THE Deputy Prime Minister has launched a scathing attack on Labour’s spending record in the region, which he said had been a series of “wheezes” that had wasted taxpayers’ money.

Nick Clegg visited the North-East yesterday to hand over cash from the Government’s controversial job creation fund.

The £1.4bn regional growth fund (RGF), which invites companies to bid for money, has been attacked by Opposition politicians and business leaders for being underfunded.

Mr Clegg said the under-fire scheme was a more “intelligent”

approach than simply handing the region a pot of money, no questions asked.

“If all of Labour’s wheezes over the past decade had been successful, we wouldn’t have the problems we have today,” said Mr Clegg. “The long-term future for the North-East is bright, but it faces a painful transition from a broken economic model where huge amounts of money were thrown at the region but didn’t create sustainable jobs.

“When times were good over the past ten years, governments have spent money on fancy business parks and great sparkling projects that didn’t get anywhere.

That’s no good. What we want to see is the North-East make the very difficult transition from an over-reliance on handouts from Whitehall to a new economy where the region stands on its own feet.”

During yesterday’s visit, Mr Clegg heard how £5.3m from the RGF would support a project led by Newcastle-based household goods maker P&G and Durham University to develop greener cleaning products. The scheme is expected to create 53 jobs and was one of 14 successful bids from the region that were promised funding when the first round of the RGF was announced in April.

Labour has criticised the Coalition for spreading over three years the £1.4bn it had promised to invest in business in a single year, via the now abolished regional development agencies. The Government has also been accused of failing to distribute the RGF money it promised six monthS ago.

Mr Clegg responded: “There has been some very misleading and misplaced criticism from Labour about the RGF. About 50 per cent of all the projects we announced earlier in the year have already got started because private companies could proceed safe in the knowledge that the public money was going to come a little later.

“I accept that we must do more for the North-East and for the country as a whole, but we are doing a considerable amount.”

Mr Clegg pointed to the £3bn of public money allocated to the Green Investment Bank and a pledge to fast-track major infrastructure projects as evidence of the Government’s commitment to growth.

In total, the first tranche of RGF projects in the North-East aim to create or safeguard about 5,000 direct jobs and another 8,000 in the supply chain. The second round of the scheme, when the biggest awards will be made, will be announced next month.