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What happens in one region affects people across the world.

I don't think massification and globalization and all those other 'izations' are necessarily hostile to regionalism.

We may have to have a geo-political regrouping or major geo-political changes.

Certainly accountability of government is what people are clamoring for; they want to know that when lawmakers make a promise or a proposal, you can actually accomplish it.

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.

As a government watchdog, I'm always looking for ways to make government smaller, more efficient, and fairer.

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.

Government should concentrate on building up infrastructure and skill development. Simplification of taxation is another important area.

We have seen a central government taking more and more control over public education, over communications, over transportation, over every detail of our daily lives.

It is characteristic that this should take place just when it is becoming more and more clear to all who think about the matter, that technically and economically we have left the territorial state behind us.