THE proposal for a Yorkshire Assembly need not, as Ron Godfrey suggests, "end in tiers." Properly organised, it may eliminate some bureaucracy, rather than add to it.

The proposed Assembly would replace the Regional Assembly for Yorkshire and Humberside entirely, as that umbrella group would be unnecessary.

Much of the work of the Regional Chamber for Yorkshire and Humberside would be part of the economic and trade functions of the Assembly. The Regional Development Agency's work would also be taken up by the new body.

The problem will be to get those in existing organisations to hand over the work to the Assembly.

Two aspects are particularly significant. First, the Assembly would be an elected body, accountable to the electorate, unlike the Regional Development Agency.

Second, Scotland has a parliament, Wales a quite different assembly.

If devolution is to come, as seems likely, the campaign for a Yorkshire Assembly may be the best way the people of the county have to influence the form of that devolution.

Without the campaign, we may at some future date be saddled with a totally unsuitable and unrealistic situation, dreamed up by a London bureaucrat and forced on us by Whitehall.

Michael Faul,

Middleton Road,

Acomb,

York.

...AS Parliament represents power without responsibility so regional assemblies must represent responsibility without power. Parliament itself will see to that.

Regional assemblies would attract precisely the kind of people who presently gravitate towards Westminster.

To believe that democracy is proportional to the number of party appointees in full-time employment is as dangerous as it is absurd.

The puppeteers would still pull the strings.

What Scots, the Welsh and the English require is the same: a national assembly which is representative of, and directly answerable to, the people of this one nation.

William Dixon Smith,

Welland Rise,

Acomb,

York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.