Reeves scapegoating bats to cut red tape is absurd, says Packham

Bats are being “scapegoated” by Rachel Reeves, Chris Packham has said, after the chancellor suggested the winged creatures were getting in the way of economic growth. Reeves recently said she wanted businesses to “focus on getting things built, and stop worrying about the bats and the newts”, and this week the press release announcing her shake-up of all the UK’s regulators mentioned bats six times. A very niche directive to Natural England, the nature watchdog, to take advice from the Bat Conservation Trust out of a planning document, became the linchpin of Reeves’s deregulation plan. “It’s absolutely absurd,” the broadcaster

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