John Prescott has reaffirmed the Labour Party's commitment to devolving power to any English region that wants it.

Speaking on Wednesday, the deputy prime minister promised that, if re-elected, Labour would offer a new political voice to those regions that stated a desire for it.

He said that there would be consultation on the type of powers and functions, recognising that each region is different, and pledged that a White Paper would be published after the election.

"In our manifesto, we make clear that provision should be made for directly elected regional government to go ahead in regions where people decided in a referendum to support it, and where predominantly unitary local government is established. We believe that, if people choose to have elected assemblies, they should be about democracy, not bureaucracy", Prescott said.

The commitment is a significant step forward from the carefully-worded commitment in 1997 to investigate if the public were in favour of moving power to the regions.

The first steps towards this came with the legislation in 1999 creating Regional Development Agencies, set up to provide a strategic framework for economic regeneration for each region.

Prescott claimed on Wednesday that RDAs had secured over 35,000 jobs and invested £1 billion in regeneration projects.

He attacked the Conservative Party, which is committed nationally to abolishing RDAs and scrapping plans for regional government.

Pointing to the 150 Conservative councillors currently involved in the voluntary Regional Chambers, Prescott asked what they would think of Mr Hague's plans to abolish "everything regional".