Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Mandelson is to make a renewed bid to ensure the English Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) operate on equal terms when competing for inward investment against their more powerful Scottish and Welsh counterparts. Civil servants have been asked to prepare a briefing on an inward investment “concordat”.
Meanwhile DETRA has indicated its determination to keep a tight grip on regional chambers. These are the bodies that will advise the nine new business-led RDAs. It said RDAs would be government bodies accountable to ministers.
Chambers would provide a mechanism through which RDAs could take account of regional views and give the region an account of their activities.
Financial Times 12/08/98 page 6
