New Harrogate Green Party candidate blasts town's MP on support for Investment Zones

Paul Ko Ferrigno, Harrogate Green Party’s parliamentary candidate for Harrogate and Knaresborough at the next general election, claims Andrew Jones’s MP’s defence of the Investment Zones initiative is part and parcel of the Tory Party’s wider failure to deliver on the environment.

"For 12 years, Mr Jones has been faithfully toeing the Government line and trusting that things will work out for his constituents,” said Mr Ferrigno.

"They haven't. Like his Government, Mr Jones has had 12 long years to establish his green credentials, and it is on that track record that he must be judged, not some aspirational scheme that has been rushed in so quickly that councillors have not been given time to scrutinise the detail.”

Under Prime Minister Liz Truss's original plans for Investment Zones announced just a month ago, local authorities were invited to apply to host investment zones with an array of fiscal and planning changes.

North Yorkshire has already said it has applied to be included in the new initiative which would see businesses in the new zones benefit from full business rates relief on newly-occupied or expanded premises, local authorities receive 100 per cent of the business rates growth in future and new housing developments “unlocked”.

Fears that loosening planning regulations in the Investment Zones would amount to a ‘bonfire of environmental protections’ were dismissed Mr Jones, MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough.

"I will never support weakening key planning policies,” said Mr Jones at the time, “but the Government has already made clear that key protections for the environment and farming will remain."

But Harrogate Green Party’s parliamentary candidate says the new zones would inevitably put the environment at risk and were a sign of the Government and Mr Jones’s casual approach on the matter.

"All those years ago, Mr Jones' Government inherited some modest intentions in building regulation to protect the environment and our pockets from problems which were clearly foreseen but what has happened in the meantime,” said Mr Ferrigno.

"The regulations that are to be swept aside are only a 'barrier to growth' if the proposed schemes are going to be polluting or potentially harmful, and no responsible constituency MP should be supporting such schemes.

"From Cameron’s desire in 2013 to “get rid of all the green nonsense”, it’s been downhill all the way.

"It isn't even clear that these Investment Zones are needed because we haven't been told which regulations are potentially holding schemes back.

"We need better home insulation and greater investment in renewable energy.

"We need better, cheaper public transport.

"It's not regulations that hold growth back, it's backing the wrong schemes."

New chancellor Jeremy Hunt may now have scrapped many of the tax cutting measures which fed into fears over the national deficit.

But plans for Investment Zones still seem set to go ahead, albeit, perhaps, with lower tax breaks for businesses.

As concern over Government debt has grown, the Department for Levelling Up decided to delay an announcement about the details of the new scheme until the end of October.

The chatter at Westminister already suggests the generosity and scope of Investment Zones may be reduced as the Government looks to reduce public spending rather than cut taxes.