ENVIRONMENT chiefs will be urged to stop the reopening of North Yorkshire's footpaths during a House of Commons debate.

Vale of York MP Anne McIntosh has secured a place to speak in Parliament on Wednesday.

She will ask a Minister from the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to stop applying pressure to North Yorkshire County Council to open its paths.

The council has carried out reopening where it considers it safe to allow walkers and horse riders into the countryside. Special rules, such as keeping dogs on leads, are laid down for path users.

Miss McIntosh said: "With the foot and mouth crisis still very much ongoing, the farming community in the Vale of York is very concerned to see the re-opening of footpaths that the Government has instigated.

"Unwelcome pressure has been brought to bear on North Yorkshire County Council by the rural task force to re-open footpaths prematurely."

But a county council spokesman denied that anything was being put at risk by the reopening.

He said: "Nothing is being done prematurely in North Yorkshire."

Meanwhile farmers in the North York Moors are anxiously awaiting the results of tests on a suspected case of foot and mouth at Lealholm, near Whitby.

DEFRA confirmed last night that animals at Mill Lane Farm had been slaughtered under suspicion of having the disease.

Updated: 11:03 Saturday, June 30, 2001