Green campaign targets ministers over cuts

Environmental campaigners are targeting senior government ministers over the potential impact of budget cuts on green schemes.

Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, Cabinet Office minister Oliver Letwin and DEFRA secretary Caroline Spelman, are top of the target list in the RSPB’s spending cuts campaign.

RSPB members have begun a series of visits to the ministers’ constituencies and erected billboards bearing the message “don’t cut the life from our countryside”.

Caroline Spelman’s Meriden constituency in the West Midlands was the first to see the billboards which were put up in roadside fields and at major road junctions.

Banners carrying the same slogan have been put up on M6 motorway bridges, in towns and in villages and will also be pulled through streets on the back of bicycles.

In his blog RSPB director of conservation Mark Avery, warned politicians that the natural environment was not the place to make swingeing cuts.

“That’s the message we are trying to get across to politicians ahead of the decisions on spending cuts which will be announced in October,” said Dr Avery.

“DEFRA’s budget amounts to just half a penny out of every pound the government spends, yet that modest investment brings huge returns in the form of wildlife, clean air and water, flood alleviation, carbon sequestration and pollination,” he said.

“Such things are beyond price and their loss would be too high a price to pay to balance the books.”

“We have also placed adverts in publications as diverse as Private Eye, the Times, Guardian, the Spectator and elsewhere.”

And Dr Avery urged people to sign up to the campaign message in its Look to the Future petition.