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'Regional rule by back door' blast
A new regional select committee for the North West will be a "hugely expensive bureaucratic talking shop", it was claimed today.
Lancashire MP Nigel Evans accused ministers of "bringing in regional government via the back door", after the Commons narrowly backed plans to set up eight regional select committees, including one in the North West, at a cost of 2m.
Bodies including the North West Regional Development Agency, the Learning and Skills Council, Strategic Health Authority, Highways Agency and Sport England will all be scrutinised by the committee of MPs sitting six times a year.
Leader of the Commons Harriet Harman said the committees, which would be made up of nine MPs, were needed to "plug the accountability gap".
She has described regional quangos as "big regional beasts" whose directors and chief executives were "regional masters of the universe – with huge budgets."
The new committee was today welcomed by Chorley Labour MP Lindsay Hoyle who said: "I am very pleased. It's something I have been campaigning on since 1997.
"It the best way to make ministers and quangos accountable to Parliament."
But during heated scenes in the Commons a controversial move to pay the chairmen of the new select committees an extra 14,000 a year was rejected by just two votes.
Today Ribble Valley Tory MP Nigel Evans slammed the plans as a waste of money.
He said:"I quite frankly think it is going to be hugely expensive, bureaucratic rubbish. It will be a talking shop."
He and other Conservative MPs believe the government will use the new committees to resurrect the idea of regional government.
The policy was left in tatters after the North East voted against plans for a directly elected regional assembly in a referendum in 2004.
Mr Evans said: "They are trying to get this up and running in order that they do not have to have an English Parliament. It is grossly undemocratic."
Tory former Cabinet minister John Redwood added: "What part of 'no' do you not understand following the referendum result in the North East on elected regional government?
"The people of England do not want to be Balkanised and regionalised at their expense."
A Tory-led move to allow only regional grand committees to be set up was rejected by 250 votes to 233.
MPs voted by 254 to 224 to go ahead with the regional select committees and grand committees for the North West, Yorkshire and Humber, East Midlands, East of England, North East, South East, South West and West Midlands.
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Weather for Preston
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Light sleet
Temperature: 2 C to 3 C
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