Warning: countryside at risk. Ministers are pulling a fast one over the threat to pristine green-belt land

‘The Sevenoaks district in Kent – 93% protected – will, for example, have to accommodate 1,113 homes a year.’ Photograph: Michael Harris/Alamy

Sir Humphrey Appleby would have a word for the government’s new green belt policy: brave. Its plan for one of the country’s best-loved institutions justifies the Yes Minister mandarin’s description of apparently pioneering initiatives that risk grave electoral damage.

For, as the Guardian reported, the plan mounts an unprecedented assault on countryside hitherto hailed by all administrations as sacrosanct. And conservationists are accusing ministers of deliberately misleading the public.