GUILDFORD MP TELLS GOVERNMENT TO SEND BACK ILLEGAL TIMBER SHIPMENT

12.00.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Thu 18th Mar 2004

A ship containing illegal rainforest timber from an Indonesian national park has today docked at Tilbury Docks in London.

Guildford MP Sue Doughty, the Liberal Democrat Shadow Environment Minister, has written to the Government demanding that the ship be sent back. She is calling for the Environmental Audit Committee, on which she sits, to reopen its inquiry into illegal timber.

Sue Doughty said:

"The Government's approach to illegal timber is desperately failing.

"This ship must be sent back. If the Government allows the cargo to be unloaded, it will be giving the green light to the illegal timber barons that are destroying the world forests and pushing rare species like the orang-utan to the point of extinction.

"The Government obviously still has lessons to learn from the Environmental Audit Committee's 2002 report on illegal timber. The Committee's inquiry should now be reopened so that we can find out how this shipment ended up at a British dock in the first place.

"It's time the Government got tough on environmental crime."