Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Bruce Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

What Ministers, I am sure, are doing, as I have done, is refamiliarise themselves with a huge amount of evidence going back over seven years. For instance, I have provided to the Leveson inquiry all the evidence I can find of meetings with press editors, proprietors and the rest going back to December 2005. There is a huge amount of information preparation, which I think is entirely appropriate.

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

Q7. My constituency has a high recycling rate—the best in the north-west—so does the Prime Minister believe it right for a huge waste-burning incinerator to be built there? The incinerator was rejected by the local planning board, is overwhelmingly opposed by my constituents in Middlewich and would involve transporting lorry-loads of waste hundreds of miles across the country. Will he do what he can to prevent an inappropriate development that surely cannot be called environmentally sustainable or an example of true localism?

[The Prime Minister]

I completely understand my hon. Friend’s concern; she is right to raise this issue and I can understand her disappointment that the local planning board’s decision was appealed against. As she knows, however, appeals against a decision on such a planning application can be made to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. She can make her views clear. It would be inappropriate to prejudge any decision that he might take, but obviously there is a need to take into account the size and scale of any proposed development and to consider the potential effect on any local community. I am sure that she will want to make those points.