AN anonymous poster claiming that county Cllr Stuart Barker supports the controversial Whitecleaves Quarry recycling development has been dismissed as a 'scurrilous attack'.

Copies of the poster were circulating in Buckfastleigh in the run-up to yesterday's county elections.

The poster quotes from a supposed article in the Herald Express saying Cllr Barker thinks the quarry development will benefit the town and calls on the public to 'vote him out'.

Cllr Barker said: 'It is nonsense. It is not true. There were no articles in the Herald Express and anybody who knows my stand and had heard me speak would not believe I support the quarry application.'

On the contrary, he said he was instrumental to the application being withdrawn last December.

'I always felt it would be defeated on policy issues. It was me driving that policy argument from day one.'

He said he was responsible for getting the quarry classified on the lowest category of strategic importance in 2003, which would allow it to become ­

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naturalised as a wildlife site. In 2005 he prevented another application for it to be used for landfill.

'It is a scurrilous attack that is completely false. After 15 years working hard for Buckfastleigh, for someone to feel it necessary to do something like this is pretty sad.'

He has submitted election literature distributed by rival Lib Dem candidate John Nutley to be examined by electoral officers.

'I can't say if it is a Liberal Democrat-inspired attack. There are several misleading statements in the leaflet,' he said.

Cllr Nutley denied having anything to do with the poster and said he did not know where it originated. In his leaflet he is pictured with members of the Quarry Action Group.

Peter Thornhill, action group chairman said: 'We know absolutely nothing about it.'

He said the photo used on the leaflet had been submitted to the group by a member of the public.

A police spokesman said the poster did not breach electoral law, which is designed to protect politicians against false personal rather than political allegations.

'It is political knockabout as far as I am concerned. Cllr Barker is open to pursue it through the civil courts if he finds out who did it,' said Mr Thornhill.

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