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Mr Brown went to Stevenage to talk about making communities stronger and tackling anti-social behaviour.

But it was his candidness about the future of the which was striking.

Everyone is agreed that whoever wins the election will have to make some very tough spending decisions.

normally ducks this question but he admitted to ´óÏó´«Ã½ Look East that there would be some pain ahead.

"It means public sector pay will rise more slowly, it will also mean that the less urgent and less priority services will have to take a back seat while at the same time we ensure that frontline services improve," he said.

But he remains optimistic about the future: "As the economy grows we'll see more jobs developing in the economy. They will not be in the same areas as we have seen in the past but there'll be huge opportunites.

"In this region we have many pharmaceutical companies and I can see the expansion of bio-science probably doubling the number of jobs in the next 10 years.

"We've also got in this this region some of the low carbon industries of the future and we reckon that round Britain around 400,000 will be created. So the jobs may be different but the job opportunities will be there."

Although Mr Brown accepts that there will be tough times ahead in the long term, he believes there'll be more gain than pain.

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