Blairs gold-plating betrays farmers


11 December 2001



Blairs gold-plating betrays farmers

By FWi staff

MINISTERS have betrayed farmers by introducing tough new rules governing the improvement of uncultivated land, claim landowners leaders.

The Country Land and Business Association (CLA) accuses Tony Blair of going back on a promise not to gold-plate EU Directives.

The Prime Minister pledged this in the Action Plan for Farming which emerged from the Downing Street farm summit in March 2000.

But on Tuesday (11 December) the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced strict measures to protect uncultivated and semi-natural areas

Farmers may be unable to plough uncultivated land and semi-natural areas without first having the environmental impact assessed.

According to the CLA, this is one of the most pernicious and overbearing regulatory approaches to the European Environmental Impact Assessment Directive.

“It is one of the clearest examples of gold-plating we have seen since the Prime Ministers most welcome Action Plan for Farming,” said CLA head of rural economy, Oliver Harwood.

The CLA says the UK has gold-plated the EU regulation by taking the widest definition of what constitutes uncultivated or semi-natural land.

And the government has ignored EU regulations that permit thresholds below which the assessment will not normally be required, claims the association.

Now the CLA fears that farmers will seek to avoid the new legislation, which is due to come into effect next February, by cultivating their land over Christmas.

Earlier this year the National Farmers Union warned that the regulations risked bringing land of little environmental value into the system.

The union called on ministers to ensure that the measures were appropriate and well-targeted.

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