NEW SOUTH WEST SELECT COMMITTEE BRANDED A FARCE

8.43.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sun 13th Jul 2008

New proposals drawn up by the government to provide for House of Commons Select Committees for each region of England have been branded a farce by a South West MP.

Somerton & Frome MP David Heath has called for a re-think, as proposals for the select committee for the south west, which will scrutinise all government activities in the government region, from Gloucestershire to the tip of Cornwall, were revealed. The new committee of MPs will

*Have just ten members, which means not every part of the south west will be represented

*Have the same party political composition as the House of Commons as a whole, which means a region dominated politically by Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will have six Labour members, three Conservatives and just one Liberal Democrat

*Have members who represent constituencies which are not even in the region at all, just to make up the Labour Party numbers

The proposals are contained in a report from the Modernisation Committee published today called "Regional Accountability". The report was only agreed on the casting vote of the Chairman, government minister Harriet Harman, when opposition members voted against.

Mr Heath, who has put down a motion to the Commons today strongly criticising the arrangements, said:

"I'm all for greater accountability. A properly constituted select committee would have enabled us to look properly at what happens in the West Country. But a committee stuffed full of Labour members, some of whom, given that government ministers and their aides won't qualify, will not come from the region and therefore won't have any genuine interest. This simply reduces the whole thing to a farce.

Of course I resent the fact that the sixteen Liberal Democrat members in the region will have just one place on the committee. If, for example, that place was filled by one of the three Somerset Liberal Democrat members that would mean Cornwall was not represented at all. How can that properly reflect the south west?"