Today’s budget was the worst for the environment in recent memory, Greenpeace said this afternoon, and CPRE were also quick to condemn the Chancellor's rhetoric on planning as misguided and dangerous. John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace, said: “This was a bad day for the environment". "Support for British manufacturing, green jobs and greening the economy should have been the cornerstone of Osborne's budget. Instead we got a polluters' charter. The Chancellor performed a carbon-belching U-turn by supporting airport expansion in the south-east, before handing tax breaks to an oil industry that’s already making billions in profits and a cash bung to the very same oil industry to drill in our fragile seas.

There was scant support in today’s budget for the cutting-edge clean tech industries that are spearheading economic recovery in other countries, meaning we fall further behind the likes of Germany and miss out on billions in investment and tens of thousands of jobs.”

Greenpeace commented on three specific areas of the Budget. On the tax break for oil companies announced in the Budget, Charlie Kronick, senior energy advisor for Greenpeace, said: “George Osborne hasn’t learned any of the lessons after the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico just over a year ago. Any oil spill in the west of Scotland would wreak untold devastation on some of the UK’s most fragile habitat and the local economy. “George Osborne has turned logic on its head with this tax break for oil companies. It should be the polluters who pay for the clean-up in the North Sea, not hard pressed working families.”

The UK’s tax regime for the oil industry is already among the lowest in the world. As the North Sea fields mature they also become less profitable so the oil companies try to sell them on to smaller operators which are willing to take them on. To make this more attractive to these companies, the Chancellor is making long term, legally binding tax arrangements which allow the companies to deduct 50%-75% of the cost of cleaning up old rigs from their tax bill. As a result UK taxpayers continue to pick up the tab for cleaning up the oil companies’ mess.

Greenpeace criticised the decision to expand aviation, as did CPRE. Ralph Smyth, Senior Transport Campaigner at CPRE, Says: “The Government seems to be attempting to disguise a major u-turn on South East airport expansion as an economic aside. After responding to public opinion by pulling the plug on a third runway at Heathrow, the Government needs to hold its nerve against the turbulence of vociferous lobbying of the aviation industry.

“'Smart hubbing' through better allocation of runway slots would provide all the additional passenger capacity needed, and avoid untold damage to the countryside including further loss of the rural tranquillity that remains in the South East of England. This is not a case of ‘jobs versus the countryside’ or ‘runways versus rural England’, but about tackling narrow minded and short sighted vested interests.”

And on Planning, Adam Royle, spokesman for CPRE, says: “We heard yet more of the Chancellor's misguided and dangerous rhetoric on planning today. If the Government undermines sound planning, it will put sustainable economic growth at risk. Countries like Germany show that good economic performance and strong planning systems can go hand in hand.

“We will have to wait until next Tuesday when the final planning framework is to be published to see if the voices of reason in Government will yet win out. From the Chancellor's words we fear the longstanding protection for the wider countryside will be abandoned. That would mean that 55% of English countryside, including many locally loved green spaces, could be placed at the mercy of developers.

“Also extremely worrying is the suggestion that communities may not be given any time to ensure their local plans conform to the new framework . This could leave more then one third of areas that don't currently have a plan exposed to a crude ‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’. On the basis of the budget statement, the Government's promise that the planning reforms are about empowering local people looks very hollow indeed.”