Green Boost For Liberal Democrats As Richard Burt Heads For Conference

11.11.00am BST (GMT +0100) Fri 14th Sep 2007

Liberal Democrats from West Worcestershire have welcomed the results of an audit of policies of the three main political parties that shows Ming Campbell's party as the best for the environment.

The audit was carried out by a group of major environmental organisations, including Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, the National Trust, the RSPB, the Woodland Trust and WWF-UK.

It awarded the parties "green lights" according to how green their policies were. The Conservatives scored zero, Labour one and the Liberal Democrats three.

Speaking at a meeting of Liberal Democrat members about the forthcoming party conference in Brighton, West Worcestershire's Lib Dem Parliamentary Candidate, Richard Burt said the verdict of the green groups was a great boost for the party.

"This audit has confirmed what we have been saying here for many years," said Richard Burt. "Liberal Democrats are leading the battle of ideas for protecting the environment and cutting the pollution people cause.

"Following our recent constituency wide environment survey, delivered to households across West Worcestershire, I will be presenting the final report and recommendations to Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, Chris Huhne MP, who helped launch our local campaign with a public meeting in Pershore last autumn.

"The report highlights the importance of the environment to residents in West Worcestershire and proposes practical steps for local councils and government to achieve the Liberal Democrat target of a zero carbon Worcestershire and a zero carbon Britain by 2050.

"The two Tory John's - John Redwood and John Gummer are locked into a battle about whether the Tories should build more motorways or less, build more runways or reduce air travel and cut taxes or introduce green taxes, that would be more worthy of a Bird and Fortune comedy sketch.

"By contrast, our party offers a clear commitment to the most far reaching set of proposals on climate change ever championed by a major British political party.

"At our conference next week we will be debating plans that will put us even further ahead of Labour and the Conservatives. These include plans to shift more people from domestic flights to a greatly improved high speed rail system.

"And we will discuss our plans for cutting income tax by 4p in the pound to 16p, paid for by shifting more of the tax burden onto pollution."