Labour’s angling spokesman Martin Salter, who is standing down at the General Election, has made a final call for better controls on numbers of otters and cormorants to ensure “a sustainable balance between predators and prey”.

MPs from opposite sides of the House of Commons have joined forces this week to call upon the Government to drop plans for the £23 billion Severn Barrage on environmental grounds. Labour MP Martin Salter (Reading West) and Conservative MP Charles Walker (Broxbourne) have published a detailed 90 page report covering the history and background to the barrage project with an examination of less damaging alternatives.

Reading West MP Martin Salter made his final Commons speech on Wednesday 7th April 2010, the day before Parliament was prorogued for the 6th May General Election. Mr Salter thanked Reading and District Labour Party for choosing him as a candidate on no fewer than seven occasions for both the Parliamentary and Reading Borough Council seats. He was successful in six of the seven contests and leaves a notional Labour majority of nearly 5,000 in his constituency.

Some of the top names in Angling and Shooting turned out this week to thank Labour’s Parliamentary spokesman Martin Salter for his work on behalf of both sports. The British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), the Angling Trust, and the Salmon and Trout Association jointly organised a dinner in the House of Commons in honour of Mr Salter. The guests included wildlife film maker Hugh Miles, angling author and Times columnists Brian Clarke, Fisheries Minister Huw Irranca-Davies and his Conservative Shadow and Newbury MP Richard Benyon and Charles Walker MP (vice chair of the APPG on Angling).

Martin Salter, Labour MP for Reading West, has welcomed the payment of a £1.5 million capital grant in order to help the children’s hospice Naomi House. The charity was badly affected by the Icelandic banking crisis. Last year, Mr Salter led a delegation of south east MPs to meet with Kevin Brennan MP, the Minister of State for the Third Sector, in order to highlight the invaluable service provided by Naomi House to local people, and to reiterate the need to release the £5.7 million of deposits that were effectively frozen by the government following the economic turmoil affecting Iceland.