Chris Foote Wood bends it like Beckham

NORTH-EAST ASSEMBLY, Northern Echo

THE Government has created yet another quango, the Finance for Investment Advisory Board. It will have a chairman on £60,000-a-year for "four to six days a month", and four non-executive board members, each earning £25,000-a-year for two days a month.

There are well over 1,000 such quangos, over 100 in the North-East alone. All spend vast amounts of public money. All are appointed by government. None are accountable to the public. Each quango has its own expensive bureaucracy.

Yet these unelected, unaccountable bodies are ignored (HAS, Mar 19) by those who want to abolish the only regional body that has any democratic accountability, the North-East Assembly, whose members are elected, accountable and unpaid.

The assembly gives powers of scrutiny and regional planning not only to local councils, but also to business and community organisations who make up 30 per cent of its membership.

For the first time ever, there is a genuinely open and democratic public debate about the Regional Spatial Strategy (the fancy name for regional planning). Without the Assembly, this debate would not be taking place and decisions would once more be made in secret.

Coun Chris Foote-Wood, North-East Assembly LibDem Leader