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WHO NEEDS THE RDA?

 

There is now, thankfully, a big question mark dangling over the future of the Regional Development Agencies. I have always regarded the RDAs as quangos of very suspect benefit. They seem to require huge teams of overpaid  staff and then syphon off cash to pay for them that would have been far better distributed elsewhere.

I have watched the growth of the South West RDA with undisguised alarm. 

I often wonder if it would not be a more effective way of distrubuting public money to take a sack of fivers up in a light plane and distribute them at random. Probably just as many grants would end up in the right hands - maybe more. But it would cost an awful lot less.

Well now the Governmnent is beginning to get the message.

On Thursday June 19th the Leader of the House Harriet Harman told me that the Government was looking at ways of clipping the wings of these outfits.

Not a moment too soon.

Mr. Liddell-Grainger: Can we have a debate on regional development agencies? Recently, the South West of England Regional Development Agency sent an e-mail to south-west MPs informing them that it will change the way it operates in relation to inward and external investment. With the demise of the regional assemblies, there has been no consultation about the proposal at all. Indeed, we have been told that it is a fait accompli and that it will happen. The history of the South West of England Regional Development Agency is not good. At best, it has been dilatory in many of the things that it should do; at worst, it has been incompetent in a lot of cases. Can we therefore just talk about that?

Ms Harman: We acknowledge that there is a gap in the accountability of regional development agencies to the House, and that is why the Prime Minister proposed, in “The Governance of Britain”, that there should be regional committees to involve Members of the House in scrutinising the work of the regional development agencies. In a week or so, the Modernisation Committee will finalise its report on regional committees, and proposals will be brought forward to the House. There will therefore be a proper system of accountability for the issues that the hon. Gentleman has raised.

 

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