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Category: Environment

  • Caroline Lucas – 2023 Speech on Bee-killing Pesticides in Agriculture

    Caroline Lucas – 2023 Speech on Bee-killing Pesticides in Agriculture

    The speech made by Caroline Lucas, the Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on—once again—securing this important debate, having also secured last year’s Westminster Hall debate on neonicotinoids in response to the Government’s previous so-called emergency authorisation.

    I am deeply sorry that we keep needing to have this debate, particularly when the Government’s rhetoric should mean that greenlighting highly toxic pesticides is unthinkable. Yesterday the Government published their environmental improvement plan, which aims to provide

    “a comprehensive delivery plan for the Government’s approach to halting and then reversing the decline in nature.”

    That goal is very welcome and should align domestic policy with a commitment in the Kunming-Montreal global biodiversity framework, agreed by almost 200 countries in December. However, it is in precisely that context that last week’s decision on neonics is so utterly incoherent and inconsistent.

    Sadly, this is not an isolated case of Ministers failing to live up to their own greenwash. Just last month, the Office for Environmental Protection reported that not one of the 23 environmental targets examined was on track to be achieved, and 14 were clearly off-track. We also have the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill risks, under which we risk scrapping a staggering 1,700 environmental regulations overnight—vital laws that cover areas such as pesticides, food, nature, air and water quality, to name just a few.

    Now we have the so-called emergency approval in England of this banned pesticide—a type of neonicotinoid —for the third year in a row. It is a poison so powerful that some have said that a single teaspoon is enough to kill 1.25 billion bees. It has been said that neonics affect the central nervous system of insects and bees’ ability to forage and navigate. A recent study showed that just one exposure could affect a bee’s ability to reproduce in future years.

    Nature’s decline is no more alarming than when it comes to insects. As we have heard, the UK has lost half its insects in the past 50 years alone. I say “lost” but I do not like that word, because we have not lost them; we have destroyed them—let us face up to what is going on here. More than 40% of the earth’s remaining 5 million insect species are now threatened with extinction. The loss of these vital pollinators is truly terrifying to comprehend. It raises the question of how on earth the Government can say in one breath that they are halting—let alone reversing—biodiversity loss, when they are also pursuing such wanton destruction.

    Of course, it is particularly alarming that this approval comes, once again, against the advice of the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides, which maintains that the risk to bees and other pollinators did not warrant the authorisation. As we have heard, the committee said:

    “the requirements for emergency authorisation have not been met”.

    It could not be much clearer. The approval is also contrary to guidance, which is clear that emergency applications should not be granted more than once—the clue is in the name.

    The Minister may attempt to argue that sugar beet does not flower, so there is no risk to bees, but that is plainly false. Neonics were banned for use on flowering crops in 2013, but were also banned for use on non-flowering crops such as sugar beet in 2018, when it became clear that their use was contaminating soils, streams and hedgerow wildflowers and, by extension, affecting bees. Flowering so-called “weeds” also grow in fields that attract bees, not just in the current year but in subsequent years, when neonicotinoids are still present in the soil.

    I remind colleagues of the findings of the Environmental Audit Committee report on pollinators and pesticides from 10 years ago. I sat on that Committee and was involved in taking the evidence that went into the report. I particularly recall this recommendation:

    “Defra policy on pesticides must be evidence-based. Where the available scientific evidence is either incomplete or contradictory, Defra must apply the precautionary principle.”

    Actually, I would argue that the evidence here is not incomplete or contradictory. Even if it were, DEFRA should apply the precautionary principle, but I think we can all agree that that the precautionary principle has been chucked out of the window when it comes to this decision and many others. So I ask the Minister quite simply: what is the point of the environmental principles policy statement, which was published just yesterday, if environmental principles are not applied in practice? I urge him to look again at this decision.

    Before we left the EU, Ministers waxed lyrical about a green Brexit. The Minister is no doubt aware—and we have heard this from the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier)—that the European Court of Justice ruled on 19 January that emergency derogations for neonics are illegal, so the rest of Europe will not be using these bee-killing chemicals. Is that what the Government mean by the so-called opportunities that Brexit provides? Will he now reassure me that the existing restrictions on neonics and other harmful pesticides will be maintained as part of the Government’s review of retained EU law? They very clearly must be.

    In conclusion, I want to probe the Minister on long-term solutions. As is patently clear, when we are the midst of a nature emergency, so-called emergency approvals of neonics every year are inappropriate and unsustainable, and they have to stop. We need an approach that safeguards both food production and biodiversity for the future. These things are not separate; they are intimately connected and dependent one on the other.

    I welcome the inclusion of integrated pest management in the new sustainable farming incentive, with payments for insecticide-free farming. However, I am concerned that it could just end up being a tick-box exercise, where farmers complete an IPM assessment and produce a plan but are under no obligation to take practical action. Will the Minister commit to remedying that issue, too?

    We need a much more concerted move towards IPM, where we use chemical pesticides only ever as a last resort, if at all, rather than continuing our current reliance on banned neonics. Will the Minister therefore commit to further support for IPM? Will he explain what alternatives are being trialled to prevent emergency authorisations in the future? And will the Government bring forward more investment in farmer-led research, practical advice and peer-to-peer learning?

  • Luke Pollard – 2023 Speech on Bee-killing Pesticides in Agriculture

    Luke Pollard – 2023 Speech on Bee-killing Pesticides in Agriculture

    The speech made by Luke Pollard, the Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, in Westminster Hall, the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

    I beg to move,

    That this House has considered the use of bee-killing pesticides in agriculture.

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Nokes. It is good to see so many parliamentary petitions attached to this debate, showing the true breadth of concern about the health of these essential pollinators. I am grateful to all the petitioners, who share my passion for bees. I hope that the debate does their concerns justice.

    Before we start, I declare an interest: my family keep bees on their farm in Cornwall, and I am a patron of Pollenize, a fantastic community interest company in Plymouth that champions pollinator conservation. I also thank Buglife, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the Wildlife Trusts, Green Alliance and the all-party parliamentary groups on bees and pollinators and on the environment for their help in my preparation for the debate.

    Although my remarks today will focus on bees, we should remember that moths, butterflies, wasps and beetles are also pollinators, but as I said, I will confine my remarks to bees. I bloody love bees. They might be small creatures, but a lot rests on them. Today, up to three quarters of crops globally are pollinated by bees. The decline in bee populations has led to concerns about food security as well as the impact on biodiversity and ecosystems, but just last Monday the Government issued yet another so-called emergency authorisation for the use of Cruiser SB, which contains a bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticide, thiamethoxam, for the treatment of sugar beet seed for the remainder of this year. This is the third time that the Government have granted emergency permissions for that bee-killing pesticide to be used.

    Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)

    I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. The European Court of Justice, Europe’s highest court, ruled that the use of bee-killing pesticides was not acceptable, even under emergency exemptions to protect sugar beet crops, which he mentioned. France has this year decided not to grant the exemption, but the UK Government have. Does he share my concern that the Government may be allowing our environmental standards to slip?

    Luke Pollard

    I thank the hon. Member for that intervention on a point that I will come to. We are in the middle of a climate and nature emergency; we need all our policies, not just some of them, to reflect that, and authorising the use of bee-killing pesticides is not consistent with the declaration that this House has agreed to.

    In this debate, I want to do three things. First, I will argue that the decision to authorise bee-killing pesticides for 2023 was wrong and should be reversed. Bee-killing pesticides are environmental vandalism. Secondly, I want to back our British farmers, so I challenge the Government and industry to do more to help sugar beet farmers, some of whom face financial losses and real difficulties because of an aphid-spread disease, the beet yellows virus. Thirdly, I propose again that future authorisations of bee-killing pesticides be subject to a parliamentary vote, rather than being quietly snuck out by Ministers.

    I do not believe that there has been an emergency three years in a row; this is a plan to allow bee-killing pesticides to be used, with authorisations given annually. I sense some déjà vu here, because this time last year, the Government authorised the use of bee-killing pesticides for 2022. I held a parliamentary debate on bee-killing pesticides in this very room a year ago and was told by the Minister at the time that the authorisation was “temporary” and “exceptional”, but here we are again. It is a new year, but the same bee-killing pesticides have been greenlighted by the Conservatives.

    It is four years since this became the first Parliament in the world to declare a climate and nature emergency. I want all of us, regardless of party, to focus on nature recovery, rather than on having to prevent Ministers from issuing death warrants for bees and other pollinators. One third of the UK bee population has disappeared in the last decade, and since 1900 the UK has lost 13 out of 35 native bee species. Habitat loss, land-use changes and other human factors are partly to blame, but so is the widespread use of neonicotinoids in agriculture and across food production. We know that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs authorisation of neonics will accelerate that decline.

    Thiamethoxam, or TMX, has been found to reduce colony health by harming worker-bee locomotion and potentially altering the division of labour if bees move outside or remain outdoors. It can cause hyperactivity in bees and affect their ability to fly. It is not just killing bees; it is depriving bees of the ability to function. One teaspoon is powerful enough to kill 1.25 billion honey bees, according to Dave Goulson, a professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who is also an expert book writer on the subject of bees. I encourage colleagues to look him up in the Library. Indeed, the former Minister at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the right hon. and learned Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), told the Commons in December 2021 that there is a

    “growing weight of scientific evidence that neonicotinoids are harmful to bees and other pollinators.”

    Furthermore, the former Environment Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), has said, “The evidence points in one direction—we must ban neonicotinoids”. It is rare that I agree with the right hon. Gentleman, but I do here, and I imagine most colleagues in the Chamber do as well. When we left the EU, the Government promised to follow the science.

    Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)

    We should protect our wildlife wherever we possibly can, but I urge the hon. Gentleman to listen to the Minister on the science behind the derogation, given that East Anglia and my constituency of North Norfolk have a large and growing population farming sugar beet. We need to bring glyphosate into the argument. That is another product that we must look to ban, particularly because we know it has harmful effects for humans—it is carcinogenic—and is poor for our biodiversity. The EU is banning glyphosate later this year. What does the hon. Gentleman think about bringing the ban forward from 2025? I certainly want to hear the Minister’s response to that question. We must move to a far more natural solution than glyphosate, which is extremely harmful.

    Luke Pollard

    I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will come to the science and the process for approval based on scientific decisions in a moment, so I hope he will hold his horses on that point. He makes a strong point on glyphosate. Last year, I held a roundtable with environmental charities, farming representatives and scientists, including representatives of Cancer Research UK, to consider the impact not only of neonicotinoids, but of glyphosate. There are real concerns here, and if we are to make progress in achieving a more nature-based form of agriculture relying on fewer chemicals and pesticides, we need to consider the impact of these chemicals not only on nature, but on human health.

    The issue is not only food production in the UK. Now that we have signed trade deals with countries that use neonicotinoids, glyphosate and other chemicals on a greater, more industrial scale in their food production, and we allow that food to be imported to the UK, we are seeing those chemicals in the UK food chain, and we might see even more of them in future, even though we might be taking positive steps to address them. That is an important issue, and I am glad the hon. Gentleman raised it. I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point.

    Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)

    My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, as he does every year on this topic. I hope he does not have to do so next year. We are focused on agricultural use today, but there is an issue with the use of glyphosate in cities. Does he agree that we ought to create pollinator corridors in our cities and prevent the use of pesticides, so we do not damage the health of our pollinators, and that councils need to be supported to go down that route?

    Luke Pollard

    I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree. Bee corridors and pollinator corridors offer an incredible opportunity to green many of our urban environments, and provide habitats not only for bees, but for other insects. Insect health might not be the sexiest of topics, but it is essential if we are to reverse climate decline and biodiversity loss.

    There are superb examples across the south-west—in Bristol and in Plymouth—of bee corridors. I encourage everyone to support their local council in establishing bee corridors, especially at the point in the year when bee corridors do not look their best and plants start to brown; that is precisely when the biodiversity boost is greatest. How can we explain that to residents?

    Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)

    I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He has referred to the benefits of pollinator corridors, but in Torbay we have the wild flower garden, which used to be very formal planting right on the seafront. The wild flower garden was extremely popular with tourists and visitors.

    Luke Pollard

    It is a great loss to Government that the hon. Gentleman is no longer a Minister, but a great benefit to these debates that we have double the west country Members from Devon speaking on such matters. Wild flower meadows, however we brand them, are a really important part of restoring ecosystems. They demonstrate that the interventions needed to support biodiversity recovery are not always large or expensive. They can be in every single community where there is a patch of ground that can be planted with wild flowers, and are a good way of signalling intent, especially as regards the recovery of pollinators.

    Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)

    I congratulate the hon. Member on securing this debate. Brighton also has lots of lovely bee-friendly verges and so forth. Are we not just asking the Government to implement their own approach? Yesterday in their environmental improvement plan, they said that they wanted to put nature friendliness at the heart of all their policies. How is that coherent with the decision taken a few days ago? If the Government want to be consistent, they need to look again at the decision on bee-killing pesticides.

    Luke Pollard

    That is exactly right. If we are to have a proper nature-based recovery, and if the Government are to achieve their ambitions as set out in not only the Environment Act 2021 but the associated piece of legislation that this House has passed, we need them to follow their own procedures, and I do not think that they have in relation to the authorisation. I will explain why.

    When we left the European Union, the Government promised to follow the science on bee-killing pesticides. How is that going? On 6 September 2021, the right hon. and learned Member for Banbury, then a DEFRA Minister, told the Commons:

    “Decisions on pesticide authorisation are based on expert assessment by the Health and Safety Executive.”

    Another DEFRA Minister, Lord Goldsmith, gave the same commitment, word for word, in the Lords that month. That surely means that bee-killing pesticides will be used only when the science shows that it is safe to do so. Right? Wrong.

    The Government’s own expert committee on pesticides concluded on 30 January this year, in a report that can be found on the Government’s website, that the requirements for an emergency authorisation of bee-killing pesticides had not been met. It stated:

    “On the basis of the evidence presented, the Committee agreed it supports the Health and Safety Executive’s Chemical Regulation Division’s assessment that it is unable to support an emergency authorisation, as potential adverse effects to honeybees and other pollinators outweigh the likely benefits.”

    How can the decision have been made through expert assessment—on the science—as Ministers claim, if those very same experts say no to bee-killing pesticides? The decision to authorise bee-killing pesticide use is not supported by the science, the politics or the public, so why are Ministers allowing bee-killing pesticides to be used again this year?

    If Ministers are serious about neonic use being temporary and exceptional, I want the Government to provide more support for sugar beet farmers, so that they can invest in other reasonable control measures, such as the greater use of integrated pest management. I back our British farmers, and I know my colleague on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), will say something similar. They have had enormous upheaval over the past few years. The withdrawal from the European Union, the change in subsidy regimes, and the fact that it is now harder to export have hit our farmers hard, so we need to find support for them. While critiquing the Government’s authorisation of bee-killing pesticides, I want to lend my support to those beet farmers, who, I recognise, face financial hardship if there is an aphid-spread infection in their crops.

    How is best practice on crop hygiene, establishment and monitoring being shared with beet farmers? What investment are the Government making in the development of pest-resistant varieties of sugar beet and other crops? Why did Ministers previously say that the use of bee-killing pesticides would be temporary as new crop varieties would be coming up? What steps is the Minister taking to encourage industry to pay its fair share of the cost of transitioning away from neonic use? Sugar is big business and it is a high-value crop. We have heard before of funds designed to help farmers affected by aphid crop loss, so why grant authorisation again now if there are resources available for the farmers who are suffering from it?

    The public will find it hard to believe that this granulated money-making machine is unable to give the sugar beet farmers that it relies on a fairer deal, so as to help them with crop failures, and so that they can develop a robust system of integrated pest management. It is welcome, and perhaps slightly curious, that although DEFRA last week gave a green light to the use of bee-killing pesticides, it simultaneously announced a new subsidy for farmers—the sustainable farming incentive—to encourage them not to use bee-killing pesticides. There is an easier way of preventing the use of bee-killing pesticides: instead of paying farmers not to use them, we could ban them, as Ministers promised to do, as we should be doing, and as other nations are doing.

    I think we have stumbled on a new political truth: as long as the Conservatives are in power, whatever the science and their approval process says, they will approve the use of bee-killing pesticides. I challenge the Minister to prove me wrong on that. I did so last year in this very Chamber, and here we are again; bee-killing pesticides have again been authorised for use. More bees will die, and I predict we will be here again in 2024 unless Ministers have a change of heart. Each and every year until we get rid of that political truth, more bees will die. This is not temporary or exceptional; it is now a firmly established annual authorisation of bee-killing pesticides. This is my challenge to Ministers: prove me wrong by not authorising them next year.

    Ministers need to provide more evidence of the impacts to inform the science. The reports from the Health and Safety Executive and the Government’s own pesticides committee—the UK Expert Committee on Pesticides— highlight a number of science holes in the evidence that they require in order to understand the impact of this authorisation on bees. Will the Minister respond to that?

    Will the Minister report how much of the sustainable farming incentive has been used to lower the use of neonicotinoids? Will he ensure that there is not only catchment area science for any use of neonicotinoids, but field-edge studies for every field they are used in? At the moment, the evidence relates to selected fields and catchment areas, which are often too large. Will he ensure that there are catchment and field-edge water studies for every field that neonics are used in? Will he ensure that the cost of science is billed directly to any farmer using Cruiser SB, so that the taxpayer does not lose out?

    The UK Expert Committee on Pesticides said that it would be beneficial to have an assessment of the quantity of active substances deployed in the environment as part of the suite of information used to determine whether the benefits of insecticide use outweigh the environmental risks. Will the Minister agree to do that?

    Margaret Ferrier

    The economic value of pollination to UK crop production is approximately £500 million a year. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the use of these toxic pesticides is short-sighted, particularly as bee numbers rapidly decline?

    Luke Pollard

    The use of bee-killing pesticides is short-sighted. It is designed to be a quick fix to help farmers who are in a real pickle. I do not doubt the seriousness of the problem, but the longer bee-killing pesticides are authorised annually, the easier it will be to authorise them annually for evermore, and the easier it will be to extend their use to other crops, because the precedent has been set. That is why this House must be firm that bee-killing pesticides should not be used and should be banned.

    I would also like the Minister to look at the datasets available for the monitoring of the use of Cruiser SB. The UK Expert Committee on Pesticides highlighted that it can see evidence and data only from selected months, not for the whole year. Will he commit to providing data for the whole year to the experts scrutinising this policy? Will he update the House on the development of alternative resistant varieties of crops before any future authorisations are made?

    Will the Minister publish in written form whether the Conservative party has received any donations from sugar companies that want to use Cruiser SB? I do not believe the accusation sometimes levelled at Ministers that there is a link between this decision and donations, but the accusation is made in debate on the subject, and the matter would benefit from the full glare of public scrutiny.

