THE North-East was last night warned to avoid "fading into parochialism" following last year's enormous No vote against a directly-elected regional assembly.

On the eve of today's inaugural North-East Economic Forum, Darlington MP Alan Milburn warned that last November's referendum result had created a power vacuum in the region, and he urged the North-East to unite behind a manifesto for the future.

His plea was echoed by David Miliband, the Local Government Minister and MP for South Shields, who also defended the continued, and controversial, existence of the unelected North-East Assembly.

Both men are among the speakers at today's forum, at Hardwick Hall in the Prime Minister's Sedgefield constituency.

"The loss of regional government means there is a vacuum, which is why there's such interest in this event," said Mr Milburn, the former Health Secretary.

He wants the forum, organised by the Sovereign Strategy group in association with Northumbria University, to debate how transport links in the region can be improved, and which economic sectors should be prioritised.

"We need a better sense of where the future for the region lies," he said. "We need to formulate a manifesto for education, training and skills, and then we need to target the Government.

"I've been an MP for 13 years and can honestly say I've never been asked to really lobby for a big regional project that will have a transformative effect on the whole of the North-East," he said.

"But we have to get a huge regional push behind this manifesto otherwise we just fade into parochialism."

Mr Miliband agreed. An Arsenal supporter, he said: "Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough can take points off each other in the Premiership but when it comes to economics, a strong Middlesbrough, a strong Sunderland and a strong Newcastle all support each other by having distinctive economic rationales and roles."

The forum was launched last night by a dinner at the Centre for Life, in Newcastle. It was addressed by European Trade Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, on his first return to the region - "my adopted political home" - since moving to Brussels a year ago.

He said: "I am very encouraged by this forum. We need to bring together the talents and leadership and harness the strength and skills with a sense of purpose and of vision.

"If we are going to do well in the rough, tough world that I see as European Commissioner, we need to raise our game and increase our competitiveness and harness the ideas and ingenuity that come from ordinary people."

Mr Mandelson drew a distinction between the sunrise jobs that have been implanted in the region and those that grew from more natural roots.

He said: "The prosperity of that new generation of manufacturing jobs did not weather the economic hurricanes of the 1980s because it was a new generation of jobs located in the North-East that was not generated in the North-East.

"Now, our enterprise, our skills, the use of our capital need to be rooted in the North-East."