by holdthefrontpage staff
The Western Daily Press has demanded that Margaret Beckett ends her silence over the foot and mouth crisis and answers the questions posed by its readers.
The paper asked farmers and rural people what questions they would put to the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if they could meet with her face to face - and then put a series of 12 questions to her in a hand-delivered letter.
These questions included:
Why was MAFF not better prepared to cope with foot-and-mouth? What happened to the last Government's pledge to farmers to start removing and simplifying their burden of red tape? How do you propose to convince British farmers that you and your Government genuinely believe in a future for British agriculture? However, more than three weeks later there have still been no answers.
The original letter was hand-delivered to Defra's HQ on August 1.
The following week, on August 9, Mrs Beckett was forced to break off from her holiday and return to London to give the news that there would be no full public inquiry into foot-and-mouth.
She then returned to her holiday and is not due to return to work until next month.
On August 13 Defra told the Press that the correspondence section was "a bit weighed down" but if the letter was hand-delivered, it would be in the process of being answered.
However the following day it became apparent that the letter had been "lost in the system", so a copy was faxed over and the paper was told to expect a reply "soon".
Three days later the paper was told some of the questions involved other Government departments and they would need "something in the region of another seven days".
But there has still been no reply and the paper is demanding answers.
It said: "We want the answers because our readers do. We said when we first published these vital questions that farmers wanted the truth. They still do, and we shall not rest until they get it."
Do you have a story about the regional press? Ring 0116 227 3122/3121, or
e-mail pastill@nepmidlands.co.uk
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