    I do not want bee-killing pesticides to be used. I do not think they carry public support or confidence, and I want the Minister to explain why he has overruled the scientific bodies that the Government previously relied on for the rigour and relevance of their evidence on the use of bee-killing pesticides. The gap between green rhetoric and green delivery is now a gaping chasm when it comes to bee health.

    My final ask is for a parliamentary vote on the use of bee-killing pesticides. I believe the Government do not have the public support for bee-killing pesticides. The majority of beekeepers and farmers, and all MPs, want greater scrutiny of that decision. My proposal to the Minister is that future authorisations of bee-killing pesticides should be subject to a parliamentary vote, in which MPs should have the genuine opportunity to weigh up the pros and cons of using neonicotinoids. If the Government want to continue the use of neonicotinoids—I believe that Ministers have now set out an automatic annual approval process—we need to make it politically impossible for that to happen without Parliament approving it.

    Last year, I warned Ministers that, just as decisions to approve bee-killing pesticides are annual, this debate will also be annual. This is now the annual bee debate; it might not always be called by me but, as long we have Ministers in power who believe that bee-killing pesticides have a place in agriculture, it must be part of the annual political calendar, and it must be a day of shame for Ministers who authorise bee-killing pesticides.

    MPs from all parties have received correspondence from constituents, asking them to speak in this debate. Lots of colleagues in all parties wanted to speak but are unable to be here. The message about saving bees is cross-party, and it needs to be one that the Government hear loud and clear.

    If we are to tackle the climate and ecological emergency, we need more than words—we need action. We need an annual moment of action: a vote to determine whether bee-killing pesticides can and should be used. If we do not have that, it will make securing a net zero, nature-positive future so much harder. Bee health is non-negotiable; our planet depends on it. We must ban the use of bee- killing pesticides.

  • Robert Goodwill – 2023 Speech on the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

    Robert Goodwill – 2023 Speech on the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

    The speech made by Sir Robert Goodwill, the Conservative MP for Scarborough and Whitby and the Chair of the Environment Select Committee, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

    Goal 5 of the plan aims at eliminating waste, and while we have made great progress—for example, in phasing out single-use plastics and substituting more sustainable materials for plastic in packaging for foods—the sad fact remains that our local authorities are very good at collecting waste, but the majority of our plastic waste is exported overseas.

    Will the Secretary of State look at two things she could do to improve that situation? First, will she look at the operation of extended producer responsibility, and maybe look at what is being done in Belgium to make sure there is work with industry to incentivise investment in our plastic waste recycling here? Secondly, will she look at setting a date, as my Committee has suggested, for the phasing out and elimination of plastic waste exports to countries such as Turkey, where standards are not as good as ours?

    Dr Coffey

    On exports of plastics, we have recognised this issue and want to make sure that we are not exporting to non-OECD countries, but that does not mean that we give a blank cheque when there are exports to member countries of the OECD. That is why we have a rigorous process in place, but we will continue to investigate, through the Environment Agency, where issues arise and get them fixed.

    On our thinking more broadly, one of our sadnesses during covid was of course the explosion in single-use plastics and the throwaway elements that were necessary for public health. We also had a reduction in our recycling rates. We do want to turn that around, and that is why we will continue to work on the important EPR reforms to which my right hon. Friend referred.

  • Alex Sobel – 2023 Speech on the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

    Alex Sobel – 2023 Speech on the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

    The speech made by Alex Sobel, the Labour MP for Leeds North West and the party’s Shadow Spokesperson on Environment, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

    I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. I am pleased that on this occasion we are actually getting an oral statement, rather than a DEFRA Minister having to be dragged to the House for an urgent question or sneaking something important out as a written statement. However, even on this occasion, she made a speech announcing this plan outside this House yesterday. Unfortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), the shadow Secretary of State, is unable to be here, as he has a pre-arranged medical appointment. I am glad the Secretary of State is here to be held accountable, but it must be difficult for her to continue to try to defend her Department’s record.

    The Conservative Government are big on promises but little on delivery. The proof is in the pudding, and the Secretary of State’s own appalling environmental track record speaks volumes. As water Minister, she presided over a new sewage spill every four minutes—321 years’ worth of sewage was spilt in just three years; and she cut the resources of regulators that are there to protect the environment by a third. Her three months as Environment Secretary have not been any better. First, she broke her own statutory deadline for publishing environmental targets. Then she told Parliament that meeting polluting water bosses is not a priority, before announcing measures that inflict more sewage dumping and toxic air on our country. [Interruption.] She can correct the record when she responds. Even her Department’s own regulator, the Office for Environmental Protection, gave the Government “nul points” on their 25 year environmental goals. On chemicals, the Government are missing in action. Their UK REACH system is evidently not working properly. Never mind Dr Dolittle, it is Dr Damage—a lot.

    Let us look at this latest plan, as I have questions. Why will our sites of special scientific interest, which have been so neglected, not be assessed for five years, until 2028? Why is there no mention of reintroducing species to help nature recovery, aid flood management and increase pollination? Does the Secretary of State agree that she is betting the house on environmental land management schemes—ELMs—by relying totally on take-up and farmer co-operation? She had the opportunity to come to Parliament to say, or to outline at the National Farmers Union conference in Oxford, that she is on the side of farming communities, but she failed to do so. Where is she on the Dartmoor issue, and the increasing threat to access to nature? How does she plan to deal with the 1,781 retained EU environmental regulations we are going to have to deal with this year?

    Trust is an important word in politics, and it is clear that there is very little trust in this Government to get anything done. Actions speak louder than words. The environmental improvement plan is full of praise for the action the Government have taken since 2018 to deliver improvements in our air quality, but light on detail on the actions they will take over the next five years to deliver change. That is why when Labour plans to introduce a stand-alone, ambitious, effective and comprehensive clean air Act, it will do what the Minister will not: save lives, save money and clean our air. Labour will expand meaningful access to nature and clean up the Tory sewage scandal. We will hold water bosses to account, not just pay lip service, and ensure that regulators can properly enforce the rules.

    This environmental improvement plan, which was so long in gestation, still has glaring omissions, and there is no evidence on how it will be delivered. Tony Juniper, the chair of Natural England, said at the plan’s launch yesterday:

    “It’s now all about delivery”.

    Yet, DEFRA has continually failed to deliver. How can we trust this failed Government to deliver for our natural environment? Only Labour will deliver a fairer, greener future.

    Dr Coffey

    Well, what can I say? I am not sure how much that deserves a response, but out of respect for the House I will say that it is important to make sure that these long-term environmental plans are in place. We brought in legislation saying that we would refresh them every five years, and that is exactly what we have done.

    If we are talking about track records, of course the Labour Government never did anything about sewage. They did not know anything about it. [Interruption.] They did nothing—nothing. I am used to the usual spew coming out of those on the Labour Front Bench and, frankly, it is not good enough.

    Let us go through some of the questions on which the hon. Member wanted some updates. On chemicals, we still have the system in place, and as is set out in the environment improvement plan, we will be publishing a chemicals strategy this year.

    On SSSIs, I am very conscious of the risks that exist. There are variations in what is going on around the country, which is why I have asked for an individual plan to be put in place for every single SSSI. Natural England will be going through and making the assessments of what is there and what needs to be done, and we will get on with it.

    I think environmental land management schemes have been transformational. This is a journey for those in the farming industry, who are the original friends of the earth—the people who want a very special countryside—and that is why we have brought forward measures, as my right hon. Friend the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries laid out to the House when he came here to talk about this transition last week. We will be working with farmers, and indeed I will be at the NFU conference next month. There has not been any NFU conference since I have been in the Government, but we make sure that we continue to speak to farmers and others.

    On retained EU laws, I have already told Parliament the approach we have set out. Where there is legislation that is superfluous, we will get rid of it. We will be looking carefully at all the regulations that are in place, and that is what we are going through. It seems to have escaped Opposition Front Benchers’ attention that we have of course already repealed 146 regulations. They did not even notice, so there we go.

    In the meantime, we want to make sure that we are holding different people to account, but there is an individual endeavour, a local endeavour and a national endeavour. That is why provisions such as those on biodiversity net gain, which will be coming into effect later this year, will start to help local nature recovery strategies. It is why we have announced extra funding for more projects, with second rounds of things such as the landscape recovery scheme. There are also species reintroductions happening in different parts of the country.

    I am very pleased we have published our environmental improvement plan. I think it shows a clear path for how we will get nature recovery, recognising that this has been going on for centuries. Finally, I am delighted to say that we in the UK Government should be proud of getting nature very much at the forefront of international thinking. We are leading the way on that, and we are doing our bit around the world. I trust that we will continue to be the Conservative party because we believe in the conservation of our precious land.

  • Therese Coffey – 2023 Speech on the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

    Therese Coffey – 2023 Speech on the Environmental Improvement Plan 2023

    The speech made by Therese Coffey, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, in the House of Commons on 1 February 2023.

    I would like to update the House on the next steps that the Government are taking to help nature recover through our new environmental improvement plan. It is a delivery plan setting out how we will achieve our ambitious, stretching environmental targets, the most critical of which is to halt the decline of nature by the end of this decade. We can and must achieve that, both here in the UK and globally.

    We are already under way. In this Government’s first 100 days, we have already delivered with legally binding targets to halt nature’s decline, clean up our air and rivers and support a circular economy; playing an instrumental role in a new global agreement for nature at the UN nature summit COP15; enacting the legal duty on Government, national and local, on considering biodiversity; publishing our environment principles policy statement; setting out in detail our transformational farming schemes with the full range of actions we will pay farmers and land managers to do to restore nature; announcing we will ban the most commonly littered single-use plastic items from October 2023; agreeing to enact mandatory sustainable urban drainage systems for new development, which will reduce the risk of surface water flooding and pollution; putting in place the plant biosecurity strategy for Great Britain, a five-year vision for plant health to protect native species, with plants providing an annual value of £15.7 billion to the UK; and agreeing with the devolved Administrations our approach to managing fisheries. There is much more I could add.

