THIS week John Prescott was on tour, encouraging regions to establish regional assemblies. Whether we in the North West accept this invitation would be up to us, since assemblies will only go ahead if people in the region have said they want one in a regional referendum.

These new regions would be democratic, elected bodies. They would take over the fire and rescue service from the county councils and joint boards, some of the functions from the existing non-elected regional boards, and a range of functions from central government.

They would, above all, be a strong voice for the region, standing up for the North West, for example, in matters of competition with other regions - especially London and the South East.

Years ago, the North West did not need to create such a strong voice. It had one naturally, through its pre-eminent economic strength from cotton, heavy engineering and associated activities. But that was then and this is now.

Over the decades the centre of gravity of the economy has shifted southwards, partly as a result of the increased importance of our trade with Europe, but more to do with the shift in the balance of the economy in favour of southern-based services.

We have had to work hard to correct these imbalances - and we have. The jobs situation is better than it has been for three decades and long term youth unemployment has virtually been eliminated.

Tomorrow, I shall be visiting three different new premises for firms in town, including a new distribution centre which opened in July.

There's been huge investment in high level education and skills training. The North West now has 16 university institutions with 200,000 students in its programmes.

Alongside these there are first class further education colleges, also offering higher education, like our own top rate Blackburn College

Looking around, we can all see visible signs of improvement - like the gems of Fleming Square and the new developing pavilions in Church Street.

But we have to keep expanding the employment base of the town and Chancellor Gordon Brown has now given us an opportunity to do so. He has launched a major exercise to see how many public sector and civil service jobs currently based in London can be moved to the regions.

Exercises like this before have been successful, provided a range of jobs are moved, including senior, highly skilled and clerical positions.

The new Capita Centre on Barbara Castle Way is in many ways a pathfinder for this and I know the council is now thinking actively as to how it can ensure that we attract a fair number of any of the public sector jobs from the South East which are moved as a result of Gordon's initiative.

We've got it all going for us...well almost. If only we could get Rovers back on track...