A DELEGATION from the North-East is to take the ideas that arose at yesterday's inaugural regional economic forum to the seat of power in London in the New Year.

Concluding the day's discussions, Alan Milburn said a meeting had already been pencilled in with Education Secretary Ruth Kelly "to explore how Government skills and education policy can be tailored to the economic priorities of the region".

He said that over the first six months of 2006, Northumbria University - which headed yesterday's forum - would be asked to create a handful of detailed policy papers for circulation.

"We have to put the work out for consultation across the North-East so everyone can see it and then when we get agreement, we can start it moving forward," he said.

Next year's economic forum would be crucial in reaching that agreement, he said. In the meantime, an advisory group will be formed within weeks to oversee the university's work.

"In formulating these proposals, we will enlist the engagement of One NorthEast, the CBI, TUC, local government, politicians from across the political parties and others, so that we secure genuine region-wide buy-in from all the key stakeholders," he said.

Mr Milburn, the Darlington MP and former Health Secretary who led Labour's last General Election campaign, said the forum had shown that the North-Eastwas making "really substantial progress ...but what we have no right to do is rest on our laurels. The gap between the progress we have made and the potential we have got is still far too wide".

The delegation and advisory group will effectively step into what Mr Milburn sees as a power vacuum created by last year's No vote to a directly-elected regional assembly.

"This forum has begun to move the debate about the future of the North-East away from institutional change where perhaps for too long it has been located," he said. "I supported the proposal for a directly-elected regional assembly. But the truth today is that regional government is now as dead as a dodo and it really is time to move on."

It seems certain that key players beside Mr Milburn will be Alan Donnelly, the former North-East MEP and leader of the Labour Group in the European Parliament, and Patrick Diamond, a former advisor to Peter Mandelson who is now a visiting fellow at Northumbria University.

North-East Conservative MEP Martin Callanan, who was not invited to the forum, said: "This is another New Labour love-in with nobody else invited apart from a small section of the New Labour establishment. The last time I looked, Mr Milburn was not the Prime Minister of the region."

Mr Callanan said he was sympathetic to encouraging enterprise in the North-East, but said that the Government of which Mr Milburn had been part had spent eight years reducing business competitiveness.

"There's no magical silver bullet that will make the region move forward, and this is a trifle simplistic," he said. "Take the idea of improving transport - it's hardly revolutionary but there's no willingness on the part of Government to fund it."