Is London taking our jobs? That’s a question raised this week by a major report on Britain’s cities. This new research shows what a gap there is between London and elsewhere.

In the two years between 2010 and 2012 the data suggest that London accounted for 80 per cent of national private sector jobs growth, whilst Britain’s next nine largest cities created only 10 per cent of all new private sector work.

London gained 216,700 jobs, Manchester 13,200.

There is no ‘city’ in East Lancashire. Our bid for city status was turned down in the 1990s. Despite this, I guess we should all be flattered this report includes both Blackburn and Burnley in its definition of a city.

Some of the report, however, makes less than flattering reading for our area.

Burnley is a ‘city’ with amongst the lowest proportion with ‘high’ qualifications (e.g. degrees); Blackburn with a high proportion of those with no qualifications.

We also had an ‘employment rate’ amongst the lowest in the country – at around 65 per cent. Though the good news here is that this level has grown (up from 61 per cent in a year), whilst some comparable areas have gone backwards.

Little in this report is new. East Lancashire’s situation continues to reflect its industrial history – of having to run very fast indeed to compensate for the collapse of the cotton industry.

Compared to cities, for example, of America’s ’rust belt’, East Lancashire has done surprisingly well to reinvent itself.

But we have to do better still – as this report suggests.

One fundamental is improved rail services, so that it’s much easier to commute into Manchester. This is why I’ve been relentless in arguing for investment on the Blackburn/Bolton corridor.

Another, even more important, is the expansion of high quality university places in our area. So many well-qualified youngsters stay in the cities where they took their degrees.

For sure, our future economic health depends above all on the private sector. But the more we widen the intellectual base of the area, the healthier that will be.