Select Committee on Office of the Deputy Prime Minister

Here's something to keep an eye on. It's the Committee on the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister:

The ODPM Committee was appointed by the House of Commons on July 13th 2005. Its purpose is to scrutinise the work of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister: Housing, Planning, Local Government and the Regions.

Here's a little snippet of something the committee came up with after the referendum in the North East produced an overwhelming majority of 78% against the establishment of an elected assembly:

Once the electorate had spoken, it was tempting, just to abandon our scrutiny of the draft Bill [on elected regional assemblies]. However, we do not believe devolution will go away. It will return to the agenda. We would go further and argue that with the powers already conferred on unaccountable regional bodies there is a democratic deficit and with the existing devolution of powers and resource allocation to Scotland, Wales and Greater London, devolution in England must be addressed.

We all know what they mean by devolution in England and it has nothing to do with devolution for England.

Posted by John at August 15, 2005 12:07 PM | TrackBack