I read your article about regional government (Ledbury Reporter, April 19) with a great deal of sadness.

Once again the Conservative Party and in particular its local chair has completely missed the point, and are trying to mislead the general public with scaremongering.

The Tories are saying they don't want regional government. Well I've got news for them, regional governing already exists!

No one is going to dispute that large sums of money are spent in our region, nor that decisions are made on our behalf, decisions that we don't always like or agree with. But, and this is the crucial point, the regional governing we have at present is unelected, unrepresentational, undemocratic, unknown and unanswerable. In a word quangos.

We are governed in the West Midlands by over 60 of these secret bodies. Appointed by a centralised Whitehall who wishes to keep power for itself.

In a devolved West Midlands regional government, quangos would be swept away. Their powers and finances would be taken over by the elected assembly, the members of which you would vote for, who would be answerable to you and who would have your interests at the top of its agenda.

Unfortunately, the Tories don't like the idea of local democracy. People do silly things with it, like getting better education, better policing, better social care and better health provision. You only have to look at Scotland and Wales since devolution to see that and is it a coincidence that there are very few Conservative SMP's or Assembly members? I think not.

Mike Dixon, Leominster Liberal Democrat campaign development officer, Warbler Place, Kidderminster.