This was the Britain that so many gave their lives for during the Second World War, and it didn’t take long for Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour Government to pass the National Parks Act with support from all sides of the House. Yet following last week’s shameful U-turn on fracking, the era of cross-party support for national parks is over. That my constituents, escaping the pressures of city life, should have to survey Staffordshire and Derbyshire blighted by hydraulic rigs, oil tankers and all sorts of potential subterranean degradation goes beyond day-to-day political incompetence. It is a blow against England and what it means to be English.