RIBBLE Valley MP Nigel Evans has called for the historic Lancashire County Council to be clearly marked on Ordnance Survey Maps.

He is alarmed that there is a suggestion that the old county boundaries are to be dropped from this definitive description of the UK's geography.

And the Tory MP wants the full original County Palatine -- including Manchester, Liverpool and the Furness Peninsula marked on the maps.

He is one of the sponsors of a Commons Motion asking ministers to direct the Ordnance Survey "properly to mark the boundaries of the historic counties on its maps, to produce regulations that the boundaries of all the historical counties are clearly marked by appropriate boundary signs at the places where they cross major highways, to amend local government terminology so that the word 'county' as it applies to local government areas is amended to the more appropriate phrase 'administrative county' and to return the ceremonial office of Lord Lieutenant to the areas of the historic counties."

Mr Evans said that the ever-changing local government framework of Britain was becoming divorced from the history and public understanding of people.

He said that historic counties were the only choice for a proper geographical framework of the nation.