YOU have reported the intention of Devon County Council, with all-party support, to appeal to the Lord Chancellor against the closure of Tavistock Magistrates' Court.

Last month, I wrote to the Lord Chancellor expressing local Conservatives' strong opposition to the measure. Last week, I received a reply from Jane Kennedy MP, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Lord Chancellor. She has laid the responsibility for the closure firmly on the Magistrates' Courts Committee.

In the same letter she accepts that the government demanded 'efficiency savings' of three per cent for magistrates' courts.

She has also denied that it is government policy to encourage the centralisation or amalgamation of courts in rural areas. On the other hand, she says, one way of 'modernising and improving' the service would be to transfer the work to bigger, better equipped centres and there is a requirement to obtain best value.

Finally, she states that the Human Rights Act, which the government brings into force in October, will create obligations to provide additional facilities, with the implication that smaller courts may be unable to match them. Your readers may work out what all that means. The writing is on the wall for smaller magistrates' courts.

New Labour neither cares nor understands that you cannot go on stripping away the institutions and administrative centres from a country town without, ultimately, reducing it to a dormitory. That is the fate that awaits us under a New Labour Government.

Geoffrey Cox

Conservative spokesman

West Devon and Torridge