WE need a Regional Parliament in the North West like a hole in the head.

Another layer of unnecessary bureaucracy, yet more time-servers earning unnecessary expenses, more interference in the management of business and the fracture of what remains of the United Kingdom.

Just pay a visit to the next meeting of the North West Assembly, and if you can stay awake, endure the long-winded, irrelevant and self-important wafflings of Labour and Liberal "bigwigs" with nothing better to do than pontificate about things over which they have no control and little influence.

Labour is into regional government only to assuage those people who are outraged by Tony Blair's attempts to break up the United Kingdom and re-write a so-far-unwritten constitution.

It is also a backdoor route to abolishing the County Councils, which they know they will lose next year, and for destabilising Borough Councils by introducing a so-called all-party "Cabinet" system to spike real opposition.

Unlike Scotland and Wales, the North West Region is not a country; only the arbitrary product of a civil servant's map pen. The Regional Assembly and all its hangers-on is a costly waste of time and effort, achieves nothing and should be abolished.

Sir ROBERT ATKINS (Conservative MEP -- North West), Lancaster Road, Garstang.