Funding carve-up underlines case for devolved government

I REFER to your report that Labour’s Linda MacAvan MEP and Yorkshire Liberal Democrat MEP Edward McMillan-Scott have expressed their concerns about how the cost to Yorkshire remains unclear (Yorkshire Post, May 14), as the Government has yet to confirm how the English tranche of EU funding – totalling £5.2bn – will be carved up.

South and East Yorkshire are designated as special cases by the EU due to their high levels of deprivation. It is certainly a sizeable portion of the lost £665m which would have headed to the region will go to Scotland.

Mr McMillan-Scott said: “These allocations are made on a clear statistical basis related to deprivation, and the Government seems to want to ignore that.

“We have known for a generation that Scotland has done better through the Barnett Formula than the rest of the UK. I have long argued it is unfair and unreasonable. This compounds the issue.”

Mr McMillan-Scott suggested part of the problem for Yorkshire is the lack of a regional voice negotiating on its behalf.

“All the regional government offices, and of course Yorkshire Forward, have been swept away, and there is no-one speaking for the region any more,” he said.

Scotland and Wales speak with one voice, but the North does not. It is not a satisfactory arrangement.

The Government defends the move, which it said meant England, Scotland and Wales will now each receive a five per cent cut that will affect the north of England proportionately more than it affects the south.

Business Secretary Vince Cable said: “We made a decision that we could not inflict the very large, disproportionate cuts on the devolved administrations.

“We’ve taken the view that Scotland, Wales and England should be treated equally – with five per cent (cuts) each.”

The lesson of this is that the North should have a devolved government with its own parliament in Leeds to argue for the North as the devolved administrations in Cardiff and Edinburgh argue for Wales and Scotland, respectively. As things stand, the needs of the North are masked by the comparative wealth of England as a whole.

From: James Anthony Bulmer, Peel Street, Horbury, Wakefield.

THERE is little wonder that only around 40 per cent of Yorkshire people turn out to vote in council elections, especially if they read your publication (Yorkshire Post, May 11).

Starting with the front page, we see councillors haven’t paid their own council tax, and yet the poor, on benefits will have to pay more. What about the people who pay the council tax regularly and on time? Are they the ones who pay the councillors’ wages and also contribute to the benefits system?

On the next page, the new Labour mayor of Doncaster appears to have started, along the usual lines of her Party, when her team’s costs rise by £100,000. This, when the country is in deep debt.

Following on we have the article about the disgraced DJ Jimmy Savile entertaining police officers in his luxurious penthouse flat.

From: Don Burslam, Elm Road, Dewsbury Moor, Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.

I FIND one aspect of the present political situation richly ironic. For years the standard response to advocates of PR was that it would lead to weak, feeble government to deal robustly with the endless problems.

Admittedly it did lead to largely stable government until the dreaded coalition was produced by the first past the post system! The price for this was a distorted result produced by many MPs elected by a minority of voters and the whole outcome dependent on a swing of a few thousand in a number of marginal constituencies. There were many wasted votes.

Now the situation is even more complicated with the advance of Ukip and no less than four parties able to attract a substantial vote. We have now achieved the dual result of a system producing distorted and even undemocratic results plus the inability of the major parties to attract election-winning support due to a more even distribution of votes. If you had set out to devise a bigger dog’s breakfast, you could not have done a better job!

The first past the post system has now been thoroughly discredited and the country sorely needs a change which may perhaps need to wait for the equally disastrous state of the economy to be sorted.