Michael Meacher MP

The claim by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) that it has not altered its policy on genetically modified terminator technology – used to sterilise farm-saved seeds, thereby protecting corporate seed sales – does not stand up to serious scrutiny. The Defra policy, published on February 21 in advance of the meeting later this month of the eighth conference of the parties to the UN convention on biodiversity (CBD), calls for a case-by-case assessment of terminator crops. It differs significantly from what I approved in 2000.

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Attempts to turn Labour leadership elections into US-style primaries would put money in command
Later this month, at Labour’s national executive, an innocently-titled document called the Party Renewal Project will be tabled for discussion. For what really lies behind this we should be grateful to Stephen Byers. Once famously self-dubbed the “outrider of the Blairite project”, he recently disclosed what that project is now planning for electoral politics. It amounts to the dismantling of the Labour party as it has operated for the past 100 years.

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