    Nature is a crucial part of our islands’ story and our shared future. We know what is special with our rare habitats and our iconic species, and we also know the pressures it is under. We rely on our natural capital for a secure supply of food, for clean air, and for clean water, as well as for leisure and genuine joy. However, nature has been taken for granted for too long and used freely as a resource with little thought for the consequences. We have to reverse that and respect nature.

    Seventy years ago, people were waking up to the devastation of the great flood of 1953, in which more than 300 people died, reminding us that the full force of nature can bring us challenges. We took action then and it is why we have continued to invest billions of pounds in protecting people’s homes and in better protecting more than 100,000 local businesses to safeguard around 100,000 jobs. However, nature can also help us to tackle some of our great challenges, so we need to help protect nature too. Undoubtedly and understandably, the pandemic set us back in some areas, as we responded to the emergency at hand. A silver lining to that experience, if any is to be had, was the opportunity for us to reconnect with nature, and I am particularly pleased by our pledge in this plan to bring access to a green or blue space within a 15-minute walk of everyone’s homes, be that parks, canals, rivers, countryside or coast.

    Our focus is on picking up the pace and scaling up at home, and around the world, and that is why we are putting nature top of the international agenda as well. We brought nature into the heart of our collective response to climate change under our presidency of COP26 in Glasgow. At COP27 the Prime Minister said that

    “there is no solution to climate change without protecting and restoring nature”.

    The House may have heard me before extol the marvel of mangroves as the ultimate example of how investing in nature is an essential, effective and cost-effective way to take on a multitude of challenges. The key achievement of 2022 was the agreement reached at the UN nature summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity COP15 in Montreal.

    To level with the House, there is much, much more to do to restore the natural world. Some of the challenges are not always so easy or so quick to fix as we might all hope, yet I assure hon. Members that with our new legal duty to consider biodiversity, guided by our environmental principles policy, we are embedding nature in the heart of every decision that Government will take for the long haul. We have a plan for the whole of Government to support this national endeavour and we have already started the journey with a great many improvements.

    We are replacing the EU’s bureaucratic common agricultural policy, which did so little for farmers or nature, and rewarding our farmers for taking action to help nature retain and regain good health, reduce emissions and produce food sustainably. Those things are absolutely symbiotic and we are leading the way in making this essential transition. We have cleaner air, with major decreases in all five major pollutants. Emissions of fine particulate matter, PM2.5, the most damaging pollutant to human health, decreased by 18% between 2010 and 2020. I want our air to be even cleaner. That is why we are working with farmers to tackle ammonia emissions.

    Councils ask for a lot of powers, but I need them to use the powers they already have, including on tackling litter and fly-tipping, rather than just asking for more. I will be publishing what they are doing and seeking to share best practice across the country.

    We are accelerating the rate of tree planting. The Forestry Commission will start growing its estate and increase planting, fulfilling its original statutory obligation to help to rejuvenate the forestry and timber industry. We have strengthened the financial support through our environmental land management schemes and we will continue to promote urban tree planting so children everywhere can enjoy their local woods.

    On the chemical status of our water bodies, the science and modelling are clear that it will take decades to recover and heal completely, but we are keeping a spotlight on water quality and getting industry to clean up its act. We are restoring 400 miles of river through the first round of landscape recovery projects and establishing 3,000 hectares of new woodlands along England’s rivers, as well as doubling funding available for the catchment-sensitive farming programme to £30 million in each of the next three years, to cover all farmland in England. We have already seen a huge improvement in our bathing waters. Last year, nearly three in four beaches were deemed excellent—only about half of them were back in 2010—but I share people’s concern about sewage in our waters. That is why we, a Conservative Government, turned on the monitoring, and why we are holding industry to account on fixing this issue. Through our storm overflows discharge reduction plan, we are requiring water companies to deliver their largest ever environmental infrastructure investment, an estimated £56 billion of capital investment over 25 years. We have set clear expectations on improvements on which we will track performance. The next formal review will be in 2027, so if we can go further and faster, that is exactly what we will do.

    This issue remains an international endeavour as well. We have a globally recognised track record of action, helping communities protect and restore their national treasures. Reinforced by our science expertise and financial support, we are helping nature around the world. That is the right thing to do and it is absolutely in our interests as well. Having committed to doubling UK international climate finance to £11.6 billion, and to spending at least £3 billion of that on nature, we are building on decades of action, backing efforts to take on the whole host of threats that now face the world’s flora and fauna well beyond climate change alone. We are doing that through the blue belt programme, protecting an area of ocean larger than India around our biodiverse overseas territories, through our world-renowned £39 million Darwin initiative, and through the illegal wildlife trade challenge fund. We are ploughing all that expertise and experience into our newly established £500 million blue planet fund, and our £100 million biodiverse landscapes fund, to help some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities restore, protect and connect globally important but fragile habitats.

    I am so proud that the UK is leading, co-leading and actively supporting the global coalitions that are committed to securing the maximum possible ambition and achieving the greatest possible impact on everything from taking on the scourge of illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing, to persuading countries to agree a new, legally-binding global treaty to end plastic pollution by 2040, to supporting efforts to establish a global gold standard for taking nature into account across our economies.

    I could spend hours talking about nature, about our mission, about what we have already achieved. As the Member of Parliament for Suffolk Coastal, I am blessed to represent a very special part of our country, with many precious habitats and protected sites, on land and offshore. I always said it felt like I had had six years of a perfect apprenticeship before I became the Environment Minister in 2016. There are many more parts to the plan that we published yesterday. I recognise that we have work to do, and our aim is to catalyse action across Government, across the economy and across the country, with the whole Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs family, our agencies, including Natural England, the Environment Agency and the Animal and Plant Health Agency, our delivery partners and regulators, the whole of Government, and individuals, communities and businesses, from farms to finance, all working together to bring this to life.

    Nature needs us to accelerate and scale up our help if we want to enjoy nature and have its help for generations to come. Together, we can achieve it. Whether someone lives in a city or town, in the countryside or on the coast, we all have a part to play in the truly national endeavour and the decade of global action that we need now to see this through. I commend this statement to the House.

  • Therese Coffey – 2023 Speech on the Environment Improvement Plan

    Therese Coffey – 2023 Speech on the Environment Improvement Plan

    The speech made by Therese Coffey, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, at Camley Street Natural Park on 31 January 2023.

    Welcome everyone to Camley Street Natural Park for the launch of our Environment Improvement Plan.

    And thank you to the London Wildlife Trust for hosting us.

    I was at another of your sites yesterday – Woodberry Wetlands – and I also recently visited Suffolk Wildlife Trust’s Hazlewood Marshes which after a breach of its walls by the tidal surge a decade ago is a great example of mitigation and adaptation actually leading to a rejuvenated nature reserve.

    I am delighted to support the important work that you do in every part of the country, both conserving nature and connecting nature to people – in the heart of the city or the countryside.

    As MP for Suffolk Coastal, I am really blessed to represent a very special part of our country with many precious habitats and protected sites, on land and offshore.

    I always said it felt like I had six years of a perfect apprenticeship before I became the Environment Minister in 2016.

    During that three years I was in office then I am proud of much of what we achieved or got going: the Clean Air Strategy, the Resources and Waste Strategy, progress on flood defences, tackling illegal wildlife trade, and much much more.

    The standout legacy from that time was our 25 Year Environment Plan, which set out our vision and the ten complementary goals designed to leave the environment in a better state than we inherited.

    I am delighted to be back now as Secretary of State, supported by a great team of ministers and civil servants here today, to present our Environmental Improvement Plan the delivery plan to achieve our ambitious, stretching environmental targets the most critical of which is to halt the decline of nature by the end of this decade.

    We can and must achieve this – both here in the UK and globally, and we have a heck of a lot to do to make that happen.

    Back then, we had anticipated that 2020 would be the magical year for bringing together the golden triangle, the triumvirate of climate change, nature and the ocean – with COP26, CBD15 and the UN Ocean Conference – especially at the time with the UK trying to secure the presidency for Climate COP26 and our intention to integrate nature.

    2020 would have started the roaring twenties – the decade for delivery for the planet. Then Covid hit.

    We saw first-hand the risk of zoonoses and pandemics. And WHAT an impact it had.

    Speaking selfishly for the environment, it was a real body blow as all the progress that had been made into turning our vibrant economy into a circular economy was somewhat derailed, understandably, in the quest to tackle the greatest public health crisis that I will ever witness.

    The silver lining, if any can be had, was the power of science and collaboration around the world to create the vaccine in record time while for the environment, it was an opportunity for us to reconnect with nature providing that break from the lockdown hell that we endured.

    Even then, initially, it was a tale of two cities – as families with no garden were shut out of their local park. That is why I am particularly pleased by our pledge in this plan to bring access to a green or blue space within 15 minutes’ walk of everyone’s homes – whether that be through parks, canals, rivers, countryside or coast.

    But nature cannot wait any longer.

    The IPBES report from 2019 set that out clearly. So, we will need to catch up at pace.

    We started in late 2021 by putting nature at the heart of (the UN Climate Summit) COP26 in Glasgow, and that has continued in Egypt and is now embedded in future climate COPs.

