Regional Government?
February 9, 2009 12:00 PM
By David Chappell
By David Chappell
Responding to Ian Smith's letter of 6th February I have to say this is typical of UKIP's upside down way of looking at things.
Europe does not cost us anything it saves us money. Nearly every regulation passed in Brussels's these days strips away red tape and bureaucracy. Look at the Working Time Directive. In Holland this directive takes up one page of legislation. In the UK Whitehall civil servants managed to stretch it out to 42 pages. The problem is Whitehall not Brussels, who employ less civil servants than the whole of Birmingham.
The Government will not give us back the Vat Receipts and other monies it sends to Brussels if we were not in the EU. It would keep it for themselves for more Whitehall spending on databases and ID cards and other ineffective projects.
The European Union forces the UK government to spend money on the regions, and throughout the EU regions have real powers to make local decisions. It is the UK government that drags its heels over allowing local people to spend money on local priorities. It is the UK government that delays and hinders local accountability for regional policy and decisions.
Who does UKIP want to decide regional policy if we don't have regional assemblies? The North did, quite rightly, vote against a Northern Regional Assembly. Not because they did not want one, but because they recognised the government was proposing a 'neutered powerless assembly' without the regional powers that have made the Scottish and Welsh Assemblies so successful in implementing local needs such as Free Care for the Elderly and Scrapping Student Fees.
The government are going to continue governing the regions through their regional offices and their 'Development Agencies.' UKIP are right however in highlighting that these bodies need to be democratically accountable, and the current system of local councils and political parties electing their representatives rather than the public electing them directly is not a satisfactory state of affairs.
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