North East Says No campaigners yesterday set fire to £1.25m in fake bank notes to highlight what they say would be the amount of money wasted every week by a Regional Assembly.

The anti-assembly group believes that the Assembly would cost taxpayers £2,500 every six minutes - a figure they base on the costs of devolution elsewhere in the country.

According to Government figures, the Assembly would cost £25m a year to run - which works out at around £2.50 per year for every taxpayer in the region.

However, North East Says No has calculated that the true running costs of devolution in Scotland, Wales and London have averaged more than 250 per cent higher than was anticipated and, on that basis, argue that the real figure is likely to reach around £65m.

That, they argue, would pay for 64 new teachers, 93 hospital nurses or 2,700 computers for schools every week.

Yesterday, campaign leaders gathered at a farmyard on the outskirts of Durham City to symbolically send the money up in smoke to illustrate their point.

Campaign group chairman John Elliott said: "Because an Assembly would not have the powers to benefit ordinary people, the money being spent might as well just be burned.

"The Government promises that we're only going to be paying £25m a year for the Assembly, but whenever they've made these promises before they've always been catastrophically wrong."

However, Yes 4 The North East hit back at what they claimed were ludicrous myths.

Sir John Hall said: "I'm afraid these No campaign figures simply do not add up.

"The costs of a regional assembly will be 5p per week for the average council taxpayer and there will be up to 500 less politicians throughout the North East with a regional assembly."

He added: Spreading this mix of guesswork and myth to the people of the North East just isn't good enough."