A new regional policy for Britain

Britain's Labour Government is setting new directions for UK regional policy and proposing radical changes in European Union regional policy as well. This paper provides a critical review of the three UK government reports that underpin the new approach. It argues that the new approach takes insufficient account of accumulated knowledge or of the long history of UK regional policy. The new approach also prioritizes the devolution of decision- making over positive discrimination from the centre in favour of less prosperous areas. The paper concludes that the three reports are taking UK regional policy into uncharted territory.