    The multiple pledges, coalitions for ambitions and the commitment of finance all were critical to unlocking transition to a greener future, including nature-based solutions, and keeping 1.5 alive.

    As the Prime Minister said at COP27, ‘there is no solution to climate change without protecting and restoring nature’.

    And indeed, one look at the marvellous mangroves – it wouldn’t be a speech of mine if I didn’t mention mangroves, those brilliant blue forests that capture carbon, protect coastlines and communities from storm surges, and provide vital nurseries for fish, including critical commercial stocks.

    That shows us that investing in nature is an essential, effective, cost-effective way to take on a multitude of challenges, including the causes and impacts of climate change.

    In 2022, the UN Ocean conference produced a call for action but undoubtedly, the key achievement of 2022 was the agreement of the Global Biodiversity framework at the UN’s Nature Summit – the CBD COP15 held in Montreal, to halt the decline of nature by 2030, protect 30% of the world’s land and ocean by 2030, unlock the benefits of DSI – digital sequencing information re on genetic resources, and much, much more – including a financing package to make this the decade of global action to put nature on a road to recovery.

    Our expert negotiators, including our ministers, empowered by our world-renowned scientists and UK jewels like Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum were all critical in delivering this global agreement and we will keep up the pace.

    But why does any of this matter?

    It still remains a challenge to explain why a particular bug or beetle matters in the global web of life, or why people are so passionate about reintroducing the beaver which has been out of our domestic environment for hundreds of years.

    Nature is a crucial part of our islands’ story and our shared future. We know what is special with our rare habitats, our iconic species, and we also know the pressures it is under.

    We rely on our natural capital for a secure supply of food, for clean air, and for clean water, as well as for leisure and genuine joy.

    However, nature has been taken for granted for too long, used freely as a resource with little thought for the consequences.

    We have to reverse that and respect nature. And while the full force of nature can bring us challenges and I am mindful of 70 years ago today of the Great Flood of 1953 in which over 300 people died in our country nature can help us tackle some of our great challenges, and so we need to help protect nature too.

    I know there is much more to do to restore the natural world and to level with you, some of these challenges are not always so easy to fix as we might all hope.

    Yet, I can assure you though that with our new legal duty to consider biodiversity, guided by our Environmental Principles Policy, we are embedding nature in the heart of every decision that government will take – for the long haul.

    This is a plan for the whole of government and this is a national endeavour. And we have already started the journey, and we have seen improvements.

    Our transformation on support for farmers and landowners to prioritise improving the environment, reducing carbon emissions and enabling sustainable food production is absolutely symbiotic and truly world-leading.

    We have cleaner air. I want it to be even cleaner. Now, I would have loved to have made our target to achieve 10 micrograms by 2030, not 2040.

    Many parts of the country already enjoy this but the evidence shows us that with the best will in the world, we cannot achieve that everywhere by the end of the decade – particularly in London.

    Councils ask for a lot of powers.

    I need them to use the powers they already have, including on tackling litter and fly-tipping, rather than just asking for more.

    I will be publishing what they are doing and seeking to share best practice across the country.

    On trees, we have to accelerate our planting rate.

    The Forestry Commission will start growing their estate and increase planting fulfilling their original statutory obligation, to help rejuvenate the forestry and timber industry.

    We have strengthened the financial support through ELMS and we will continue to promote urban tree planting so children everywhere can enjoy their local woods.

    On our water bodies, without the specific uPBT chemical issue, nearly all of them are in good condition. those persistent chemicals, none currently reach the new standards – which is also the case in Germany.

    The science and modelling is clear that it will take decades for those to recover and heal. There is little if anything we can do about that specific issue but we will continue to put the spotlight on water quality and get industry to clean up its act.

    We have already seen a huge improvement in our bathing waters.

    Last year nearly 3 in 4 beaches were deemed excellent and fewer than 3% deemed poor, when it was only about half excellent back in 2009 and over 10% were poor.

    And I can tell people that I do care about the sewage in our waters. That is why we – a Conservative government – have turned on the monitoring and is why we are holding industry to account on fixing this.

    Indeed, when it comes to tackling storm overflows, we have set clear expectations on improvements that we will track against performance

    The next formal review will be in 2027 so if we can go further, faster, then that’s exactly what we will do.

    Today, the new environmental targets come into law as they were agreed by Parliament, though bizarrely the Opposition tried to vote them down.

    I am also aware of the concerns people have about EU retained law. I spent a lot of time post-Brexit putting all that into domestic law and after nearly 50 years in the EU, it is no surprise that there is a lot of legislation on our statute books.

    Nor should it be a surprise though that a lot of that legislation is actually superfluous to our needs, as rather a lot of it has nothing to do with the UK at all or no longer does in terms of we do not need to report to various agencies.

    A lot of the legislation is absolutely key to what we do which is why we will be keeping it. To avoid any doubt, I have already set out our approach to Parliament.

    We will remove legislation superfluous to the UK, review the effectiveness of EU regulation in achieving environmental outcomes and we will retain, by default, environmental legislation for the UK to achieve existing environmental outcomes.

    But this is also an international endeavour.

    We have a globally recognised track record of action helping communities protect and restore their national treasures, reinforced by our science expertise and financial support, we already help the nature around the world.

    And we will continue to do so as the impacts elsewhere can and do have consequences here in the UK.

    Having committed to doubling UK international climate finance to 11.6 billion pounds, and to spending at least 3 billion on nature, we are building on decades of action, backing efforts to take on the whole host of threats that now face the world’s flora and fauna – well beyond climate change alone.

    We do that through the Blue Belt programme, protecting an area of ocean larger than India around our biodiverse Overseas Territories, our world-renowned 39 million pound Darwin Initiative, and the Illegal Wildlife Trade Challenge Fund.

    Now, we are ploughing all that expertise and experience into our newly established 500 million pound Blue Planet Fund, and our 100 million pound Biodiverse Landscapes Fund to help some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities restore, protect, and connect globally important but fragile habitats.

    And I am so proud that we are UK is leading, co-leading, and actively supporting the global coalitions that are committed to securing the maximum possible ambition, and achieving the greatest possible impact, on everything from taking on the scourge of illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, to persuading countries to agree a new, legally-binding global treaty to end plastic pollution, by 2040, or supporting efforts to establish a global gold standard for taking nature into account across our economies.

    As you can probably tell, I could spend hours talking about nature, about our mission, about what we have already achieved.

    And indeed here are many more parts to our plan – on sustainable use of resources, on biosecurity, on resources, on sustainability, on adaptation, on access to nature, on green finance, and so on.

    But we have work to do.

    I am determined to make this a decade of delivery for Defra, for the whole government and most importantly, for the environment.

    Driven by data and dashboards, I expect the whole Defra family to be working together – our agencies, delivery partners and regulators.

    And in all this, our aim is to catalyse action across government, across the economy, and across the country.

    And together, we can achieve this. And whether you live in a city or town, in the countryside or on the coast, I invite you to join us, because we all have a part to play, in this truly national endeavour.

    Nature needs us to accelerate and scale up our help if we want to enjoy nature and have its help for generations to come and that is exactly what we are going to do.

  • James Bevan – 2023 Speech on the Future City

    James Bevan – 2023 Speech on the Future City

    The speech made by Sir James Bevan, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, at Imperial College in London on 24 January 2023.

    Introduction: the right kind of city

    Close your eyes and picture a city. What do you see? I’d guess that whatever most of us see in our mind’s eye, it’s mostly grey – roads, buildings, bridges. When you say the word “city”, it doesn’t normally bring to mind things which are green, like leaves and grass; or blue, like rivers and lakes; or red, yellow, brown, black and white all together, like a goldfinch.

    But the best cities, and the cities of the future we should be aspiring to build now, are not just grey: they are multicoloured – in their biodiversity, their ecosystems and their partnership with nature.

    That is not just because those multicoloured cities are better places for people and wildlife. It’s because our cities – even more than our countryside – hold the key to addressing the biggest of all issues facing us: the climate emergency.

    In praise of cities

    It’s easy to find people praising the countryside. And rightly so – our own is one of the greatest inheritances we have, and we need to look after it. In the country we can still find things that are increasingly, sometimes vanishingly, rare in our urban environments: natural beauty, silence, darkness, tranquility. We can all draw sustenance from being out in the country and experiencing at least some of those things. Which is why a lot of the work of the organisation I lead, the Environment Agency, is about protecting and enhancing nature and the countryside.

    But today I want to talk about something different. Today I want to sing the praises of the city, and not just the great city of London where we are today.

    Cities matter. They matter because they are where most people on the planet now live. In 2010 the world passed a threshold that went largely unnoticed: for the first time in history more people were living in cities than in the countryside. That trend is going to continue: by 2050, most of the people on this planet (some 70% or more) will be living in cities and other urban areas.

    Now this next bit may sound counter-intuitive, but that fact is good news, because cities are Good Things. They are more efficient at using resources, so they are a critical ingredient in securing a sustainable economy. They put out less carbon per person than rural areas, so they are critical in tackling climate change. They produce most of the resources we need to create the cleaner, greener world we all want. They offer social, educational, cultural and other opportunities that can be hard or impossible to access in many rural environments. They are centres of economic activity, knowledge and innovation, because they are the places where different people from different places with different skills, new ideas and talent congregate and spark off each other to create something new. Which is why cities are what have driven pretty much all human progress since the dawn of humanity. It’s not for nothing that the word civilisation comes from the Latin for city.

