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Former UKIP Leader Jeffrey Titford has been appointed interim leader of the Party following the resignation of Lord Pearson of Rannoch.

Mr Titford, who last led the Party from 2000-2002, was asked to take the reins by the National Executive Committee at the meeting in Torquay on the eve of the annual conference.

A new Party Leader will be appointed following a full-fledged election later this year.

UKIP MEP Mike Nattrass has today welcomed the findings of a new report which shows the M6 Toll has proved to be a costly mistake.

A new damning report published this week by the Campaign for Better Transport, says the 27-mile privately financed toll road has been bad news for the West Midlands, bad news for drivers and bad news for investors in the toll.
 
Looking at a recent Highways Agency report, reports by the Transport Select Committee and annual reports from Midlands Expressway Ltd, the Campaign for Better Transport says the toll failed to improve transport in the West Midlands and failed to deliver value for money to motorists.
 
The report’s findings come amid EU attempts to grab control over British roads and motorways and force through pay-as-you-go charges to use our roads.
 
The report states: “Toll roads are not, and will never be, a solution to congestion on British roads, no matter how attractive they may appear to cash-strapped politicians desperate to deliver otherwise unaffordable road schemes.
 
“Instead of promoting toll roads as a viable alternative to central Government money, the Department for Transport should use what little money remains in its coffers to maintain the roads we have and provide people with viable alternatives to car use.
 
“As we have seen from the M6 Toll, even a completely unregulated private sector cannot make money from toll roads. A regulated operator with fewer freedoms over the level of charges (as proposed by motoring organisations) would find it even harder to make a profit, unless supported by covert or overt taxpayer subsidies.”
 
Welcoming the report, Mr Nattrass said: “The report’s findings endorse everything I have said about the M6 Toll since it opened. The toll has been an expensive and embarrassing failure.
 
“The Toll, as the report states, has been overwhelming rejected by hauliers who instead pile onto the already congested M6.
 
“But despite this the EU wants to extend the toll motorways network under the European Electronic Toll Service Directive (EETS). It simply does not make sense.
 
“Our roads should remain in public ownership. We do not need anymore expensive failures like the M6 Toll,” he added.

Writing in Exeter's Express and Echo, UKIP MEP William Dartmouth warns of the potential wave of immigration from Turkey should they be given EU membership

When Prime Minister David Cameron  declared that he was in favour of Turkey being allowed to become a full member of the European Union it was possibly of little more than passing interest to people living  in the Exeter area or indeed the South West.

After all why should it be? The huge waves of immigration that the UK has seen over the past few years has had little or no impact on the region.Immigration, with its huge demands on schools, hospitals, housing and social services, was a problem for places like London, Birmingham or East Anglia.

Yet I firmly believe that  we in the South West should be concerned.I am not saying that tens of thousands of Eastern European immigrants are about to arrive overnight.It may not even happen for two or three years.

But it would be foolish to shrug our shoulders and believe it has nothing to do with us.

Presently Turkey has a population of nearly 80 million people. They are  the poorest nation in Europe and would have  the second highest population the EU behind Germany. Granting them full membership of the European Union would give every  Turkish citizen the right to not only come here to work but to settle with their families.

Of course not every Turkish citizen would immediately up sticks and come to live here. But remember when Poland became a member?

The Labour Government told us not to be alarmed as only a predicted 13,000 people would come here from eastern Europe. In the end the figure was well over a million.

So why should we be concerned about Turkish membership?

In the run up to the General Election few people - if any - realised what the Lib Dem policy on immigration was. Let me remind you.

It was to channel immigrants into areas of the country that had little or no immigrants. Away from the major cities and into areas where they could settle and work could be available. Places like the South West or  the Scottish Highlands.

Few people took notice because  everybody knew that the Lib Dems had no chance of gaining power.

But today - through a combinations of events, they are sharing power in a coalition government. They have not changed their  policy  on how to handle immigration.

And it is not just the threat of a wave of immigrants from Turkey. In recent weeks three EU member states, Bulgaria and Hungary have  issued millions of EU passports to their ethnic minorities living outside their own borders. People from places like Ukraine and Serbia.

Our membership of the European Union means that anybody with an EU passport has a legal right to come and  work in Britain. Our government cannot prevent it.

Today it is not politically incorrect to talk of immigration. People have accepted that it is not about race its about space. We are a small and overcrowded island and in many places social services are buckling under the strain of our open door immigration policy.

It is not too fanciful to fear that in the next year or so the Lib Dems views on immigration will hold sway within the Coalition.

Another danger for the South West in the  advent of Turkey joining the EU is that of funding. Because Turkey is so poor, with a GDP per head of around £10,000, it would qualify for huge amounts of development money at the expense of other countries and regions such as the South West.

In fact Cornwall and the Scilly Isles qualify for just over 77% of  development money as compared to Essex which is eligible for  nearly 100%.

