Stretford & Urmston by-election candidate opposes plans to develop wildlife haven | Rejoin EU Party

The Rejoin EU Party’s candidate in tomorrow’s Stretford & Urmston by-election, Jim Newell, has announced his opposition to controversial and potentially damaging plans to develop Carrington Moss.

Carrington Moss is a large area of peatland used for farming and leisure and features a number of nature reserves. In 2016, the 10 local councils in Greater Manchester unveiled a framework plan including proposals to develop 11,500 homes and industrial units on the land. Although the plans have since been reduced, with 169 hectares of green-belt land set to be lost compared to some 300 previously, plans for a new road remain, as do plans for warehousing, logistics and similar development. We’ve known for decades that new roads do little more than encourage more people to drive on them.

Campaigners against the plans, including Friends of Carrington Moss, say they’re environmentally unsustainable, conflict with climate-change objectives and will increase congestion, besides significantly reducing amenities for visitors and local residents.

Jim said: “I oppose the plans and am sorry Labour’s candidate in this election appears to support them despite its many promises, in the last election campaign, not to build on green-belt land. I recognise we have a housing shortage, which affects young people particularly badly, but I note Friends of Carrington Moss have identified brownfield sites and I particularly applaud their efforts to offer alternative proposals.

“The proposed developments again highlight that conservation and climate-change targets can’t be achieved fairly without addressing inequality, on which Labour has become notably weak since Keir Starmer became leader. We must take climate change seriously and reject policy approaches based on assumptions about ever-increasing growth: our problem, as a society, is not that we don’t have enough material wealth, but rather that the wealth we do have is so badly distributed.”

Carrington Moss is an issue central to seeking to re-join the EU. After the Covid pandemic, the EU broke new ground in developing a recovery plan – “NextGenerationEU” – strongly linked to the need to fight climate change. Among other things, the plan for the first time involves creating joint public debt at union level — and thus a solidarity mechanism to share debt between member states — while earmarking 30% of the funds made available for member-states’ projects to achieve the green transition. It therefore includes funding for schemes to protect natural habitats such as Carrington Moss.

Moreover, it seems likely Trafford Council would have had to consider alternative ways to increase housing and jobs, had the UK stayed in the EU. This is because EU legislation makes member states ensure accounted greenhouse gas emissions from land use, land-use change or forestry are balanced by at least an equivalent accounted removal of CO2 from the atmosphere between 2021-2030.

At Labour’s 2021 annual conference, the party bureaucracy blocked a motion by members backing a Green New Deal (apparently on a technicality).

Jim said: “This again suggests Labour’s leaders can’t be trusted on climate and that its supporters would do well to rebel in the by-election by supporting the Rejoin EU Party’s progressive alternative. Unswerving loyalty to a party merely allows its leaders to take positions its supporters disagree with.”