    So what we need in future is not – as some might argue – fewer or less populous cities. What we need is bigger and better ones. Cities that retain all the fizz and energy of the cities of the past that have driven so much progress, but which in future use resources much more efficiently, create far less pollution, can stand up to all the impacts that a changing climate will throw at them and thrive, and which have more green and blue spaces to which all city-dwellers have equal access, so that our cities are a joy to live in for everyone as well as drivers of growth and progress. In short, we need to make our cities what the UN Sustainable Development Goals say they should be: “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”.

    The state of nature in our cities

    At the heart of every good city is nature. So what is the state of nature our cities in this country? Short answer: a lot better than it was, but not as good as it could be. I know this because in 2021 the Environment Agency published a report on the state of the urban environment in England.

    Let’s start with what’s got better. To illustrate this I want to take you back to the decade of my birth, the 1950s, and this city, London. It was then that three significant events happened that shaped this city we know now for the better.

    Air quality: the Great Smog,1952

    The first event took place in 1952, when thousands of people in London died as a result of the so-called Great Smog – the smoky fog caused by coal burning which eventually led to the Clean Air Act that banned smoke pollution. Most Londoners today have never even heard of smog, which shows you have far we have come. And it’s not just the smoke that’s gone: our air is much cleaner than it was overall. As a result of robust regulation of polluting industries, largely by the Environment Agency, emissions of some of the worst air pollutants have been massively reduced right across the country. Between 1970 and 2017 sulphur oxides (SOx) emissions have decreased by 97%, particulate matter (PM10) by 73%, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) by 79%, and nitrogen oxides (NOx) by 73%. We need to go further, because air quality is still a major factor in unnecessary deaths. But we are making progress.

    Flood risk: the Great Floods, 1953

    The second big event happened almost exactly seventy years ago now, on the night of 31 January 1953. On that day, an anniversary we will shortly be commemorating, over 300 people died in this country when a massive storm surge caused sudden and catastrophic flooding of parts of the East Coast. While Lincolnshire, East Anglia and Canvey Island bore the brunt, London itself came perilously close to disaster. We have come a long way since then. We are much better now at warning people of flood risk and informing communities how to protect themselves. We have much better flood defences. The EA now deploys our people and kit quickly and effectively to help communities under threat. And – a direct result of the 1953 disaster – the Thames Barrier now protects 125 square km of central London, millions of people, and hundreds of billions of pounds of assets and infrastructure. It will continue to do that until at least 2070, but we are already planning for its replacement.

    Water quality: the biological death of the Thames, 1957

    The Thames was also the centre of the third big event. In 1957 the Natural History Museum declared that the river in London was ‘biologically dead’ because the water was so polluted. Since then, we have made great strides in restoring the water quality of the river, largely down to the investments made by the water companies and the introduction of much tougher rules about what operators can put into the river, enforced by the EA. Which is why the river is alive again, with salmon – always a sure sign of good water quality – back in central London.

    Citytopia: imagining the future city

    But it isn’t all good news. While here in London and in many other cities around the country the air is cleaner, the population is better protected against flood risk, and the rivers have come back to life, there are significant challenges that remain as our cities grow. Perhaps the biggest of those challenges isn’t actually out there on the streets, in our air or in our waters but in our own heads: if we want to build a better world then the challenge is to reimagine the city itself.

    A utopia is defined as “an imaginary place in which everything is perfect”. Of course, nowhere is nor ever will be perfect. But it helps to have a vision of where you want to get to. What would Citytopia look like? It would be many things, but most of all it would be three things: clean, green and climate positive.

    Clean

    First, the environment in and around our future city would be pristine, with clean air, clean land and clean waters.

    For the EA, that means continuing all the work we have been doing over the last two decades to stop the pollution that threatens those natural assets – regulating to ensure our air and water quality continues to improve, restoring contaminated land to its near-natural state, tackling the waste criminals who damage our communities and our environment through illegal dumping, and so on.

    Green

    Second, our Citytopia would be the best possible place to live: for wildlife as much as for people. That means more green (and blue) alongside the grey and black.

    The EA is playing a major role in designing and delivering cities with that green and blue infrastructure. We are a statutory consultee on all major developments, and take an active role in placemaking, including by helping design in that blue and green infrastructure, and advising on how best to protect people from flood risk and enhance the environment. We are influential: more than 97% of planning applications are decided in line with our advice.

    As part of that we apply the principle of what is technically called Biodiversity Net Gain, but which in normal English means development that leaves nature in a better state than it was. With our active support that principle was enshrined by the government in the 2021 Environment Act, which makes it a precondition of planning permission.

    The government has recently announced another important step forward: its intent to make what is called sustainable drainage mandatory in new developments in England. This is another boring phrase for another really exciting concept. Sustainable drainage increases the ability of our cities and their drainage systems to absorb large amounts of water when it rains, for example by creating parks to act as giant sponges or putting grass on roofs to allow rainwater to drain away gradually.

    As our cities grow and our current drains reach full capacity, as we concrete over areas that used to act as natural drains, and as climate change brings us bigger and more violent rainfall, these schemes can make all the difference between basements, underpasses, city centres and Tube lines that are flooded and dangerous, and a city that just shrugs its shoulders, puts up its umbrellas, and keeps going. Not only can sustainable drainage reduce flooding, it can also improve water quality, and provide more green – creating better habitats for wildlife and better places for people. The EA already designs sustainable drainage into the flood schemes we build and the developments we support.

    Climate positive

    And third, our future city would not just be a clean, green place where many would dream to live. It would also do something even more important than all of those things: it would actively help us beat the biggest of all challenges that we face, the climate emergency.

    This Citytopia would no longer be part of the climate problem, because it would not be emitting the greenhouse gases that are causing our climate to change. It would achieve that with the right transport systems, so that people could easily walk or cycle to wherever they wanted to go or use cheap and convenient public transport fueled by renewable energy. It would have buildings designed to be energy efficient, heated by solar or other renewable energy and cooled by natural airflow designed into the building at the start. It would use all its resources efficiently and turn all its waste back into a resource to be reused again. It would have arrangements that allowed its inhabitants to share many of the things they needed (bicycles, vehicles, tools, etc) without having to buy or own them all, thus vastly reducing the carbon cost of producing, consuming and disposing of all the stuff we currently feel we have to each own ourselves. Our city might even grow much of its own food, including in so-called vertical farms – tall buildings or deep tunnels – and so avoid the carbon damage caused by transporting its food over hundreds, sometimes thousands, of miles.

    And our future city would not just stop being part of the climate problem. It would also be a major part of the solution. Its green areas – parks, woodland, grasslands, flowerbeds, football pitches – would all be acting as carbon sinks, taking damaging carbon out of the atmosphere and so reducing the extent of climate change. In its design and its infrastructure our city would be perfectly adapted to living safely and well in a climate-changed world. It would have flood defences that protected people from the worst that the violent weather caused by a changing climate could fling at it. It would have power and transport systems designed to cope just as well with periods of high temperature and drought as with record-breaking rainfall. Better still, its trees and plants would not just take carbon out of the atmosphere but cool the air and provide habitats for wildlife. Our city would not just be liveable: it would be beautiful. And by nurturing nature as well as the human spirit, it would lift us all up in mind and body.

    The future is now

    The good news is that this isn’t science fiction. A lot of this future is happening now, and the Environment Agency is helping it happen. I could replicate what follows from most of the cities in this country, but since we are in London let me give you a couple of examples from this city:

    The London Olympic site. The Environment Agency worked with our partners before, during and after the 2012 London Olympics to transform what was a derelict and contaminated landscape into what was first the site for those fantastic games and is now Britain’s largest urban park and a vibrant new development with thousands of sustainable homes and businesses, better water quality, new habitats and lower flood risk – a better place for people and wildlife.

    The Thames Tideway Tunnel. This is a new 25km sewer running from west to east London, mostly in a tunnel under the River Thames. It will address the problem of overflow from Bazalgette’s Victorian sewers, ensuring that after high rainfall sewage discharges are stored and treated rather than as now emptying straight into the Thames. That will bring the biggest single improvement to water quality in the Thames since Bazalgette. The EA has ensured it’s designed and built in ways which don’t just avoid damage to the environment but create something better. For example, a new piece of landscaped land jutting out into the Thames by Blackfriars Bridge which covers one of the main tunnel shafts will create a small park. And the project won’t just improve water quality in the river and provide amenities for the public. It will also help tackle the climate emergency, because it will increase London’s resilience to the higher rainfall that climate change is bringing.

    None of us is as good as all of us: Imperial strength

    So the future London, and the other future cities in this country, are being designed and built right now. But none of us is as good as all of us. If we are going to build the future cities we want – both in our heads and on the ground – we need to draw on all the energy, insight and expertise that’s out there.

    Which is why I want to salute the role of the Grantham Institute and Imperial College in all this.

    The Grantham Institute is delivering world-leading research on climate and the environment and – critically – turning that into real world impact. You are giving us all – practitioners, policymakers, businesses and governments – news we can use. And we are acting on that news. Keep giving it to us.

    And here at Imperial you are doing all that and more. Your vision – a sustainable, resilient, zero-carbon future – is our vision. And your work is helping us realise that vision, including what you are doing on urban ecosystems, and your own Transition to Zero Pollution initiative.

    It’s not just all of you here today and the rest of your faculty, researchers and academic partners who will change the world for the better. The students here at Imperial and in other institutions like this around the country will too. Because they are the people who over the next few critical decades will be playing leading roles in governments around the world, in research, in development, in businesses, in NGOs and the other major organisations that will be shaping the future world – and our future cities – in ways that can be better for everyone.

