Cameron said that "wasteful quangos" would be scrapped under a Tory Government.
This echoed bullish comments, made by shadow communities secretary Eric Pickles at Tory conference fringe events, that there would be "a bonfire of the quangos" and that the RDAs would not have a "rosy future" under the Tories. Pickles said their powers would be handed down to town halls or city-regional partnerships.
But the message at the conference from shadow business secretary Alan Duncan was more tempered. Duncan said the party would hand the RDAs' planning powers to councils or sub-regional bodies and ask the agencies to focus on economic development. He said they would be business-led.
Frost said the idea of devolving RDA powers to councils was "unacceptable". He said: "It's clear that there's a need for a regional or sub-regional approach to economic development and we would be most unhappy about a simple transfer of powers down to town halls."
Meanwhile, MPs were told this week that the RDAs must develop more "flexible and variable geometry" to deliver economic development. The Commons Business and Enterprise Select Committee was told by business representatives and local government officials that, where the RDAs are aligned with real economic areas, such as the North-East, they are effective. However, in the South, where there are three agencies and the boundaries are arbitrary, there are often complications in their work supporting economic growth, the committee was told.
