Regional quangos must go

Last Thursday bureaucrats from Birmingham came to Shrewsbury to learn what local people think of their plans to impose on Shropshire the largest share of new pitches for gypsies and travellers of any county in the West Midlands.

This provides a parable of the practical realities of the legacy of New Labour on the day-to-day lives of people in rural areas.

A regional body, lacking any direct democratic accountability, has decided it knows best how to deal with a difficult problem: dump it on the county with the most space, the smallest population, few of whom vote Labour, since fewer people will complain.

Providing sites for gypsies and travellers is a deeply sensitive issue. Local authorities are best placed to balance the need to find appropriate places for travelling people to live with the housing needs of the settled population.

More broadly, the Labour experiment in expanding the power of regional bureaucracies has been staggeringly expensive. The combined cost of the unelected regional assemblies, the Regional Development Agencies and Government Offices for the Regions is now £12.8bn a year - some £580 per household per year. This cost is equivalent to the doubling of Council tax revenues across Britain under Labour, or 4p on the basic rate of income tax.

A Conservative Government will abolish unelected regional planning bodies and hand their powers back to local councils. The top-down Soviet-style system will be scrapped. Instead locally accountable people will be given back the right to decide on issues that affect their local residents, including the number and location of pitches for gypsies and travellers.