Kwasi Kwarteng denies plans to relax environmental rules in push for growth
Kwasi Kwarteng has tried to play down concerns that ministers plan to tear up a series of environmental regulations in their push for growth, after a furious backlash from wildlife and green groups.
“We’re not going to relax environmental rules,” the UK chancellor told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg show, arguing the only aim was to reduce red tape.
“What the prime minister and I are focused on is the process. Too often in this country the process just takes too long. It doesn’t mean that you change the standards, but the process of the paperwork and actually getting consents is taking too long. And that, as you’ll appreciate, is an obstacle to growth.”
It remains to be seen whether Kwarteng’s assurances will reassure campaign groups which have reacted with anger to the apparent intention – unveiled in Friday’s unofficial budget on Friday – to loosen environmental rules in 38 proposed low-regulation “investment zones”.
Some have also expressed alarm to the apparent plan, revealed by the Observer, to scrap a post-Brexit scheme devised by the former environment secretary Michael Gove that would have paid farmers and landowners to enhance nature.
The Environment Land Management Scheme could be replaced by a plan to simply pay landowners a set yearly sum for each acre of land they own.
In a forcefully worded statement posted on Twitter on Friday, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in England said plans for changed rules in investment zones “potentially tears up the most fundamental legal protections our remaining wildlife has”.
It said: “Make no mistake, we are angry. This government has today launched an attack on nature. As of today, from Cornwall to Cumbria, Norfolk to Nottingham, wildlife is facing one of the
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