The Tories and the Lib Dems both pledged to boycott Gordon Brown's regional grand committees so I called the offices of the five Shropshire MPs over the last couple of days to ask if they would be attending the regional grand committee in Smethwick on Thursday.
- Daniel Kawczynski will definitely not be attending the meeting, approves of the Tory boycott and opposes regionalisation.
- Owen Paterson is giving a speech to the Tory Party conference and won't be attending the committee.
- Mark Pritchard's secretary in his constituency office doesn't have access to his diary and his Westminster office has yet to reply to an email.
- David Wright has yet to return my call (although he has been sending me Twitter messages all day).
- Philip Dunne will be attending the committee as he has been instructed to attend by the party whip.
Tory Party conference follower and English Parliament supporting blogger,
Man in a Shed, put the following update on
Twitter today:
Abolishing Labour's regional government gets the loudest clap so far
How much applause would the announcement have got if the delegates knew that the whips were ordering their shadow cabinet members to attend regional grand committees despite a public pledge to boycott them?
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