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.

Down with this sort of thing

On Thursday I will be at the Campaign for an English Parliament’s protest at the pantomime that is the regional grand committee for the West Midlands euroregion.

The regional grand committee for the east of England euroregion was a complete farce – hardly any MPs turned up to the meeting (not enough for a quorum so they couldn’t discuss anything on the agenda) and they spent 30 minutes of the 50 minute meeting debating whether to put the PA system on. The whole thing cost the taxpayer nearly £2m, the meeting in the West Midlands euroregion will also cost roughly the same amount.

This is El Gordo’s vision for the future governance of England but it’s certainly not mine. The protest will be at 6:30pm on Thursday the 8th of October at the Sandwell College campus in Smethwick.

Telford leaves city region with immediate effect

Excellent news from the West Midlands NO! campaign …

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I would love to have been a fly on the wall in Simon Murphy’s office today when he got the call from Telford & Wrekin Council announcing that they were leaving his city region quango with immediate effect.

A week ago to this day I wrote an email to the leader of Telford & Wrekin Council, Andrew Eade, after writing about the city region’s plans for independence:

Andrew,

Re: http://www.westmidlandsno.org.uk/2009/02/16/city-region-wants-independence/

You either don’t know what the city region’s plans are or you do know and either don’t understand or don’t care. Whichever it is, we should not be a part of this.

You have plenty of soothing words about how you don’t like it but you want to make sure we don’t lose out if we leave and how the city region doesn’t have any real powers. But soothing words are worth nothing because the city region will have statutory status, it will have a legal personality, it will be allowed to apply for its own money, it will be allowed to enter into legal contracts and it will be able to make statutory policy that Telford will have to abide by.

This is nothing like the benign organisation that you and others have told us the city region is. So what’s the truth Andrew? You don’t understand the city region or you’ve been lying about it?

Stuart

Councillor Eade told the Shropshire Star “I’ve always said we would stay in the City Region to try and maximise any benefits to our community”. He hasn’t always said that - prior to the last local election he said that he would pull Telford out of the city region if the Tories won. It’s taken close to two years and a lot of back-tracking for him to put his words into action.

Maybe the timing is a co-incidence, maybe the email I sent played a part in the decision to leave. Either way, it’s a big victory and further proof that Greater Birmingham the City Region of Birmingham, Coventry & the Black Country really isn’t going to turn the West Midlands into the land of milk and honey.

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