A plan to launch a new independent inquiry into the Bradford riots was today labelled a waste of time and money.

The city's MPs said it was time for action and not more words as a special scrutiny committee prepares to meet tomorrow to decide what type of probe should be launched into July's devastating riots and how much it is likely to cost.

It will be December before the inquiry can be launched as the Council's executive committee has to sanction the recommendations.

The move comes five years after the Bradford Commission inquiry into the Manningham riots. That inquiry took 18 months to complete, was launched in a blaze of publicity, and then gathered dust on a shelf.

Today Lord Ouseley, who co-ordinated a report into the district's race relations at the same time as the riots, said the answers to moving the city forward were already out there.

"It is now up to somebody to take it by the scruff of the neck and do something," he said.

But he said there was nothing wrong with getting information on the background to the disturbances.

Tomorrow's scrutiny committee - which meets at 4pm in public at City Hall - will also consider setting up a youth assembly to involve young people in decision making.

But the inquiry plan was criticised as a useless exercise by Khadim Hussain, a member of Bradford Council for Mosques' executive.

Mr Hussain claimed nothing had happened following the major Commission report into the last riots in 1995.

He said he feared an action plan following July's disturbances, where more than 300 police officers were injured, may never surface.

"We have had people sitting down in committees before. They have a cup of tea, look at the recommendations and nothing happens. We still have problems of children's under achievements in education and young people still can't get jobs," he said.

And Bradford North MP Terry Rooney said: "It is a waste of time and money to commission another study. We should get on now and do something."

Gerry Sutcliffe MP for Bradford South agreed: "It is time for action and not words."

But Councillor Chris Greaves, chairman of the special scrutiny committee, said the inquiry was a major step forward.

"This has to work. Bradford won't get a third chance to get it right," he said.

"We hope this committee will be a catalyst for things happening.

"I think it is very, very important to get it right. A quick fix solution isn't going to work. It is important that it should be done properly."

Coun Greaves said he wanted the committee to make regular detailed reports to the Council's other committees.

"But I would like to see it listed as an important matter in its own right and not just any other business on agendas, because it is vitally important."

Councillor Ian Greenwood, leader of the Labour group, who initially called for a scrutiny committee to be set up to look at the riots, said: "We have to look for a strategy and look at the underpinning causes of the problems." But he said there was also a need for action.

And former Tory Lord Mayor Councillor Stanley King, a member of the new scrutiny committee, defended its remit.

He said the commissioned study would be brief and to the point.

"We are keenly aware that nothing happened with the last report commissioned to look into the riots," he said.

"This time we will be getting on with things and we won't be taking lots of time re-inventing the wheel. We have a short time-scale because we have to report to the executive committee in December."

Council leader Councillor Margaret Eaton said: "We, too, want action not just words.

"That is the reason why we have agreed our own action plan on the Ouseley report which is now being dealt with by a team of dedicated officers."

The scrutiny committee will deal separately with the Ouseley report by a team headed by the former chairman of the Commission for Racial equality which found a divided and fearful city.

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