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The members of quangos responsible for nearly a quarter of all public spending are "grotesquely unrepresentative" of England, a think-tank says.

The New Local Government Network found that more quango members live in four London boroughs than the whole of the North of England.

It says quangos are responsible for spending more than £123bn a year.

The government says that people appointed to quango boards are chosen on merit alone.

The New Local Government Network looked at 1,000 quango members and found that over half live in London and the south-east of England.

Many major cities outside the South East, such as Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, are under-represented, it says.

And about 20 areas, for example Blackpool and Swindon, are not represented at all.

Quangos are bodies such as the Environment Agency and the Student Loans Company, that are run at arms-length from central government, although they receive and spend taxpayers' money.

The report's author Chris Leslie said: "This highlights the scale and power held by quangos and the areas of the country who have the greatest sway over this power.

"While London and the counties immediately surrounding it are home to over half of all quango board members, there are in contrast, vast swathes of England with apparently no voice on our public bodies."

"We suspect that the poorer the area you live in, the less likely you are to climb to the heights of quango board membership."

Matthew Elliot from the Taxpayers' Alliance pressure group said the research showed that "quangos are utterly unaccountable, and run by unrepresentative and over-privileged bureaucrats."

My, that Matthew Elliot's a perceptive chap, isn't he?

The solution to this is certainly not an English Parliament. Like the once-proposed regional assemblies. that would be a body firmly in the Blairite tradition, and just look at the devolved bodies in Scotland, Wales and London (which last still contains ten times as many quango members as Borough Councillors Assembly Members and the Mayor put together) to see what that would mean.

No, we need the restoration of the proper powers both of Parliament and of local government, and the reconstitution of both as genuinely representative.