Give the North its own parliament – Yorkshire Post Letters

JOHN Grogan and Timothy Kirkhope are right (The Yorkshire Post, October 23) to support devolution.

Sadly they are prey to the temptation to see counties as the natural sub-national devolved entities.

They equate Yorkshire within England to Bavaria within Germany, and I applaud their search for parallels in other countries, but they should have gone further.

Bavaria is five times the size of Yorkshire, it is one-fifth of Germany’s land mass, and it was a kingdom until fairly recently rather than a mere county.

They should have pursued their logic further; rather than a One-Yorkshire devolution settlement there should be a North devolution settlement and, within a One-North region, today’s districts, boroughs and city councils.

Counties are an awkward, albeit much-loved anachronism. We should use them for geography and history, with brown-signs welcoming people as they cross the old borders, but we should not use them as local authorities.

Think bigger! Here’s to the first meeting of the North parliament (and the Midlands parliament, the South-East parliament and the South-West parliament).

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