Mr. Jim Power:

I said I would. If you are starting from a position where there is a gross inequality, I think you would need positive discrimination. You could look at gender quotas, for example. There is a massive requirement for positive discrimination on the gender front because we are coming from such an unequal and low base. I think it is the same with capital investment. If regions have been starved and have been treated unequally over the decades, I think the first thing you have to do is try to close that deficit through positive discrimination. I know it may not tick all the boxes in effective policy-making, but when you have a market failure like that, positive discrimination would be important.

On the five-year timeframe, it is looking back and is quite historical but if politicians know that when it comes to the decisions they are taking today, the data will become available, it should influence their behaviour. Even if a Minister has moved on, the party will suffer reputational damage as well.

There is another thing, which I did not discuss with any of my colleagues here. It would be great if we could do it retrospectively and go back over a number of different years and then one could really see the trends. I do not know whether that would be possible. It would be a lot of work.