I’m fed up with talking about the weather, but I can console myself with the fact we have grabbed every opportunity so far and progress is not too bad.Georgina Downs loses High Court pesticides appeal
PESTICIDES campaigner Georgina Downs has lost her long-running legal battle with Defra over its policy governing crop spraying.
The Court of Appeal this morning overturned a landmark High Court ruling last November, in which the judge declared Defra’s policy on protecting bystanders from crop spraying to be ‘unlawful’.
Standing on the steps of the High Court in London, Ms Downs branded the decision ‘the most bizarre and inaccurate Judgment to have ever come out of the Court of Appeal’.
“Last November I won a landmark victory in the High Court against the Government over pesticides,” she said.
“That High Court Judgment was very clear as the Judge, Mr Justice Collins, said that he was in ‘no doubt’ that the Government had been acting unlawfully in its policy and approach in relation to the use of pesticides in crop spraying, and that public health, in particular rural residents and communities exposed to pesticides from living in the locality to regularly sprayed fields, was not being protected (and this applied to both acute effects and chronic long term adverse health effects).
“However, today’s Judgment from the Court of Appeal which has overturned Mr. Justice Collins’ Judgment unanimously, has done so as a result of very wrongly (and possibly intentionally) substituting the cogently argued case I presented with that of another party.
“This means that almost the entire judgment has been formed on the wrong basis and does not in any way resemble the same case, arguments and evidence that Mr. Justice Collins based his Judgment on in the High Court.”
Ms Downs has been campaigning for new rules introducing no spray buffer zones in residential areas and compulsory prior-notification of residents ahead of spraying.
However, the Judgement may not spell the end of this story for farmers. NFU president Peter Kendall has revealed that Hilary Benn is planning to introduce new restrictions to protect bystanders on crop spraying regardless of the outcome of the Downs case.
The NFU has been consulting its members on a possible voluntary approach to prior-notification.
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