WALES: Assembly Government doesn't know its grass from its gravel - Bates

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 16th Aug 2004

The Labour Assembly Government's aim to promote development on brownfield land has been exposed as a sham by Welsh Liberal Democrat AM Mick Bates.

In a series of written questions to Carwyn Jones, the Minister for Environment, Planning and Countryside, Mr Bates has discovered that the Assembly Government does not know how much greenfield land there is in Wales, or how much has been built on in the last decade. The same is true for brownfield land.

Mick Bates, spokesman on the environment, said: "How does the Assembly Government expect to be taken seriously on its environmental policies? What kind of logic is at work which says we support development of brownfield land, but don't know how much of it there is? Or how much greenfield we have and are trying to protect.

"Carwyn Jones, the Minster for Environment, Planning and Countryside, admits that over the last ten years there has been no monitoring of how much green or brownfield land has been developed. How can we know whether the situation is getting better or worse if we have no information? It exposes Labour's policy to ridicule and proves they cannot be trusted with the environment."

Mr Bates, AM for Montgomeryshire, supports the stated policy of re-developing areas which have already been built on in preference to virgin sites. He called on the government to establish a proper definition for greenfield and brownfield land in order to give its policy a real purpose.