North-East Assembly limits their liabilities! ~ Arden Forester

Thursday, July 21, 2005

North-East Assembly limits their liabilities!

11:47 pm Arden Forester No comments

This excellent piece appeared in the Daily Telegraph about John Prescott's Regional Assembly scheming. Jobs for the boys and girls!

"An extraordinary impasse has arisen in the North-East, following the referendum last November in which voters threw out John Prescott's plan for an elected regional assembly by an overwhelming margin of four-to-one. Last week the unelected North-East Assembly, made up of councillors and representatives of local bodies, announced that it was to set itself up as a limited company under a new name. The reason publicly given for this by the Assembly's chairman, Alex Watson, was that they wished "to engage with the public better than we have done". What Mr Watson did not reveal was the real reason for this new policy. It is now more than a year since Neil Herron, the leader of the campaign against an elected North-East Assembly, uncovered the embarrassing fact that, since the unelected assembly was an unincorporated body, its members were personally responsible for all its financial obligations, including the contracts and pension rights of its employees. Between them they had thus unwittingly taken on liabilities amounting to millions of pounds.
Initially the assembly tried to deny this, but Mr Herron's point was subsequently confirmed by lawyers, including those for North Tyneside council. Since this unfortunate fact came to light, the assembly has been seeking to set itself up as a limited company, in the hope of relieving its members of this burden of personal liability. But when they tried to set up the North-East Assembly as a company, they found that Mr Herron had got there first. He had already registered that name."

What a lot of cheeky chappies they are! Talk about being economical with the truth! Engaging with the public indeed! More like "let's run a mile before they find us out". Neil Herron deserves a medal. Trouble is it won't be coming from Blair. He doesn't recommend medals for telling the truth!