That is why the threat to Exeter and the South West is very real. It is why dismissing immigration as a problem that somebody else will have to deal with is no longer enough.

Now is the time to let our elected representatives know that immigration  must be controlled now to avoid huge problems in the future.

UKIP has consistently opposed the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and The Extradition Act 2003.

It has done so because, unlike the Old Parties, it always understood that the criminal justice systems of many of the member states of the European Union did not measure up to the high standards set by the Common Law and other legal systems in place in the UK and that many people being haled off to face criminal proceedings in far-flung corners of the EU would so on the flimsiest of pretexts and without any Judge in the UK being able to scrutinise the evidence on which the draconian EAWs are based.

The year 2010 has seen UKIP campaigning tirelessly on the issue both at a general level and in particular cases. Thus William Dartmouth MEP engaged himself closely in the case of two men whisked off to Hungary to face investigation – not prosecution as the Extradition Act 2003 requires – and possible incarceration for years before charges were brought.

Thanks to William’s unstinting efforts the two men are now back in the UK. Then there was Gerard Batten MEP intervening in the case of Andrew Symeou who has been extradited to Greece on minimal evidence to face trial.

UKIP was also active in the case of Edmond Arapi who was tried and sentenced in absentia by an Italian Court to seventeen years imprisonment without right of appeal. Until this flawed measure is removed from the Statute Book new cases of gross injustice will fill newspapers and the airwaves every day.

Now the mainstream media are beginning belatedly  to take notice of our campaign. The Sunday Telegraph has carried a series of articles and a leader on the subject: Surge in Britons exported for trial, Arrested and held in Britain on demand of EU prosecutors, Extradition nightmare: 'When we first saw our son in jail it broke our hearts', More than 1,000 Britons were 'exported' for trial last year - and they couldn't even ask a British judge to test the case against them.

Andrew Gilligan’s Telegraph pieces reveal a shocking picture. Nearly three people a day are being spirited off to distant places to face lengthy investigations before possible trials according to standards that fall far below those which British people are used to and expect. Their use has risen dramatically in the last year: up by 51% in 2009-2010 as against 2008-2009. Gilligan cites cases which involve minor crimes where British Citizens have been extradited without consideration of the evidence to face the possibility of years on remand in foreign prisons.

Even David Blunkett, the Europhile Home Secretary who did Brussels’ bidding in introducing the Extradition Act in the first place, now has his misgivings: “I was right, as Home Secretary in the post-9/11 era, to agree to the European Arrest Warrant, but I was insufficiently sensitive to how it might be used.”

That, of course, is what comes of not listening to the sort of warnings UKIP were issuing at the time and ever since: that instead of this being used for genuinely serious crimes, it would result in British Citizens being extradited to face trial for minor matters at great expense to the British Taxpayer - resources which would be better used protecting our own Citizens against crime.

In its leader the Telegraph calls on the government to act but absolves the Coalition of any blame. This is, as you might expect, utterly misleading. The EU Directive that had Blunkett introducing the 2003 Act was steered through the European Parliament by Graham Watson MEP, a Liberal Democrat, with the unstinting support his fellow UK MEPs Lib Dems, Labour and, to their eternal disgrace, the Tories.

Only UKIP warned against it and voted consistently against it in the European Parliament. Now that its true nature is revealed we have the unedifying sight of former enthusiasts wriggling with shame and embarrassment at what they have wrought: Baroness Ludford and her crocodile tears, Graham Watson bleating on about terrorism (and just how many of last year’s 1032 were terrorists, Mr. Watson?), David Davis cravenly ducking debate with Nigel Farage on Question Time… so the list goes on.

Now that it has become evident that this Act is producing the most monstrous injustices, its former enthusiasts are suddenly discovering they were really against it all along and are leaping as hard as they can onto the UKIP bandwagon.

Since the Treaty of Lisbon came into force UKIP has had ample opportunity to observe “We told you so” as each new power-grab comes along. But this case amply demonstrates how we have been consistently ahead of the game from the word go, so often that it would fill a whole statute book to list the occasions we have got it right and the Old Parties have got it wrong. On this occasion we can thus say it again, loud and clear: “We told you so!”

Far from the Coalition backtracking on this, the inept and ignorant Theresa May is keen for the UK to opt in to the European Investigation Order which will have foreign judges sending British police on fishing expeditions for evidence in all manner of footling causes at a time when cuts mean less police for the investigation of domestic crimes. Faced with a disaster like the Extradition Act, the Europhile Tories are keen to repeat the exercise.

And when the EU passes it all in the European Parliament, May will have no choice but to ram the legislation through Westminster, revealing the impotence of the UK Parliament and government in all its tawdriness.
UKIP, as usual, will be fighting the UK’s corner in all this whilst the Watsons and Ludfords and their Europhile Tory chums are surrendering in droves to “More Europe”.