Letter: Shropshire Star

City proposal will mean more tax

I wonder how many residents of Telford know anything about the West Midlands city region that Michael Frater has sold us to?

It took me about a month, many phone calls and e-mails and I ended up speaking to Birmingham City Council but I finally managed to get some information on the proposal.

I didn’t get a copy of the proposal as that is to be kept secret for the next few months, presumably so that members of the public can’t give their councillors reasons to object to it.

The city region, Messrs Frater and Austin tell us, will bring us economic benefits and help us attract investment.

The blueprint for city regions produced by the UK government suggests that city regions will be able to levy business taxes. Extra taxation will encourage investment in Telford?

The economic benefits will be in the form of extra money from the UK government and EU in return for complying with regional policy.

This is nothing short of bribery and, in the case of the EU, they are bribing us with our own money!

The city region will mean higher taxes, less democracy and accountability, move more control of our daily lives away from our own democratically elected local representatives to unelected regionalists in Birmingham and the “economic benefits” are little more than bribes paid out of our own pockets.

Stuart Parr, Telford