Sensible move

We applaud MP Paul Truswell for following up the findings of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Mobile Communications, which he chairs, by tabling a Commons Motion urging the Government to implement its recommendations.

These include forcing companies to seek planning permission for all masts (at the moment masts under 15 metres high do not need permission) and to consult with local people. At the moment, the first many people know about such masts is when they are erected and by then, of course, little can be done.

The jury is still out on whether or not radio masts emit rays that could be harmful to health, particularly in the case of children. The mobile phone companies who, it has to be said, do not seem to concern themselves with what is next to the sites they have chosen, will say that there is no concrete evidence to support this, safe in the knowledge that such claims are terribly difficult to prove.

Equally so, the argument could be turned on its head and we could ask the mobile phone companies to prove that these masts are not harmful to people's well being.

There have been a number of attempts to site masts next door to primary schools, which has quite naturally worried parents of pupils attending them, whilst waking up to find a mast next door to your home is also an unwelcome surprise.

Pressure groups can influence whether the larger masts are given planning permission or not. But unless Mr Truswell's committee's recommendations are implemented by the Government, radio masts will continue to spring up in all the wrong places.

What is wrong with asking companies to seek planning permission and to consult with those likely to be affected by, at the very least, a change in their local landscape?

This newspaper fully supports Mr Truswell's Motion.