Ante Raised...Court case looms

Campaigners plan court battle
Sep 22 2004
By Ross Smith, The Journal

Campaigners fighting plans for an elected assembly are preparing a court action to make the Government reprint an information leaflet.

Neil Herron (pictured above), of North East Says No, intends to apply for a judicial review over what he claims are "misleading statements" in the `Have Your Say' booklet.
Meanwhile, the official North East Says No campaign wants the Electoral Commission to re-write the text on the ballot papers.

The `Have Your Say' leaflet was sent by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to every household in the North-East as part of its `Your Say' information campaign.

Last week, regions minister Nick Raynsford was forced to admit that calculations over the cost of reorganising local government in County Durham included in the leaflet were wrong. The correct figures are to be sent out again to every home in the county. But Mr Herron claims they should be distributed across the region.

And he also claims that statements claiming assembly members will be elected by proportional representation and that regional development agency One NorthEast will be answerable to the assembly rather than Whitehall are "misleading".

The draft bill says that elections will be carried out on a first past the post system, with regional members topping up the assembly to ensure it is proportionally representative.
And an ODPM policy statement says: "Central government would retain powers to ensure that assemblies and their RDAs continue to address national priorities."

But the ODPM insisted it is accurate apart from the incorrect figure for County Durham. A spokeswoman said: "We believe we have followed all the relevant guidance and been very careful to make sure things were legally watertight."

Meanwhile, NESNO chairman John Elliott has written to Electoral Commission chief Sam Younger, calling for a preamble to the referendum question to be re-written on ballot papers. The preamble, which says: "The elected assembly would be responsible for a range of activities currently carried out mainly by central government bodies, including regional economic development", was agreed in 2002.

Mr Elliott said: "We are now two years further on in the debate and it has become increasingly clear that the proposed regional assembly will in fact have very limited powers."

But an Electoral Commission spokeswoman said: "We looked at issues of intelligibility and fairness and made a number of suggestions for improvements. The Government made changes as a result and we believe that the intelligibility of the materials has improved significantly as a result of our suggestions."

Yes4theNorthEast chairman John Tomaney said: "It is important that the smoke and mirrors approach adopted by the `no' campaigns doesn't hide the important factors in this debate. The status quo is unacceptable and it is important the people of the North-East have the facts because they have a crucial question to answer."