Vince Cable

Local allotment holders have asked Vincent Cable, MP to raise with the Environment Minister the apparent anomaly that the commercial horticultural industry is being helped to cope with the hosepipe ban - and more draconian drought orders - but non-commercial growers of the same crops of fruit and vegetables are being told to let their water dependent crops wither away.

Vincent Cable said that he had been greatly encouraged, at the annual prize giving at Markhole Allotments in Hampton, to see the way more and more local residents were taking up the opportunity for healthy living and self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables: "but the current anti drought measures are very silly in the way they are being applied. One Hampton resident could not understand why she was forbidden from spraying her runner beans but was allowed to wash the path way. More seriously commercial fruit and vegetable growers are being given exemptions but allotment (and domestic) growers of the same crops are penalised. I have asked the Minister to look at the regulations with this in mind".