Political expediency is the nub of the problem and the fundamental reason that three and a half years after the Minister for Finance announced his grandiose plans nothing has happened. Having listened to the Minister of State we are no wiser. Instead of the massive programme of decentralisation within a fixed time-scale, there is now a complete row-back. Instead of the explicit commitment to the decentralisation of 10,000 jobs, the more recent utterances leaked from the Government refer to up to 10,000 jobs. Instead of the unequivocal time-scale that the programme of decentralisation would be realised by the middle of 2001, we are now told that the plan will take up to ten years to complete. The row-back in implementation of the plan is singularly due to the fierce infighting that would inevitably ensue among Ministers, Ministers of State and backbenchers in trying to divide the spoils.