    Before I conclude, please let me include a brief commercial for the Environment Agency. Our job is to create a better place. We are always looking for talented people who have a passionate commitment to that goal. There is a lot of that talent and commitment in this room, and at Imperial College more widely. So if you are interested in building the green cities of the future, or changing the world for the better in other ways, please think about joining us.

    Conclusion

    I said at the start of these remarks that it’s relatively easy to find people who will praise the country but there are fewer who will praise cities. That includes poets. But there are exceptions, including someone who is much more famous as a nature poet than as a writer about the urban environment.

    That person is William Wordsworth, and I thought it would be fitting to end this speech – which is a speech in praise of cities in general and London in particular – with a poem he wrote over 200 years ago on Westminster Bridge. Wordsworth was looking at the London of 1803, a city that is long gone. But if we do the right things, in this city and elsewhere, his words could also be describing the city of the future.

    Earth has not anything to show more fair:

    Dull would he be of soul who could pass by

    A sight so touching in its majesty:

    This City now doth like a garment wear

    The beauty of the morning; silent, bare,

    Ships, towers, domes, theatres, and temples lie

    Open unto the fields, and to the sky;

    All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

    Never did sun more beautifully steep

    In his first splendour valley, rock, or hill;

    Ne’er saw I, never felt, a calm so deep!

    The river glideth at his own sweet will:

    Dear God! the very houses seem asleep;

    And all that mighty heart is lying still!

  • James Bevan – 2023 Speech on Tackling Climate Change

    James Bevan – 2023 Speech on Tackling Climate Change

    The speech made by Sir James Bevan, the Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, at the UEA in Norwich on 16 January 2023.

    The Fear

    “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

    Unfortunately, that’s not one of my quotes, because it’s a very good one. As most of you probably know, it’s from the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his inaugural address in 1933, at the very height of the Great Depression – when millions were forced into deprivation and were fearful of what the future would hold.

    I quote FDR because his point is just as relevant today, when we confront what for many is the scariest challenge we could imagine: the climate emergency. According to numerous studies, a sizeable majority of young people now struggle with ‘eco-anxiety’ and are fearful about the future due to the climate emergency.

    What I’m not here to do today is to tell you that everything is fine, because it isn’t. But what I do want to argue is that fear is not the most useful emotion when it comes to the climate crisis because it can paralyse us into inaction; and that there is an evidence-based case for climate optimism if we do the right things.

    The Fear = doomism

    But first let’s acknowledge that the Fear exists for good reason. We are already seeing the consequences of climate change: more extreme weather, rising sea levels, higher rainfall, bigger floods, extreme droughts, massive wildfires, ecological harm wiping out species, and rising impacts on the economy, the way we live, and the health and wellbeing of every human on this planet. This affects us all directly and indirectly. The impact is particularly hard on people in the countries of the Global South who are the least responsible for the emissions that are causing these effects but are hardest hit by them – which is why the fight against climate change is also a fight for social justice.

    So if you’re worried about climate change, that’s OK – you are right to be so. And if you are angry about those who are primarily responsible for causing it or those who are denying it (often the same people), that’s fine too: as John Lydon, singer of the punk band the Sex Pistols, used to say: anger is an energy.

    But fear tends to exhaust us rather than energise. And what we sometimes hear from sections of the media, influencers, some well-intentioned campaigners and politicians is all focussed on The Fear. The Fear that we’re running out of time. The Fear that what we’re doing is never going to be enough. The ultimate Fear, that humanity is doomed.

    In my view this climate doomism is almost as dangerous as climate denial. Indeed doomism might even be the new denial. And it’s equally misplaced. It’s not justified by the facts. And it risks leading to the wrong outcome: inaction.

    The evidence: the case for confidence

    So let me give you some evidence to combat this doomism: the case for confidence.

    My case for climate optimism is simple: we know what the problem is; we know what we have to do to solve it; we have started to do it; and if we keep on doing it we will succeed – not just in ending the climate emergency but in building a better world too.

    We know what the problem is: the massive increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the start of the industrial revolution is doing exactly what the science predicts – warming the planet and making our climate more extreme.

    We know what we have to do to solve this problem. The solutions are technically quite simple. First, we need to reduce and as far as possible stop entirely the emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases that are causing the climate to change: what the experts call mitigation. And second, we need to adapt our infrastructure, our economies and our lifestyles so we can live safely, sustainably and well in a climate-changed world. Because even if all greenhouse gas emissions magically stopped at midnight tonight, some climate change has already happened and will go on happening as a result of all the carbon already released into the atmosphere over the last decades.

    And we are starting to do these things.

    Mitigation

    Let me start with mitigation. Governments around the world are taking action to reduce their national emissions, including here, where successive UK governments have shown strong leadership. The 2008 Climate Change Act was the first time a major economy set legal limits to reduce its own emissions. In 2019 the UK became the first major economy to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by getting to Net Zero by 2050.

    Just passing laws of course doesn’t make it so. But we are starting to do the things we need to do to get there. Take energy generation, which has historically been one of the biggest drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. In 1991 only 2% of the UK’s electricity came from renewable sources: wind, solar, hydro and bioenergy. By last year (2022), nearly half (43%) of our electricity came from those sources. And if you include nuclear energy, which accounts for a further 16% of our electricity, the majority of our power is now coming from low or no carbon sources. Which is why the National Grid say that the UK is well on its way to creating an electricity system that’s wholly based on renewable and carbon-free sources by the 2050 target.

    Putin’s war in Ukraine has inadvertently given this move to sustainable domestically-generated energy a massive push, because no-one in Europe now wants to be dependent on Russian gas.

    Science and innovation are helping us too. Last month US scientists announced a breakthrough in the race to create nuclear fusion, which is a potential source of near-limitless clean energy. For the first time in an experiment they produced more energy from a fusion reaction than they put in to generate it.

    Now if this is to power our world in future, it will need massive scaling up: the experiment in question lasted nanoseconds and produced just about enough energy to boil seven kettles. Building a fusion machine that can produce industrial quantities of power and run constantly is a massive technical challenge. But because it can be done, and because it will be so beneficial if it is, it almost certainly now will be done. And the UK will have a part in that: the UK government has announced that the West Burton power station site in Nottinghamshire will be the home of the UK’s first prototype fusion energy plant.

    Adaptation

    Everyone talks about net zero, and I just have. That’s important: the lower our carbon and other emissions, the lower the extent and rate of climate change. But the other side of the climate coin – adaptation to make us more resilient in a climate changed world – is just as important.

    And until recently adaptation has tended to be the Cinderella of climate – getting less attention than mitigation. The good news is that is now starting to change.

    Here in the UK more and more infrastructure providers and utilities – Network Rail, National Highways, the energy providers and the water companies for example – all now have programmes to adapt their own networks and operating arrangements to make them more resilient to the impacts of the changing climate.

    Meanwhile internationally we saw a major step forward on adaptation at COP27, the UN climate change summit in Egypt last month. This was the agreement on a new Loss and Damage Fund that will help nations most impacted by climate change cope with the damage that has happened already and adapt to be more resilient in future.

    This won’t fix any of those problems immediately. It will only mean anything if it’s actually delivered, and you can argue about how much money is needed to get the job done. But the agreement matters in itself, because it signals that the rich nations recognise that they have a particular responsibility to the rest of the world and that they need to show solidarity with the developing nations and back their rhetoric with resources. And that matters because the rebuilding of trust between rich and poor countries that this agreement can help achieve will make it much more likely that we sustain the collective international commitment we need to tackle the climate emergency successfully.

    The Environment Agency is a major player on climate

    The Environment Agency which I lead is playing a central part in tackling the climate emergency. We have put it at the heart of everything we do.

    Our strategy, EA 2025, which drives all our work, has three goals: a nation resilient to climate change; healthy air, land and water; and green growth and a sustainable future. The common theme that runs through them all is the climate emergency. Tackle it successfully, and we will achieve all those goals. Fail and we will fail on all.

    The EA plays a major role in mitigation. We regulate most of the greenhouse gas emitters in this country, and have cut emissions from the sites we regulate by 50% since 2010. We run the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, which limits and will progressively reduce the emissions that airlines, steel works and other major sources of carbon are allowed to make.

    We are trying to walk the walk ourselves with our commitment to make the Environment Agency and the whole of our supply chain Net Zero by 2030. That has meant we are rethinking much of what we do – for example using hydrogen vehicles to move around, low carbon concrete or better still natural flood management (tree planting etc) for flood defences. We are even using our own pension fund to influence investors to put their money into sustainable businesses and move it out of carbon.

    The EA also plays a major role in adaptation. We build and maintain most of the country’s flood defences: that is helping ensure that communities are protected in the face of the higher tides and more violent rainfall that climate change is generating. And those defences are working, because even as we’ve seen record-breaking rainfall and river heights over the last few years, we’ve seen fewer and fewer homes and businesses suffering the trauma of flooding.

    We work with the water companies and other water users to reduce the risk of another impact of the changing climate – severe drought – by finding ways in which they can take less water from the environment and use it more efficiently.

    And in our role as a statutory consultee on all major planning decisions, we are helping design places for people to live and work which are not just more resilient to the effects of climate change (example: if you have to build homes in a flood plain, put the garage on the ground floor but the people on the first floor) but are also better places to live, both for the people and the wildlife, because we try to design in as much blue and green infrastructure – rivers, lakes, trees and grass to you and me – as we can.

