John Prescott
John Prescott
John Leslie Prescott, Baron Prescottis a British politician who was the Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007. Born in Prestatyn, Wales, he represented Hull East as the Labour member of parliament from 1970 to 2010. In the 1994 leadership election, he stood for both Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, winning election to the latter office. He was appointed Deputy Prime Minister after Labour's victory in the 1997 election, with an expanded brief...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth31 May 1938
There's no excuse, it's just an opportunity that presented in a limited way and that happened and as soon as the press rang me I didn't deny it I just said 'that's it' and I had to go home and explain it.
There was only one punch. Tony Blair rang me and he said 'Are you OK?' and I said 'Yes', and he said 'Well, what happened?' and I said 'I was just carrying out your orders. You told us to connect with the electorate, so I did.
If you look at Newcastle or Gateshead, even over twenty years, even with the previous administration, it has moved quite remarkably in transforming itself.
In a sense, what we do with the regional development agencies is to give them resources to look at the deficiencies in the economy in the regional areas, so they can address themselves to that.
There is progress taking place, growth is better. We're only talking about two years there.
I have only been seeking to get them to the negotiating table and, thank God, that's where they are.
The only break I ever took was to eat. That's all I did. Work, and then quickly eat something. It became my main pleasure, having access to my comfort food.
Down in the south, it's how we find the brownfield sites without taking too much land take to meet the tremendous demand for housing, and that's what I've done.
What government has been doing, we've got major programmes now, of billions of pounds, which are directed by central government into these areas of deprivation.
You go down some street - no doubt it's there, and we have to do something about it, and our programmes are designed to do that - but if that's a picture of Newcastle, it's not the one I recognise and I bet none in the North East do either.
We are making the fundamental changes. It was like the decent housing target. We said by 2010, we'd have taken a million houses and refurbished them into decent housing.
Why can't we, with a more intelligent policy, actually have houses that are affordable, built at higher densities than they are at the moment and built on brownfield sites.
We've given more resources. On housing, we are now establishing a regional housing pot.
There is no doubt that Tony Blair is acting in a very courageous way and is doing what he believes to be right and we are supporting him in that,