THERE has been a natural feeling of elation locally following Caroline Spelman's concession that the DEFRA consultation will be scrapped and various clauses removed from the Public Bodies Bill.

During the 1981 parliamentary Forest debate, a speaker compared selling off the Forest to selling the Garden of Eden to the Serpent. Although a panel of experts is to be commissioned to report to Caroline Spelman in the autumn it cannot be known what they will advise so it is as well to remember that, although wounded, until the Serpent is well and truly killed it is still lurking in the undergrowth.

No campaign is won until the threat it challenges is finally removed.

Daphne Pearson (Dr)

Redbrook