Sam Hall is the Director of the Conservative Environment Network.
At the election, all parties need a positive offer on the environment, which has remained one of voters’ top five issues throughout this parliament.
This applies to the Conservatives too: recent polling by Opinium shows little evidence that weakening green commitments would be capable of reuniting the party’s 2019 voter coalition. While less supportive of climate policies than voters of other parties, Reform UK voters are overwhelmingly motivated by immigration rather than net zero. Conversely, strong climate policies offer a route for the Conservatives to win back those now planning to vote Labour.
Yet there has been little explicit debate about the environment so far. This is despite the fact the environment underpins so many of the main themes of the campaign, from the volatile fossil fuel prices that have pushed up food and energy bills, to the untapped potential of green industries to drive faster economic growth, to the role of climate change-related extreme weather overseas in driving migration.
The Conservatives shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to talk about one of their most substantive areas of achievement while in government: coal has virtually been banished from our electricity mix; the five biggest offshore wind farms in the world have been built; an area of ocean bigger than India around the UK Overseas Territories has been protected; and reforms to agricultural subsidies to reward nature-friendly farming have been rolled out. If the party wants voters to credit these successes, it must put forward a positive environmental agenda in this election.
Despite this progress, there is much still to do if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and reverse the decline in nature. And parties would be electorally wise to set out bold and practical policies to reduce emissions and enhance nature, while growing the economy and safeguarding our food and energy security. That’s why the Conservative Environment Network has launched our 10-point plan for the environment.
First, to cut bills, improve energy security, and tackle energy waste, we need new incentives to encourage home energy efficiency improvements. Rather than bureaucratic grant schemes, we should consider tax cuts like a stamp duty rebate for homes that are retrofitted within two years of purchase or allowing landlords to deduct the costs of energy efficiency improvements from their tax liability. These should be married with regulatory reforms to unleash innovative green lending products, such as home improvement loans attached to properties rather than individuals.
Second, alongside delivering annual large-scale renewables auctions and the small modular nuclear reactor competition, there is a significant opportunity to expand rooftop solar. To give people more control over their energy bills, proposals to require solar on new homes and commercial buildings should be confirmed, while a new leasing structure to help short-term commercial tenants install panels on warehouse roofs should be created.
Third, we should tackle transport pollution by making clean rail travel cheaper through more competition between private firms. Network Rail should be given a duty to prioritise open access operator applications. Where on-track competition has been introduced across Europe, fares have been reduced by 20-60 per cent over time.
Fourth, we should increase the tax breaks offered inside investment zones, freeports, and ports for green industries. Alongside this, planning rules for cheap renewable power inside these industrial areas should be relaxed, while ports should be helped to invest in expanding capacity and deepening their harbours to manage large offshore wind infrastructure.
Fifth, to address voters’ concerns about water quality, keep water bills affordable, and seize an untapped Brexit opportunity, we need to overhaul the regulation of the water sector. A new outcome-oriented approach to water regulation, with catchment-level plans to reduce all the different pollutants affecting watercourses, would enable more nature-based, cost-effective, and locally tailored solutions.
Sixth, we should boost people’s access to nature, by blending public and private funding to deliver local nature recovery strategies around towns and cities and by protecting these zones with a new wildbelt designation. Community groups should be given discounts to buy disused public land and ownerless land for nature recovery projects near to where people live.
Seventh, we should use our Brexit freedoms to stop large fishing vessels, which are mostly from EU countries, from damaging our marine environment and native wildlife. We should complete the ban on bottom trawling in our marine protected areas, which would be good for sustainable inshore British fishers, for native wildlife, and for the carbon stored in our marine habitats.
Eighth, rather than a tree planting bidding war, we need practical policies to boost tree cover in the next parliament, such as Forestry Creation Zones that cut red tape in low sensitivity areas for afforestation and incentives for farmers to plant more trees along streams and rivers.
Ninth, the nature-friendly farming budget should be protected in real terms during the next parliament. Freed from the wasteful Common Agricultural Policy, the UK should double down on supporting farmers to strengthen the foundations of our food security, such as healthy soils and pollinators, and tackle the main medium-term threats to food security, namely climate change and biodiversity loss.
And finally, we should keep working with UK Overseas Territories to expand our world-leading Blue Belt of marine protected areas and guarantee the scheme’s modest funding for the remainder of the next parliament.
At the election, parties should be competing over how, not whether, to tackle environmental threats. Conservatives should not cede this debate to the left. Instead, they should put forward a positive, practical set of environmental policies that go with the grain of individual preferences and free markets, unlock private investment for environmental solutions, and take advantage of the opportunities post-Brexit to reform regulations to achieve better environmental outcomes.
