Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
Main Page: Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Labour - Life peer)Regional Growth Fund
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon Excerpts
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, in her answer to my noble friend about what the Government are doing to assist those workers who were so tragically being made redundant from BAE Systems, the Minister mentioned local enterprise zones. Can she tell us exactly what the local enterprise zones are going to do to assist in finding jobs and supporting small and medium-sized enterprises in those areas of the country? Would it not have been better to have retained the RDAs?
Baroness Wilcox
The RDAs were enormously expensive and were not value for money. I am very glad that we are finished with the RDAs, although one or two of them were extremely good. I hope that the local enterprise initiatives will enable people to take themselves forward so that they do not always turn round and depend on the Government, which is not a good way to take forward the private sector—the sector that will actually start to bring our country out of this deep depression that we find ourselves in.