LABOUR members in the North-East got the chance to question the five leadership candidates on the big issues facing the party on Saturday.

More than 450 members of party branches throughout the region attended the event at the Great North Museum, in Newcastle, to hear from South Shields MP David Miliband, his brother Ed, former Children, Schools and Families Secretary Ed Balls, former Health Secretary Andy Burnham, and Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP Diane Abbott.

The event, which was hosted by Chris Lloyd, deputy editor and political editor of The Northern Echo, was one of a series being held around the country before the ballot in September.

Concern about reconnecting with the grassroots party and fighting spending cuts were among the big concerns voiced by the candidates.

Bookies’ favourite David Miliband told one questioner that New Labour lived on in its achievements such as “every new school, every new hospital and every person who receives the minimum wage”.

But after admitting there had been mistakes, such as the 10p tax fiasco, he said: “We need a different politics rooted in people’s lives.”

He also told the audience that he could fire the public’s imagination, unite the party and be a credible leader who could take on David Cameron at the dispatch box.

Andy Burnham hit out at the plans to scrap the £464m Wynyard Park Hospital for Teesside, which he had approved as health secretary, saying: “There is no case for scrapping the project.”

Ed Miliband, David’s younger brother, said the spending cuts were ideologically driven and would hit the poorest people and the weakest regions hardest.

“They are trying to undo the extra public spending that Labour did in 13 years in just five years.”

Diane Abbott warned that spending cuts would be particularly damaging for the regions and would cost jobs in private firms that have contracts with the public sector.

“They want to cut parts of the public sector, never to return.

It is ideologically driven,”

she said.

There was support from the candidates for the regional development agency, One North East, which could fall victim to the cuts.

Ed Balls said that the agency was the best at leading economic development and that Labour would have to make the case for government taking an active role in guiding activity.

He also voiced his concern that the planned Free Schools could lead to the return of selective education by the backdoor