IN a nutshell and probably inadvertently, today's Public Accounts Committee report sets out the case for proper regional government - and why the public so overwhelmingly rejected the proposals for regional government that were put before them just a month ago.

There were numerous reasons for the huge No vote. Among them were the feeling that the directly-elected assembly would have no real powers to make a difference and it would be so hamstrung by central government interference (hence the white elephant).

This report appears to prove the public right. It says that the regional development agencies (RDAs) - One NorthEast and Yorkshire Forward - concentrate too much on hitting the targets set by their Whitehall masters and not enough time looking at the priorities within the regions.

A directly-elected assembly would have taken charge of the RDAs, but the public feared that it, too, would have been dancing to Whitehall's tunes.

Yet the committee, led by its Conservative chairman Edward Leigh, also sets out why a regional government with proper powers might have been a good idea.

It says that as well as struggling with Whitehall, the RDAs are floundering because they have no influence over skills and transport, and no sway over other regional bodies such as the universities. However good the RDAs' strategies might be, they cannot be put into practice because they do not have a wide enough remit.

The size of the No vote means that regional government is now dead for decades to come.

But the regional development agencies continue to grow. Their budgets run into billions, their directions come from Whitehall. Yet the people whose lives their decisions affect struggle to have any significant input.

To repeat the question we've been asking ever since the November 4 outcome: what happens next? Or do we just sit back and wait for an annual report by bigwigs in London to tell us that there's too much central interference and not enough regional action?