WEST Devon and Torridge MP John Burnett has accused the South West Regional Development Agency of breaching competition rules by making taxpayers money available to support a controversial energy scheme.
Mr Burnett attended an extraordinary meeting of Winkleigh Parish Council last Wednesday, (April 14) at a packed village hall.
Mr Burnett said: 'These are vast sums of money on a venture which even the Minister of State described to me as a gamble.'
Mr Burnett said: 'The un-elected and undemocratic Regional Development Agency have decided not just to buy the site but to pay for two or three studies, one of which certainly should be up to the applicants.
'Why is the RDA subsidising a particular individual business and using taxpayers money to give an unfair advantage? I believe it has quite probably been spent in breach of unfair competition rules.'
Mr Burnett said a biomass plant would also have a detrimental impact on tourism, which was of growing importance to the South West.
'Why undermine the phenomenal effort that has been made by thousands of people in our tourist industry by sticking up an industrial white elephant in a beautiful site between Dartmoor and Exmoor,' he added.
It is now a year on from the announcement of the award of a DTI grant of £11.5-million for a planned biomass energy plant on Winkleigh airfield.
The South West Regional Development Agency paid out £338,000 last year to buy the 36-acre airfield site and has also provided funding of £90,000 for an environmental impact assessment to be carried out, which is required as part of the planning process.
An RDA spokesmen this week said it was 'completely confident' it had not breached competition rules.
Peninsula Power, the firm behind the biomass scheme say it is a ground-breaking project, which will be at the 'cutting edge of green energy development'.
A planning application is expected to be lodged with Torridge District Council sometime next month.