EAST Lancashire peer Lord Greaves and his Tory colleague Lord Waddington have launched a fierce new attack on government plans for a delay referendum on an elected regional assembly in the North West.

Lib Dem Lord Greaves, who was re-elected to Pendle Council with his biggest ever majority under an all-postal vote, said the whole system was "a shambles."

He told the House of Lords: "One fellow who was sitting in the sun in Nelson town centre filling in ballot papers for all his family was a well-known life-long Labour supporter.

"One of our people went up to him and said 'This is how the Labour Party win elections is it?'

"He said 'We've had a family meeting. It's all right. We've all decided to vote Liberal Democrat this year.'

"It was a shambles, I am very pleased to say he was not a voter in my ward."

He criticised the Government for revealing no new facts in a statement on regional referendums given to the Commons by Local Government Minister Nick Raynsford and to the Lords by Jeff Rooker.

Lord Greaves said: "If the Government are so keen on having these referendums in Yorkshire and the Humber and in the North West, why do they not just hold them?

"Is that they think that people are so uninterested in this whole project that none of them will bother to go to the polling station?"

Former Ribble Valley MP Lord Waddington said the Government was stealthily and without any democratic mandate trying to expand the powers of regional government.

Lord Rooker rejected their claim. But Steve Machin, chief cxecutive of the North West Regional Assembly, urged a committee of MPs to forge ahead with a referendum and said proposals for a regional mini- Parliament of between 25 and 35 were too small.