    There’s an important point there that I alluded to earlier: which is that if we tackle the climate emergency right, and treat it not just as an existential risk but as a massive opportunity, we can actually build a better world: one in which we make cities which don’t just generate less carbon or which are just more resilient to the changed climate but are also better places to live; in which we invent new technologies that don’t just help mitigate and adapt but also help nature recover from the battering we’ve given it over the last few decades and thrive; in which we find new ways to run successful economies so there is sustainable, inclusive growth for everyone; and in which by ending the impacts of climate change on the weakest and helping them recover from things which they did not cause, we help deliver justice for all.

    UEA is a player too

    You here in the University of East Anglia are also a major player on all those things because of your own outstanding work on climate, and I want to recognise that and thank you for it.

    I know that UEA was one of the early pioneers of climate research and that you’ve been producing world class analysis for nearly 50 years now. I know that the Climatic Research Unit and the Tyndall Centre here have both broken new ground in understanding what is actually happening to our climate, what that means for society, and how best to address those consequences. All that is giving us News We Can Use – the best of all academic research.

    I also know – and here I feel particular solidarity with you – that that endeavour hasn’t been consequence-free, and that you have been the subject of aggressive targeting by climate deniers and others who don’t like the clarity or the consequence of your messaging. To which I can only say: let’s stick together, keep going, follow the evidence and have the courage of our convictions.

    The ingredients for success: none of us is as good as all of us

    But it’s not enough of course for UEA, the Environment Agency or the UK government to be taking action on climate on our own. The climate emergency is a textbook example of a problem that can only be successfully dealt with if everyone takes action, not just in this country but around the world.

    And here too I see cause for optimism, because that is pretty much what is now happening. Think about the things which have to be true in order to tackle the climate emergency successfully.

    There needs to be international consensus on the need for action and on what action should be taken, and a mechanism to make sure it actually happens. There is: the United Nations COP process. Is it perfect? No. Is it moving as far and as fast as we’d all like? No. But is it a necessary condition of success, and is it making progress in the right direction? Yes and yes.

    There needs to be national action by individual governments all around the world. And increasingly there is – not least because ordinary people, in the developing world even more than in the rich west, are feeling the impacts of climate change on their own lives and livelihoods and demanding that their governments take that action. I’ve spent over forty years working with politicians around the world, and one thing that is true in all countries – democratic or not – is that politicians pay attention to what the public want, because giving it to them is ultimately the best way of staying in office.

    There needs to be action by business, both because businesses are a large source of the problem and because they are a key ingredient of the solution: most of the money in the world, as well as a lot of the innovation, both of which are critical for success – is found in the private sector. And over the last few years we’ve seen more and more businesses adapt what they do and how they do it in ways which are helping tackle the climate emergency. In some cases that’s happening because it’s the right thing to do, in others because it’s the smart thing to do: businesses which innovate, get out of carbon and don’t trash the planet will ultimately have stronger futures and better profits than those that don’t.

    And critically there needs to be action by each of us as individuals, because in what we do in our daily lives we are all part of the problem and so all part of the solution. And here too in the last few years we are seeing people all over the world, not just the young or privileged western elites, take action to change how they live and the impact they have on the planet – whether by using low emission vehicles or public transport, insulating their homes, sharing or freecycling possessions, or lobbying their own governments to take action.

    The spearhead of this movement is the new generation of adults who are now in their twenties or thirties. And these are the people – and I may be looking at some of them right now – who over the next two critical decades will be running the country, leading major organisations, or shaping public opinion. That too gives me confidence that the right decisions will get made and that we will indeed tackle the climate emergency and come out on the other side with a better world.

    The EA: environment plus agency

    There is no free lunch, so let me conclude with a brief commercial for the Environment Agency. Our job is to create a better place. We are always looking for talented people who have a passionate commitment to that goal. There is a lot of that talent and commitment in this room, and in UEA more widely.

    So if you are interested in building a better world, think about joining us. If you are interested in the environment, the clue is in the first word of our name. The other clue is the second word – agency. If you actually want some, and you want to make a real difference to the real world, please also think about joining us. Because ultimately the best cure for fear is agency – taking back control, to coin a phrase.

    I can do no better than end with a quotation from Mae Jemison, who was the first African American woman to travel into space, which she did as a mission specialist on the US Space Shuttle Endeavour:

    “Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.”

  • Gordon Brown – 2009 Podcast on Copenhagen Climate Change Summit

    Gordon Brown – 2009 Podcast on Copenhagen Climate Change Summit

    The text of the podcast made by Gordon Brown, the then Prime Minister, on 21 December 2009.

    This weekend the world came together in the first step towards a new alliance to overcome the enormous challenges of climate change.

    But, as you saw, the talks in Copenhagen were not easy. And, as they reached conclusion, I did fear the process would collapse and we would have no deal at all.

    Yet, through strength of common purpose, we were able finally to break the deadlock. In a breakthrough never seen on this scale before – secure agreement from the international community.

    But this cannot be the end – in fact, it is only the beginning and we must go further still.

    To do that, we must learn lessons from Copenhagen and the tough negotiations that took place.

    Never again should we face the deadlock that threatened to pull down those talks. Never again should we let a global deal to move towards a greener future be held to ransom by only a handful of countries.

    I believe that in 2010 we will need to look at reforming our international institutions to meet the common challenges we face as a global community.

    And we’ll need to harness the best of low carbon technology for the world to continue to grow whilst keeping to our pledge made this weekend to limit the increase in global temperatures to two degrees celsius.

    I am convinced that Britain’s long term prosperity lies in leading the necessary transformation to a low carbon, greener future.

    We must become a global leader not just in financing greener technologies but in the development and manufacture of wind, tidal, nuclear and other low-carbon energy.

    And as we look towards a new decade, be assured that your government will play its part in supporting the ambitions of our entrepreneurs and leading businesses and the expertise of our scientists and engineers in making this transformation.

    For it is not just at international summits that Britain must lead the fight to tackle climate change – it’s here at home too.

    Working to protect the only planet we have is about our moral duty to our children and grandchildren.
    Like every parent, I understand we all want to see our children get on and do well in life and I believe that each generation should have greater opportunities and possibilities than the last.

    And I believe in making Britain more ambitious and in helping you to fulfil your aspirations for a better quality of life and a better standard of living.

    A fairer Britain is the driving force behind everything we do. Government is there to help people get on, not just get by.

    That’s why we have helped ensure that the past year has not been as bleak for the vast majority of you as past recessions.

    Last week we had encouraging news that as we approach Christmas, there are more people in jobs, and also that more young people are being helped through these challenging times.

    If the experience of the last recession had been repeated, unemployment would have been so much higher; repossessions twice as bad and company insolvencies two and a half times worse.

    And it’s not just the economic measures which are giving me cause for optimism.

    Crime has continued to decline – bucking the trend of every other recession when it has soared.

    Of course, there are no grounds for complacency. Challenging months and tough decisions lie ahead and we’re determined to do more.

    Jobs, apprenticeships, training and work experience will help kick start the careers of thousands of young people, giving them the confidence and self-esteem that comes with playing an active role in society.

    We’ve also guaranteed that every person on unemployment benefits for six months – whatever their age – will be £40 a week better off when moving into work.

    So our message is that we are a country of aspiration and opportunity and we as a government will support the hard-working majority and that is a government of optimism.

    We have faith in our young people, in our shared futures and in a greener, fairer Britain for all that I’ve just talked about.

    Can I take this opportunity to wish you and your family a very happy Christmas.

  • Ben Price – 2023 Interview on the Norwich Western Link

    Ben Price – 2023 Interview on the Norwich Western Link

    The interview with Ben Price, the Leader of the Green Party group at Norfolk County Council, on 2 January 2023.

    (i) Do you agree with the council’s suggestion that the road is essential for economic growth or do you feel that there are alternatives? What would the Green Party’s solution be to improving transport links in the county and also ensuring that there is economic growth?

    The Green party does not agree with the idea that building this road will create the sustainable economic growth that Norfolk is crying out for. We need to transition our local economy to create the jobs and industry of tomorrow. Norfolk can be a world leader in renewable energy and clean hydrogen production, and the eco house building and retrofitting industries, if only there was the vision and strength of character in council leaders and local MP’s to seize the opportunity.

    (ii) Is the suggested need for the Norwich Western Link simply a legacy of an inadequate public transport system in the county?

    Norfolk has been largely ignored by Westminster. Having Conservative MPs dominate the region clearly hasn’t helped change that approach. The underfunding and systematic dismantling of a national public transport system by central government is felt more acutely here in this large rural county, than most other places across England. All the scientific research is pointing towards a change in how people live and work. How we travel, and why we travel is changing. The rate of change has only increased since the Covid pandemic. Most countries that are currently experiencing economic growth understand that you need to build and maintain a good, cheap and reliable public transport system, that integrates rail, bus and bike seamlessly. Public transport underpins sustainable economic growth and transition. The Western Link is an expensive and highly damaging folly. It’s yesterday’s solution, and will not solve the issues of tomorrow.

    (iii) Do you think a tipping point has been reached where the building of new roads is difficult to justify given the push for Government to take increasingly environmentally conscious decisions?

    Looking at the scientific evidence, the tipping point was some years ago. The UK Government is only now slowly catching up. Under the new carbon neutrality commitments, road building is absolutely prohibitive. We need to reduce the damage to the natural environment. You can’t just plant trees to excuse large carbon generating projects. Going forward with projects like The Western Link, with the knowledge of the damage it will cause, and understanding the commitments we have made to reducing carbon, can only be described as ecocide. These types of projects need to be challenged in court, and there is no way that they can be reasonably justified. History will judge the actions of today.