Let's dispense with some of the rumours and innuendo with which the No campaign has chosen to fight.

Let's look at the truth about mayors. At his recent inauguration, the mayor of Seoul declared "an all-out war on corruption". The mayor of Taipei has invited Transparency International, the anti-corruption think-tank, to open an office in the capital of Taiwan and has just set up a single-stop on-line service to "cut red tape and root out corruption". The mayor of Rome was elected on an explicitly anti-corruption platform. He is succeeding, so the people re-elected him in 1996. In Berlin in the recent election, the people threw out the right-wing CDU mayor when he was accused of corruption and elected one of the few openly gay men in German politics.

There is no research whatsoever to support the oft-repeated lie pushed by the No campaign that there are 50 corrupt mayors in the US. What we do remember are things such as the famous corruption of the North-East of the old committees, with T Dan Smith and the much more recent Doncaster fiasco, where the entire council was riddled with committee sleaze.

And why do these mayors succeed in improving their cities? Because their own political future is owed to the people in a re-election every four years. If Marc Morial in New Orleans had not cut crime and delivered public services effectively, he would not have been re-elected with 79 per cent support. If Richard Daley had not transformed Chicago in the way its citizens had wanted, ditto. These elected servants of the people have the influence and responsibility to cut through bureaucracy to make the decisions the people want to run front-line services effectively.

-Simon Fanshawe, Brighton