DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Blighting our inexperienced and nice land

The Green Belt was introduced nearly 70 years ago to protect the countryside around large towns and cities from urban sprawl.

Not every acre has been sacrosanct since, but the principle has held firm. Until now.

Under its controversial planning reforms, the Government is ordering councils to reclassify parts of the Green Belt for residential and commercial use.

While ministers say this will mainly be limited to disused car parks and scrubland – the so-called ‘Grey Belt’ – critics warn it is just the start of a war on rural England.

With Labour’s contempt for the countryside, who’d be surprised if – in its drive to build 1.5 million homes – countless fields are eventually tarmacked, hedgerows grubbed up and meadows concreted?

If councils fail to hit mandatory housing targets, they will be penalised. Oh, and the new planning system is being rigged to minimise objections from people opposed to large-scale developments on their doorstep – undermining democratic accountability.

Of course, Britain has been suffocated by a culture of obstructionism for too long.

Under its controversial planning reforms, the Government is ordering councils to reclassify parts of the Green Belt for residential and commercial use

Pictured: Deputy PM Angela Rayner. The number of homes Ms Rayner wants to build each year is dwarfed by net migration. If Labour tackle this influx, the housing crisis might ease

Thanks to tortuous planning regulations, absurdly strict environmental rules and Nimbys, we have failed to build enough housing or critical infrastructure.

So Deputy PM Angela Rayner is right to rectify a system which stops enough properties being constructed – inflating prices and rents, and puncturing young people’s home-ownership dreams.

But she should first focus on abandoned ‘brownfield’ sites in our main conurbations, and on the 1.2million new homes that have planning permission but are not yet built.

Then there is the elephant in the room: mass immigration. The number of homes Ms Rayner wants to build each year is dwarfed by net migration. If Labour tackle this influx, the housing crisis might ease.

Alongside plans to bulldoze our precious countryside, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband wants to cover every other field with solar panels and wind turbines.

In years to come, will anyone believe that this was once a green and pleasant land?

The stain of secrecy

The more we learn about the incompetence of the officials who failed to protect Sara Sharif, the more disgraceful the veil of secrecy placed over her case becomes.

The authorities missed at least 15 chances to stop the bubbly ten-year-old being tortured and murdered by her evil father and stepmother in August last year.

Perhaps most shocking, a family court judge allowed brutal Urfan Sharif custody of his daughter – despite being aware he had a history of domestic violence.

The more we learn about the incompetence of the officials who failed to protect Sara Sharif  the more disgraceful the veil of secrecy placed over her case becomes. The authorities missed at least 15 chances to stop the bubbly ten-year-old (pictured) being tortured and murdered by her evil father and stepmother in August last year

So it is an affront to open justice that the High Court has banned the naming of the judge responsible for the order.

Yes, it may often be right to protect the identities of surviving children in such cases. But there is no reasonable justification for doing so with a senior member of the judiciary.

Isn’t the truth that those who have most to gain from secrecy in family cases will almost always be the social workers, council officials – and, yes, judges too – whose mistakes escape full public scrutiny?

By the same token, errors and misjudgments can only become more commonplace when their perpetrators believe nobody will hear about them. 

This decision must be reversed. A decade ago, the Mail won a major victory against secrecy, and for openness, in family courts.

This week’s ruling is a return to the opacity that was a stain on the good name of British justice.