Another day, another Tory broken promise

A year ago, almost to the day, the Conservatives promised to abolish all regional quangos.

• Unelected Regional assemblies – abolish
• Select Committees for the English regions – abolish
• Regional housing quangos – abolish
• Regional planning quangos – abolish
• Regional spatial strategies and housing targets – abolish
• Targets and surveillance of Councils by Whitehall and regional government – abolish
• Many of the specific grants – abolish – to be replaced by general grant
• Council Tax capping - abolish

Today?  Another broken promise.

This morning the Western Morning News was reporting a Tory U-turn over their promise to abolish Regional Development Agencies, followed quickly by Regeneration Renewal (majority owned by Tory Lord Heseltine) issuing a clarification from Caroline Spelman and Ken Clarke: Regional Development Agencies will be abolished and replaced with local development agencies formed by local authorities which may or may not be formed on a regional basis.

But what about the rest of the regional quangos?  The unelected regional assemblies?  Select committees for English regions?  Regional housing and planning quangos?

There was a long-standing Tory promise to abolish the unelected Regional Assemblies but Labour stole their thunder with that one and they're already going.  And the rest of them?

In a “Q&A” section at the bottom of the letter, the pair insisted they did not want to scrap regional agencies, saying: “We want to reform the system, not scrap it.”

- Birmingham Post

Broken promise after broken promise, that's all we get from Devious Dave and the dishonest Tories.  The promise to abolish regional quangos was unequivocal, what the Tories actually stand for is not.