Stewart Arnold: We need forward thinking to help our region to flourish

Heavy hints, reinforced by the leaking of the Queen's Speech to the Sunday newspapers, suggest that at least two such agencies in the south of England would in fact be abolished. It could be that others would follow. This should come as no surprise, given the Tory and Liberal Democrat election manifestoes.

The Conservative manifesto in fact talked about "abolishing the unelected Regional Assemblies and regional planning, and devolve the powers and funding of the unelected Regional Development Agencies to local partnerships of councils and business".

RDAs came in to being in 1998 as a way of delivering economic development in the English regions. With EU structural funds still coming into the UK in large quantities from Brussels, it was seen as a way of managing this regeneration money closer to the communities most in need.

The RDA for Yorkshire and the Humber is Yorkshire Forward, based in Leeds with an annual budget of about 300m and about 500 staff. Since its establishment in 1999, Yorkshire Forward would argue that its presence has helped to create thousands of jobs in the region and generally improved economic development.

Critics would say that many of these jobs might have been created anyway and that although the overall economic prosperity has improved in the region, it has not done enough to close the gap with other regions, particularly in London and the South East.

In 1998, Yorkshire was one of the poorest regions in the UK.

Twelve years later, this remained so. In fact, the Labour Government itself recognised RDAs might not be the best vehicle for economic growth and had latterly embarked on the creation of City Regions as a way of delivering development.

So given the Government's statement about retaining RDAs where popular, just how popular is Yorkshire Forward? The answer to that is we don't know. Although a letter was carried by the Yorkshire Post during the election campaign supporting the retention of Yorkshire Forward, it was

signed by just eight businesspeople.

I think we need to see more evidence of the regional appeal both from business and the wider public. The Financial Times reported last week that business groups, councils and universities had written to the new Business Secretary in support of the RDA in the North West and in the North East. They seemed to suggest no such support was forthcoming for Yorkshire Forward. There is clearly a need for a debate in Yorkshire and the Humber about the desire for Yorkshire Forward to remain.

One solution which retains RDAs in some form, and which could reduce costs, may be for some of the agencies to pool resources as they are doing similar jobs in each region.

Unless this was to change I would think there might be a case for combining the three northern RDAs into one, as say "One North" so reducing the amount of overlap which exists. Sub regional offices would be retained in the same way as there are now.

If Yorkshire Forward does remain as a separate RDA, as it appears, it must expect its budget to be cut. While there are clearly budgetary commitments for 2010-2011 which would need fulfilling, it must look seriously at cutting a salary bill of about 20m.

One further thing that should come into the mix is the accountability of this body in future. With the abolishment of the Regional Assembly this year, Yorkshire is poorly served in holding region-wide bodies to account.

I would like to see increased transparency from Yorkshire Forward; for example, in holding a public meeting at which all residents of Yorkshire and the Humber can come and ask questions of the chair, chief executive and the members of the board.

Such transparency is even more important if Yorkshire Forward does stay in place, because, as seems likely, there will be no appointment of a new Yorkshire Minister and no "grand committee" of regional MPs.

Whatever the limited powers of both the Minister and the Committee, it nevertheless did allow for greater scrutiny and increased accountability. Yorkshire Forward should not shy away from that.

So the new Government causes us to reflect on the best delivery mechanisms for economic development in the region. It is not something we should be afraid of.

It gives all of us an opportunity to input into the argument

about processes which have been essentially fixed for the past 12 years. It is an ideal opportunity to ask ourselves about how we want Yorkshire to be governed.