Cheltenham MP Rallies Party Against RSS

Cheltenham MP Martin Horwood rallied his party yesterday to support his plans to protect the UK’s biodiversity and restore its natural environment.

Speaking to party conference in Bournemouth, Martin urged members to support the policy paper, Our Natural Heritage: Policies on the Natural Environment. This policy, among other measures to protect and enhance the UK’s natural environment, would scrap the controversial Regional Spatial Strategy housing targets which are threatening greenfield land around Cheltenham.

Martin said, ‘I am delighted to be moving this conference motion today. Our policy on the natural environment has been widely welcomed by conservation charities and green groups. But for Cheltenham in particular, the commitment to ditch those RSS targets is really important. Locally and nationally, you can trust the Lib Dems to protect our green spaces.

‘Our Natural Heritage also calls for tough action internationally on deforestation to tackle serious climate change. And it calls for radical reform of the remit of Ofwat so that profit is not put above people.

‘The Lib Dems have a long history of being the greenest of the political parties and this policy will strengthen our record.’

Martin Horwood has also spoken out against the big barrage option for the Severn Estuary at conference. An alternative, the much smaller ‘Shoots’ barrage, in combination with tidal reefs and lagoons has been proposed by the Lib Dem Severn Tidal Power working group, who believe it will offer environmentally sustainable energy generation.

The combination of technologies, phased over time, would enable power generation over a staggered period of time and the reefs would generate a large amount of energy with very minimal environmental damage. This proposal would provide upwards of 8% of the UK’s electricity needs.

Speaking on the motion, which was passed by the party, Martin said ‘This imaginative solution that the Liberal Democrats have proposed is a triple win. It will generate just as much electricity as the big barrage, without the environmental damage to eco-systems and because some of the elements of the proposal can start generating electricity sooner, this will cut down our carbon emissions even more than the big barrage.

‘We must of course make sure that we balance local and environmental concerns, and I believe this policy does just that. The big barrage would be an environmental disaster for the Severn Estuary’.