YOUR anonymous correspondent last week asked why we have got regional assemblies in England. The answer is starkly simple.

Forget the spurious rationalisations about efficiency and local decision making, we have regionalisation simply and humili-atingly because the European Union says we must.

The regions approximate to EU election constituencies and each has its own Regional Development Agency created in 1999 with a fully staffed office in Brussels. And, by EU law, each maintains direct contact with the commission.

Each promotes its region as if it were a country and the regionalisation process continues relentlessly disuniting our once United Kingdom. Currently it is the fire and rescue services next in line, as your correspondent will know, is the police service.

In dealing directly with Brussels, the regions deliberately by-pass Westminster while power continually haemorrhages from Westminster to Brussels. As a result, our world economic policy is no longer in our own hands. We have to watch an unelected EU Commissioner present a policy which has been created in the Council of Ministers where our elected ministers are no longer answerable to us because the meetings are in secret with no minutes published.

Similarly there are plans for an EU Foreign Minister in place of our own. The argument that that gives us extra strength is nave in the extreme, especially when Qualified Majority Voting in which we have a 9 per cent stake is intended to be the norm.

C Francis Warren, Lancaster.