Patrick Jenkin's axe
Sir:
I must add a further class of Conservative to those listed by Neville Beale (Letters, 28 April) who oppose the abolition 13,f the GLC and the metropolitan counties. 't consists of the vested interest which cannot believe that it can be dispensable. ,_,w1r Reale is well aware that the Chelsea Conservative Association, of which he was °nce chairman, overwhelmingly supports the abolition of the GLC. How much more gracious it would have been if he had been Prepared to assist in bringing this about rather than merely looking to his own Partisan lobby. Mr Beale may dismiss the ov ersPencing of his tier of local government as a mere one half of one per cent of total Public expenditure but the ratepayers of terms well know its cost to them in real rms by way of precept to rates which are umready a substantial addition to their general tax burden. Moreover they can see that i they are getting precious little for t which is not already duplicated by the 17roughs or cannot be taken over by the th°r°11ghs with far closer accountability to em as the electorate.
The remarkable result of the Government White Paper, and the consideration of it by my council in Kensington and Chelsea, has been to show how little of the GLC's functions in fact should be performed on a London-wide basis. Indeed it is often the GLC's search for a more grandiose, but fundamentally unwarranted role, which has fuelled the dramatic increase in its expenditure under recent Conservative administration as well as under the notorious Livingstone regime. We Conservatives, also involved in local government at the sharp end, are confident not only that the cries of the vested interest lobby, clinging to the tail of the expensive Livingstone propaganda, will go unheeded for what they are, but also that once the GLC and the metropolitan counties have gone, they will not be missed by their residents. It is not Patrick Jenkin's razor in the dark that Mr Beale should be concerned about but the axe which the GLC and the metropolitan counties have brought upon themselves by their failure to limit their domain to providing services which are really needed.
Christopher Nickols
Town Hall, Kensington, London W8
Previous page
