Shadow chancellor Ed Balls: I should have been tougher on the banks

The shadow chancellor, who worked in the Treasury for Gordon Brown before becoming an MP, acknowledged Labour's mistakes in government on a visit to the Express & Star's headquarters in Wolverhampton but stressed he would wipe the deficit out completely by 2020.

He toured the newsroom and met the newspaper's five apprentices, recruited through the pioneering Ladder for the Black Country scheme, which has created more than 300 posts for young people with 80 employers.

And he promised to look at the bid to rebuild Wolverhampton's eyesore rail station, which now only needs the green light from the next government to borrow the remaining £20m needed and pay it back using income from the car park and shops.

Asked about his own reputation amid Tory claims he and Labour 'crashed the car' on the economy, Mr Balls said: "I don't think anyone believes that I personally or the Labour government caused the financial crisis. It wasn't having too many teachers or police officers in Wolverhampton that bankrupted Lehman Brothers in New York."

And when pressed on whether it would be better to have someone new in the post of Shadow Chancellor, he said: "The thing about life is we all have different experiences through our lives. We do good things. We get involved in things that don't work out so well. That can be in your professional life or your personal life.

"Weak people don't learn. Strong people can see where they got things wrong and can do better in the future. You don't want a government run by a bunch of novices. You don't want it run by people who can never admit they got things wrong. You want it run by people who have the right values, a lot of experience and know what it is to do things right. I was very involved in us not joining the Euro. That was a really good decision. We made the Bank of England independent on interest rates. That was a good decision. When I was Education Secretary, I removed the person responsible for a council department's failings around the death of Baby P, Peter Connelly. That was a good decision. But we weren't tough enough on the banks. George Osborne told me I was too tough. I should have ignored him more than I did.

"But I've learned from that experience and that means I will be a better Chancellor in the future and I'll be a better Chancellor than George Osborne because I'm not a novice." He promised that Labour would not 'betray' England to the Scottish National Party in the event of a hung Parliament but said he believed the Coalition had short changed the West Midlands already by scrapping the £300m a year regional development agency, Advantage West Midlands. The quango was scrapped amid criticism that it did not deliver value for money.

He said: "The Tory government took a backwards step scrapping the regional development agencies.

"Advantage West Midlands didn't get everything right but scrapping it and going back to a centralised approach, it was all about bidding into London. It's the wrong way to do things. We won't scrap the new architecture. We'll keep the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership but we will hand over the powers to local communities. Issues around transport and skills, these are issues that should be decided here, rather than in Westminster.

"We're talking about a much bigger devolution. On business rates, if success delivers locally, I want that something council leaders can decide how to spend rather than the Treasury. The expertise is here and that's where the decision should be."

He added: "We're going to have a review of funding on local authorities. It's not right a place like Wolverhampton gets a second class deal. The George Osborne plan says unless you sign up to an elected area wide mayor you'll have a second class deal." Mr Balls walked through Wolverhampton city centre, accompanied by Rob Marris, former MP for Wolverhampton South West.