Mr Sumberg made his plea after the Government announced on December 2 it is to hold a public consultation asking voters whether they would like a referendum in their own region on the question of setting up an assembly .

Mr Sumberg said it is strongly suspected that once the Government has the results of the consultation the North West will be one of the first regions to hold a referendum providing voters are in favour of the idea.

“The idea of abolishing Cumbria, Lancashire and Cheshire county councils and replacing them with a regional parliament in Liverpool or Manchester is patently absurd,’ he said. “Labour is hell-bent on taking local politics and decision making away from people making politics less democratic and more remote and irrelevant to the public.  I urge voters to kick these dangerous proposals into touch while they still can.

“Moreover it is highly perilous to underestimate the huge threat to our national sovereignty that these plans pose. Regional assemblies will only push the North West further into an integrated Europe leaving the regions to deal direct with Brussels cutting out the checks and balances of Westminster.”

Mr Sumberg warned he expects Labour's Millbank spin machine to go into overdrive in the North West in an attempt to sell the idea to voters.

"As the Scots and Welsh have found devolution has only delivered a heavy dose of very expensive disappointment,' he said. "In Scotland voters were promised the new parliament building in Edinburgh would cost a maximum of 40 million pounds. That cost has now soared to 360 million pounds and it is three years behind schedule. We do not want a repeat of that kind of fiasco here. A North West Assembly would cost taxpayers millions and would provide no more than a talking shop for another layer of politicians and bureaucrats. We cannot afford to take our eye of the ball the present county council system works. We must fight to keep it.”

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