Why the government needs to hold fast on the green agenda – Inside track

These are difficult days for UK environmental politics.

It is only a few months since 85 per cent of the electorate voted for parties committed to net zero by 2050. In that election, the Conservative and SNP both supported net zero, but went cool on environmental leadership, campaigning against their own records. They both lost badly. Labour not only committed to net zero, it set out policies to achieve it, including clean power by 2030. It won a landslide. The Lib Dems and the Greens also gained seats.

The government has a strong mandate to deliver on its environmental policies and, with Donald Trump’s election and the fall of the German government, it is more important than ever that it succeeds. Successive UK governments have shown that it is possible to grow the economy and cut emissions. If environmental policies come to be blamed for the inevitable difficulties all governments face, the world will take notice.

Influential voices want the government to fail on the environment But there are now lots of influential people, well represented in the media, who want the government to fail on the environment. It is particularly worrying to see the Conservative Party turn against the Climate Change Act which it helped inspire.

Claire Coutinho, the shadow climate secretary, has doubled down on the election losing line that pursuing net zero is all cost and burden. She says that the Climate Change Act’s legally binding carbon budgets “are creating a complex web of targets and quotas tantamount to central planning”. Her leader, Kemi Badenoch, promotes the false idea that net zero was introduced (by the Conservatives) with no idea how it would be delivered. She describes herself as a net zero sceptic and argues for climate adaptation as an alternative, rather than a complement to mitigation.

The UK’s cross party support for climate action has been a source of pride during a particularly fractious few years. Before the 2015 general election, the three main party leaders issued a joint statement, brokered by Green Alliance, that “acting on climate change is… an opportunity for the UK to grow a stronger economy, which is more efficient, and more resilient to the risks ahead”. They agreed, whoever won the election, to end the use of unabated coal.

The Conservatives honoured this agreement and the UK’s last coal fired power station closed this year. The rapid transition from coal to renewables, far more rapid than most predictions, is an extraordinary success story. As recently as 2012, coal provided nearly 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity; the figure is now zero, with renewables providing over 40 per cent. Technological change can be rapid. A business friendly party should see its potential, as business certainly does.

Climate is left out of the anti-net zero argument But those who said the lights would go off if we ditched coal are still at it. Interestingly, most of their attacks are on energy policy and the specifics of net zero, which can sound like an abstract, technocratic goal. Climate change itself is hardly ever mentioned by the self-styled net zero sceptics, though the evidence of its severity becomes clearer week by week. When it is acknowledged, they point out that the UK is responsible for only one per cent of global emissions. To which Ed Miliband has a good answer: that is why we have to work hard to influence the other 99 per cent.

I do not expect Conservatives to back all Labour’s policies. It is natural that they should want to do things differently. Sam Hall of the Conservative Environment Network, Michael Liebreich and others are promoting distinctively centre right ways of decarbonising. I hope Kemi Badenoch will listen to these voices rather than the know nothing controversialists who fill the pages of the Telegraph and the sofas of on GB News.

And I hope the government will hold firm on increasing the uptake of heat pumps and zero emission vehicles, both of which are crucial to achieving net zero.

Meanwhile, farmers are up in arms about changes to inheritance tax. There is some irritation at the sight of millionaires angrily demonstrating in defence of their privileges and there is a good argument for closing a loophole which incentivises rich people to buy up land to avoid inheritance tax. Nevertheless, many of the farmers who are angry are not rich, certainly not income rich, and there are genuine worries (however well justified) about the impact these changes will have on family farms.

Farmers need a fair deal This furore has the potential to set back efforts to put farming on a more sustainable footing. To reassure farmers that the government has their interests at heart, it must ensure that future trade deals are based on core standards and bar imports that undermine UK standards (Kemi Badenoch’s “we have your backs” speech to the farmers’ demonstration went down well but was hardly consistent with her support for a UK-US trade deal).

Farmers also need a fair deal from supermarkets: for this and much more, it is time to implement Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy. And the government must increase funding for the new post-Brexit Environmental Land Management schemes, both to support struggling farmers, particularly those on marginal land, and to deliver its climate and nature goals. Farmers and environmentalists can make common cause in arguing for this in the Comprehensive Spending Review.

Farming is a diverse industry and not all farmers are up in arms. However, many are, and the government needs urgently to rebuild trust. It will not be easy and it will not be achieved with just words and promises. Farmers cannot be given a blank cheque, but it is unwise to alienate those who are ready to change. In a fierce article, James Rebanks warns that many farmers “will drift to the populist Right as they have done in America”. They have in the EU too, where genuine grievances have been used to stoke a culture war.

It is crucial to avoid such a drift. The government has a big task and a host of problems. It may be too late to say that it should avoid making another one, but it should at least try to minimise the trouble caused by the inheritance tax changes and follow Denis Healey’s first law of holes: when you are in one, stop digging.