THE Tories' new regions spokesman strode into the North-East yesterday and declared that a regional assembly was "a dreadful idea".

"It will not bring a single new nurse, doctor, teacher or police officer to the region," said Eric Pickles, as he started his day at Darlington station. "It's just for the political classes to mess around with."

It is almost certain that the Government will announce plans in the November Queen's Speech for a referendum to see whether the North-East wants its own elected assembly.

Mr Pickles, though, said his party would be calling for a "no" vote in a referendum, and dismissed an assembly as a "Geordie parliament" which would have little relevance to the south of the region and to rural areas.

"There may well be a majority outside the metropolitan areas of Newcastle which is against it, but it will be imposed upon them," he said. "Newcastle will then control the whole shooting match, funding will follow that power and it could be that the other areas are starved of any benefits."

Mr Pickles, a Yorkshireman, said he feared the same in his native county: Leeds and Bradford might opt for a Yorkshire assembly which could leave rural areas like North Yorkshire out in the cold.

In the North-East, the loss of a tier of local government - with either Durham County Council or its districts abolished to make room for a regional assembly - would make town hall democracy "a very remote concept", he said.

Instead, the Conservatives were a "born-again local" party.

"We want to see significant devolution of power to local authorities. They are now almost utterly creatures of central Government. "The reason people don't vote for them is that they don't matter. When 85 per cent of their funding comes from central Government, they don't matter."

Mr Pickles said that the Tories would like to see local authorities raising at least 35 per cent of their money from their council tax.

He spent the rest of his day touring the North-East and meeting local Conservatives, including the directly-elected mayor of North Tyneside, Chris Morgan.

Mr Morgan, one of three such mayors in the region who have now been in office for 100 days, is making big waves as he tries to cut £6m from his council's budget.