CPRE: Starmer is wrong to block legal challenges to major infrastructure projects
Responding to Kier Starmer’s plans to block legal challenges to major infrastructure projects, Roger Mortlock, CPRE chief executive, said: ‘The government should bring people together to tackle the climate emergency, not set them against each other with tired, divisive language.
‘Campaigners bringing legal challenges only do so because they think the law is being broken. Allowing judges to block these concerns as ‘totally without merit’ is anti-democratic and, when it comes to the climate crisis, dangerously short-sighted.
‘Climate change is the single biggest threat to the countryside. It’s clear we’ve got to build a clean energy grid fit for the future but the best way to achieve this is with local communities involved from the start.
‘The UK could learn from countries such as Ireland and Australia, which involve communities in decision making from the beginning, reducing the need for lengthy and expensive legal processes without eroding democracy. For everyone’s sake, we should be building consensus, not dismissing people with real ideas and solutions as “blockers”.’