Paice: Government hypocrisy over soil protection
24 September 2009
On the day that Hilary Benn launches a strategy to ‘Safeguard Our Soils’ the Conservatives have revealed how the Government has weakened the protection of the country’s best agricultural land.
Shadow Agriculture Minister Jim Paice said: “It is unbelievable that Hilary Benn talks about the need to ensure that the planning system provides appropriate protection for good quality agricultural land all the while his Government is downgrading that protection.
“The importance of healthy soils is beyond question but under the Labour Government, planning protection for farmland has been undermined and many councils have been forced to remove special protection of farmland from their local plans, even though they wanted to keep it.
“Hilary Benn talks about the need to ‘safeguard our soils’ but it is the Labour Government’s policy to cover it in concrete.”