The government was right to order an inquiry into a proposed new coal mine in Cumbria which threatens to undermine Britain’s climate change objectives.
Ordinarily governments should be encouraging investment and not turning it away. Certainly ministers should not lightly block the launch of a legitimate enterprise that had previously secured planning permission and which promises to create 500 jobs in a part of the country that the government has committed to levelling up. It is therefore hardly surprising that many Conservative MPs for northern constituencies are up in arms over Robert Jenrick’s decision to hold a public inquiry into a new deep coal mine, the first in Britain for 30 years. It has already been approved three times by Cumbria county council, and the delay could put it back by a year or even scupper it.
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