YOUR reporter Nadia Jefferson-Brown highlights the crucial fact that one-tier local government will only be introduced if residents vote for an elected regional assembly in the autumn referendum.

Indeeed, the Deputy Prime Minister's own official pamphlet states that 'local councils will only be changed if the region has an elected regional assembly'.

However, the overarching Government intention is for change. Thus, in the Boundary Committee's booklet there is the uncompromising insistence that: "Unlike previous structural reviews... where there was an option of change or no change the committee must recommend at least two options for structural change."

This underlying assumption of change is criticised by Lancashire County Council leader Cllr Hazel Harding, who says: "People were asked to express their opinions about which new local government boundaries they would prefer. One option they weren't asked their view on was no change at all."

The reason for this gross surreptitious bias is, of course, the Government's policy of insidiously reinforcing the regions into which the EU has divided the UK.

As ever in things EU, the public has to be constantly on its guard against an endemic deception. Here it must insist on the means to register its support for our current, traditional local government.

C Francis Warren, Lancaster.