Labour didn’t do enough to communicate our policies on the environment in the last Parliament. We failed to capitalise on commitments we had made to protect nature and decarbonise the UK economy. We needlessly gave the Green Party and even the Liberal Democrats a free run at showing that they understood the importance of the environment.
I know the environment matters to so many people in the UK.
The number of people who belong to environmental organisations dwarfs the combined membership of all political parties. These organisations, many of them small and community-based, work to protect the natural world and represent the many people who are concerned about the risks of climate change. These groups see nature as something that sustains and nourishes all life and so should be protected for the benefit and enjoyment of all.
I agree with them. I know that so many Labour members do too. I know that from my experience coordinating the National Policy Forum and the Your Britain platform where members were a part of the policy-making process. Labour members, our councillors and our grassroots care about the environment because it matters for social justice. I care about it too and I’ll never forget my first job in government in the old Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions back in 1997.
The work of our Labour councillors in places such as Haringey, Manchester, Nottingham and Islington demonstrates the innovation, creativity and commitment our party brings to green policy. These councils are learning by doing; finding new ways to tackle fuel poverty, make a local park work for the whole community, or taking on the big energy firms by starting their own green energy services.
Despite the commitment of so many party members, Labour has too often treated the environment in a way that suggests it’s come as an afterthought, left to a few concerned MPs and policy leads, not central to work in the leader’s office. As deputy leader of this party, I will ensure that doesn’t happen, and that environmental concerns are given the attention they deserve.
We have some great policies. Labour’s ‘green plan’ is a good place to start but came too late in the parliament to give people a chance to hear about it.
There was a sense that we relied too much on Ed Miliband’s record as climate secretary in the last Labour government, as if that meant we didn’t need to say anything about green issues. In the end this only increased frustration among our members and green campaigners. There were too many occasions when I was asked why Ed Miliband didn’t talk more about climate change or give speeches on the environment.
To put this right, we need to continue the work of giving our grassroots more power over policy making. We also need to ensure that their priorities are properly reflected in the policy output. Our ideas are better when we listen to Labour members and the country at large, and our campaigns can be better too.
It is even more urgent that we take environmental issues on with more priority when we see what the Tory government has done since the election. The numerous major policy changes - from cutting subsidies for renewable energy and applying the climate change levy to the very renewables industries it is meant to benefit, to scrapping the green deal without a replacement and planning to charge cleaner petrol cars and hybrids the same vehicle excise duty as gas guzzlers show a clear direction.
They are “cutting the green crap” as the PM so memorably put it. We are seeing an ideological assault on environmental policies regardless of the likely disastrous impact this will have on cutting carbon emissions just as time is running out for the world to limit global warming to 2C.
The environment isn’t something remote from us – it’s embedded in our communities, in our homes, our streets, in how we keep warm and what kind of world we hand on to our children. It’s central to this country, and I’m determined, as deputy leader, to ensure it’s central to Labour as well.
• Angela Eagle is running to be the deputy leader of the Labour Party
