TONY Blair is making the right noises for the North West.

For, in an exclusive interview with the Lancashire Evening Telegraph, he pledges that a Labour government would give it two important boosts.

The first is its own development agency to attract job-creating overseas firms and investment.

The other is regional government for the North West - if we want it.

Both are long overdue - and more so the development agency.

For it has long been a nonsense that a region of the North West's size and population has had to contend with decades of decline of its traditional "smokestack" industries without a powerful development agency to help with the task of renewal.

And the absurdity has been rubbed in by Wales and Scotland being favoured with just such assistance despite having smaller populations and industrial bases than our region.

All the North West demands is fair treatment, instead of the often-shrinking, always-patchworked and sometimes contest-style regional aid programmes that Conservative rule has offered our efforts at economic regeneration.

If Tony Blair is promising a development agency with powers similar to those of the Scottish and Welsh ones, underpinned by real grants and incentives for incoming and expanding businesses, then, we are sure, he will be rewarded with votes.

And as for regional government for the North West, we support the plan for two reasons.

First, a region of such size and importance as ours does need its own "voice."

Secondly, the over-concentration of power at Westminster and the replacement of much of local democracy by the politically-tainted quango culture, really does need to be redressed.

But any regional "parliament" must be one with real powers, not just a talking shop.

Also it would be an ideal body to which a North West development agency could be accountable and to which it could refer for policy direction.

It is noteworthy, though, that setting up regional government is obviously somewhat down the list of Mr Blair's priorities.

He talks of it being inspired first by regional calls for it to happen and then voted for in a referendum.

And his hints that a system of unitary local authorities would need to be created beneath regional government level augurs for another painstaking review of local government in the region.

All of that suggests that regional government is unlikely to happen soon under a Labour government - so that a development agency for the North West may be set up long before any regional parliament.

Nonetheless, this commitment to our region and the promise of greater empowerment for its economy and its people is as welcome as the need for it to be put into action.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.