LABOUR leader Ed Miliband today (Monday) pledged to restore prosperity to the North-East by devolving up to £30bn worth of power to local government.

Transport, skills, and economic decisions would be taken within the region to give "the power of economic development to local people" and help the region transform its fortunes, he told The Northern Echo.

With just ten days until polling day he visited the Stockton South constituency which is seen by both main parties as a key "kingmaker" seat.

Conservative James Wharton and Labour candidate Louise Baldock are battling it out for just a few hundred votes to win in a seat which had a Tory majority of 332 in 2010.

Prime Minister David Cameron visited the region earlier this month and claimed the "sun was shining on the region" with new jobs and financial growth.

But Mr Miliband said: "I think we will let the people of the North-East decide whether that is the case. David Cameron and George Osborne may be coming along and patting themselves on the back, but I think the people will have their own opinion.

"We will devolve more power, not pick and choose and give power to some areas and not others. We will devolve real economic power, skills and transport - even something as basic as regulating local bus services."

Mr Miliband unveiled his sixth election pledge at Stockton's Arc theatre - to tackle the housing crisis.

In front of an audience of Labour supporters, he pledged to build more than one million new homes by 2020 and described how he would abolish stamp duty on properties under £300,000 for first-time buyers, helping nine in ten of them.

Three-year tenancies would be introduced, with rents fixed in advance, to help private tenants, and he would fight tax avoidance by landlords using property investment schemes, which costs the economy £500m a year.

Half of all homes built in each area would be offered to people who had lived there for more than three years, helping to stop the property speculators, he said.

The Labour leader took a question from nine-year-old Leon Driscoll, from Newcastle, who asked if he thought Mr Cameron was "chicken" for avoiding a live head-to-head TV debate with his main rival. Mr Miliband said: "The offer is still on the table."

Leon's younger brother Nelson then asked him what he wanted to do when he was seven, to which Mr Miliband replied that he had hoped to be a bus conductor because, as a child, he had always been fascinated with the ticket machines on London buses.