WEST Devon?s Conservative parliamentary spokesman this week urged residents in the borough to reject moves towards regional government.
Launching a ?Don?t Dump Devon? campaign along with West Devon Borough Council?s Conservative group leader Dick Eberlie, Geoffrey Cox said the Government?s local funding proposals would siphon off precious resources from rural areas to urban regions, relegating boroughs like West Devon to ?second class status?.
Mr Cox claimed the Liberal Democrats had done ?absolutely nothing? about the relegation of rural areas.
He said: ?Now the Lib Dem?s answer is to support Labour?s plans for the federation of England into regional governments.?
He said the Government?s plans to shift power away from county councils would mean power would be removed from local people.
He said: ?West Devon would be controlled from Bristol or Swindon with little chance of making its voice heard. It would herald the break-up of England into artificial regions, produce damaging rivalry and horse-trading between the regions and be a recipe for disaster as the big metropolitan areas dwarfed rural concerns and called the shots.?
And Mr Cox urged people to support their local councillors, whatever their political persuasion, who worked so hard for their local communities.
?I know from working with them that our councillors in West Devon champion our local interests with practical solutions such as their Charter for the Rural Economy, which was later adopted and copied all over the country.
?They have fought John Prescott?s imposition of hundreds more homes on green fields in the Tavistock area, which would be unlikely to be occupied by local people and they have worked to bring to Okehampton the new facilities and infrastructure it needs to support new development,? said Mr Cox.
?This is typical of the active and constructive approach of our local councillors to tackling the grave problems we have had locally in recent years.
?Let?s give them all the encouragement we can, not denigrate their efforts by trying to replace them with another layer of full time professional politicians for whom the poor old taxpayer would have to pay through the nose.?