NORTH-EAST people were "batty" if they believed a booming Newcastle would suck prosperity out of their communities, a Government minister said yesterday.

David Miliband, the Communities Minister, said big cities could act as locomotives that could drive success in the towns around them.

But critics at the conference meeting raised fears of creating a "donut" effect - where the outer ring of towns suffered as the big city thrived.

Mr Miliband, the MP for South Shields, was speaking at a fringe meeting on the growth of so-called city regions, organised by the New Local Government Network.

The Government's Core Cities initiative is focused on reviving large areas of the North by boosting investment and infrastructure spending in the big cities.

And the Northern Way growth strategy, launched last year, also identified the big cities as the best route to economic growth across the North.

But fears have also been raised that Newcastle is not accountable in any way for the effects of its success on surrounding places, such as Sunderland, Durham or Darlington.

Mr Miliband, who has launched a tour of the core cities, said: "It is batty to believe that it is good for Sunderland if Newcastle is doing badly - apart from in the Premiership, of course.

"It is these great city regions that are acting as locomotives for what's going on around them."

But the meeting heard warnings that booming big cities would leave other nearby towns "floundering in the Championship or even further down the league".

The Core Cities report last year said England's big cities needed to do more to stimulate their surrounding regions by building closer links with them.

It said the big cities must recognise they were thriving on "assets they cannot themselves provide", which came from their surrounding areas.

Those assets included a larger workforce and skills base, space for infrastructure such as airports and shopping centres and leisure and countryside opportunities.