Down in the south, it's how we find the brownfield sites without taking too much land take to meet the tremendous demand for housing, and that's what I've done. John Prescott
I was the one that brought it in, but not only for the north-east, for every area so we can develop all the regional economies, lift up the national productivity, get greater wealth and share it more evenly. John Prescott
If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself. John Prescott
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. John Prescott
We are making the fundamental changes. It was like the decent housing target. We said by 2010, we'd have taken a million houses and refurbished them into decent housing. John Prescott
We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent. John Prescott
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. John Prescott
Why can't we, with a more intelligent policy, actually have houses that are affordable, built at higher densities than they are at the moment and built on brownfield sites. John Prescott
You go down some street - no doubt it's there, and we have to do something about it, and our programmes are designed to do that - but if that's a picture of Newcastle, it's not the one I recognise and I bet none in the North East do either. John Prescott
