Asking the questions no one else will...

By Adrian Pearson on Nov 3, 09 06:00 PM

"There are hard facts and harder facts. I want to talk about the hard facts".

Thanks to Stockton MP Dari Taylor for that. Straight out of the Donald Rumsfeld guide to politics.

Dari chairs the regional select committee, which today asked the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills why North East research spending was so slow.

She was up against a civil servant who insisted that the way he measures funding shows there is no problem with investment levels here.
The regional select committees have had a a hard press, not least because the Tories and the Lib Dems refused to join them. But if the alternative is well paid civil servants allowed to avoid any "difficult" questions, then they are surely a welcome addition to the regional scrutiny scene.

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