It’s time to build on Olympic success says Clegg

Facing questions from business leaders in Yorkshire, Mr Clegg defended the coalition’s economic record, backed calls for greater devolution of powers to the regions and made the case for Britain’s future in Europe.

The Sheffield Hallam MP was speaking at an event marking the first anniversary of the launch of Yorkshire Vision, the Yorkshire Post’s quarterly magazine highlighting the region’s business successes and making the case for inward investment into the region.

On the day the route the Tour de France will take through Yorkshire next year was announced, he pointed to the success of Yorkshire athletes including Jessica Ennis and Nicola Adams at the Olympic Games as having given the county unprecedented exposure.

Mr Clegg said: “I genuinely think the Yorkshire triumph in the sporting arena in the summer has probably done as much as anything to put Yorkshire as a place not just on the British map but on the international map.

“I think Yorkshire has got a great and strong identity in the public imagination and I think it’s got a lot stronger in the last year and there are great commercial opportunities in that.”

The Deputy Prime Minister used his visit to announce the latest round of the Government’s Regional Growth Fund which will see £350m made availabe to support companies to create jobs.

He defended the Fund against complaints that Yorkshire has not benefitted as much as other areas, stressing that 11 per cent of awards have gone to organisations in the region, and called on local enterprise partnerships to help Government get money to small businesses.

“I’m ruthlessly of the view that the worst thing that we could do with Government money is repeat the mistakes of the past and divide a pot for political and geographical reasons. It should be completely driven by merit.

“I very much hope that in response to the £350m available in the next round of the Regional Growth Fund, I really hope good Yorkshire bids come forward and if there are £350m of good Yorkshire bids no-one will be more delighted than me but in a time of scarcity you can’t responsibly support what are private sector initiatives, private sector job creation and retention, other than to do so on the basis of commercial merit.”

The Deputy Prime Minister insisted there was more consensus between the major parties on public spending and cuts than suggested by debates in Westminster, highlighting recent comments by former Foreign Secretary David Miliband suggesting he accepted the Governnment’s overall spending cuts while disputing where the axe falls.

“He doesn’t obviously speak for the Labour Party and certainly doesn’t for Ed Balls but that really would be a breakthrough for British politics,” said Mr Clegg.

“That really would be levelling with the British people and we could finally get away from this infantile politics that somehow seems to suggest that there is an easy, pain-free, controversy-free alternative when you are dealing with the largest deficit in peacetime history.

“If we can get to the next General Election with everyone basically saying we kind of have to save X by Y, and by the way if you extend the deficit programme by one year that doesn’t make a huge amount of difference in the grand scheme of things, if you level with people on that and then have a debate about who pays, whose belts get tightened most, where do you make the savings, that’s the debate we should have in 2015, but that’s not going to happen until the rest of the Labour Party admits what David Miliband has recently admitted.”

During his visit Mr Clegg officially opened Yorkshire Post Newspapers’ new offices in Whitehall Road, described by managing director Helen Oldham as a “catalyst to establish us firmly as being a true digital business as well as maintaining our reputation as being world class publishers of regional press in this country.”

The Deputy Prime Minister paid tribute to the Yorkshire Post as a “great campaigning newspaper” and an articulate and powerful voice for the region’s business community.