It is one of the poorest regions in the UK and we are only going to tackle that with a separate assembly for Cornwall

Bert Biscoe Cornish Constitutional Convention

This would include areas like economic development, planning, transport, housing and culture.

Don Price, national spokesman for the Campaign for English Regions, based in the North East, said: "We need to get decision making close to people and we need people to be able to decide their own future.

"Bureaucracy is already there... and this is about making that tier of bureaucracy accountable.

"There is a real scope for efficiencies, and if you look at the plethora of agencies, quangos and other bodies, all with their own chief executives and boards, there are literally thousands of these organisations.

"The Regional Assemblies will rationalise that mess."

"Ill-feeling"

But Conservative MP for Hexham, Peter Atkinson, has been a long-standing critic of regional government and said today he was "surprised and alarmed" by proposals that assemblies may have tax-raising powers.

He said: "It is a fundamental mistake. The reorganisation of of local government in Durham and Northumberland will cause a great deal of ill-feeling and I think it will be much harder to achieve such a radical reform."

And in the North West, the appetite for a regional assembly is perceived to be a lot less clear than in the North East.

If it did go ahead, traditional county councils such as Cheshire and Lancashire could be abolished.

Prescott: "Real power and funding"

Hazel Harding, Leader of Lancashire County Council, said: "We do a good job as far as I am concerned - it is what works for the people of Lancashire that matters.

"We are accused of being remote ourselves but we are as close to the community as every school that we help to run and every home help that goes into people's homes.

"I think people would see the region as being a step further away."

The Liberal Democrat MP for Southport, John Pugh, said: "I have always felt that the whole government of this country has a very much London centre to it.

"I think that the North West is considered from the Whitehall perspective as a colonial outpost to be governed.

Expected regions

North East North West Yorkshire West Midlands East Midlands East of England South West South East

"If there is to be good regional government... it should not replace local government but draw down powers from Whitehall."

In the South West, Mr Prescott's announcement was given a cautious welcome.

The Cornish Constitutional Convention said it would be calling for an assembly for Cornwall, as distinct from the south west region.

'First pitch'

Bert Biscoe, chairman of the Convention, told BBC News Online: "Cornwall is clearly in the lead in wanting to reorganise local government in order to manage further economic regeneration programmes.

"It is one of the poorest regions in the UK and we are only going to be able to tackle that with a separate assembly for Cornwall.

"We feel that if Cornwall was forced into a south west region, it would make the situation as bad now as it was in the past.

"It would make us as peripheral as we have ever been. So we will be pushing for our own region."

Mr Biscoe described Mr Prescott's White Paper "encouraging" and a move in the right direction.

"It is very much the first pitch in the game and we intend to make strong representations back to government."