Last week, I hosted a dinner with my Parliamentary colleague Shailesh Vara in the House of Commons, for some of the top businesses and opinion formers in the city.

The theme was "Building a Bigger and Better Peterborough".

The talk was largely positive although we all agreed that Peterborough's attributes were not as widely shared with the outside world as they should be and we needed to "punch above our weight" nationally.

We also agreed that the city – at times – lacked ambition but nevertheless an exciting future beckoned – with the regeneration of the city centre, the North Westgate development, a new eco estate on the South Bank, the Thomas Deacon Academy and Voyager Schools opening and the advent of the university centre on the Peterborough Regional College site.

Special Report: The future of Peterborough: Immigration in the city
The ET spotlights some of the key issues facing Peterborough as the city plans for the future.
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Do you think the Government is doing enough to to help the City?
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We are constantly told that the city's economy is booming despite some high profile job losses in the last few years – but there were lots of questions unanswered by this event.

Are we repeating the mistakes of the Peterborough Development Corporation of forty years ago?

Are we leaving a generation shut out of Peterborough's economic success?

Will the centre of our city be a gleaming showcase whilst some of the outer suburbs are "badlands"?

If things are going so well, why has the number of jobseekers allowance claimants soared in the last six years for instance?

What of the 10,630 in the Peterborough constituency on benefit – almost 4,500 of them astonishingly for more than 5 years?

What of the one in five people economically inactive? Why is our life expectancy four years less than Cambridge?

Why do local people earn less than the national average weekly wage? Why, when we have one in four of our young people not in jobs, training or education (known inelegantly as NEETS) did we at the same time issue in the city over 8,000 National Insurance numbers to European Union migrants just in the three years to March 2007 – the highest number in the Eastern Region?

Are we turning a blind eye to worklessness and welfare dependency by locals whilst importing from Eastern Europe a workforce which in some cases is badly paid, poorly housed and in many cases will not add to the long term economic viability of our area? What does that do for social cohesion?

The problem of reliance on the benefits culture is real. In some parts of the city, we have third generation families trapped in the spiral of despair and hopelessness, poor education and health, low skills, drink and drug abuse – and in some cases criminality. The terrible tragedy of the murder of Warrington dad Gary Newlove showed how family breakdown and feral behaviour can lead to appalling consequences.

The businesses at the dinner last week were keen to address these issues – with, in the jargon, corporate social responsibility. Some, such as Perkins Engines, already have in place superb schemes – such as the LEAP project to help teenagers whose schooling has been disrupted.