Introduction

Lucy Pegg (host): Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast. We are the charity and think tank dedicated to achieving ambitious environmental leadership. I’m Lucy Pegg, senior political advisor at Green Alliance.

On the 4th of July 2024, the UK decisively elected a Labour government, who won on a landslide and ended 14 years of Conservative rule. Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, taking a 174 seat majority with him into Parliament, the third best showing in the party’s history, on the back of a manifesto that featured bold environmental pledges.

Now, 12 months on, we’re looking back on one year of Starmer’s government. In this episode, we’ll be hearing from Green Alliance experts as well as others working in major environmental organisations. We’ll be hearing from them what the big moments of the past year have been, whether Labour have lived up to their expectations and what all this has meant for the climate and nature agenda.

A Rocky Start but Environmental Progress

Lucy Pegg: I’m here with Shaun Spiers, executive director at Green Alliance, to get his thoughts on Labour’s first year. So, Shaun, how has the first year felt to you?

Shaun Spiers: Obviously, from the government’s point of view, it’s been very rocky. They’ve found government quite difficult. They were less prepared than I think people were expecting. And a whole lot of events have just hit them: Trump’s election, pivoting towards Russia away from Ukraine, war in Gaza, difficult economic climate.

From the point of view of the government, they boxed themselves into a corner economically as well by ruling out various tax rises. And so they’ve had real difficulties.

I think from an environmental point of view, I’m reasonably chipper. I think in the context of a very difficult financial situation, the spending review was good for our issues. Ed Miliband clearly came to power knowing what he wanted to do and has gone on with it with great pace and been one of the most effective ministers. And Steve Reed, who hadn’t been in post as DEFRA secretary very long, or DEFRA shadow secretary very long when the election was called, has actually been a really effective champion, I think, of the environment.

So there are obviously things we don’t like. There’s things that could have gone better. I think the cut to overseas aid was terrible, not only from an ethical point of view, but also in terms of climate justice. And one could reel off a whole list of other concerns, which we’ll no doubt get on to.

Lucy Pegg: It’s definitely been an ups and downs year for Labour. I think it started so incredibly positively. Obviously, the huge excitement from Keir Starmer and his army of new MPs immediately after the election and that moment where they really delivered a lot of things incredibly quickly, including taking the ban off onshore wind.

But since then, external events, things happening in the world, put quite a lot of challenges on Labour’s plate. And then some internal Labour battles haven’t helped from winter fuel allowance and now through to benefits that have not made things easy for Labour either.

Shaun Spiers: On the wider political context, also, the thing that has changed is the cross-party consensus on climate action has gone. Kemi Badenoch has ruled out net zero 2050. The Conservatives are campaigning actively now against climate action. And so, of course, are Reform UK, who are topping the polls. And that does significantly change the politics. But it’s become a dividing line.

And I think the environment sector for a long time has said we don’t want it to be a dividing line as it has been in Australia, the US. Obviously, Green Alliance is still talking to a whole bunch of green conservatives who are privately appalled by their party’s pivot on net zero. But it does, in a way, create a space for greater climate ambition by the Labour government if they want to lean into this being a dividing line.

And particularly if they want to show that they are a radical centre-left party, which has not always been particularly clear in some of their policies in the first year.

Lucy Pegg: Yeah, that’s probably been one of the most concerning things over the past year is seeing that consensus on climate breakdown. But I think it is good to see people like James Cleverley going out there and batting for the Conservatives’ track record. They did do quite a lot of important things when they were in government on the environmental agenda. We need them to be standing up and defending their track record and making sure that Labour deliver on the opportunities that they set up around things like the environmental land management schemes, for example.

Shaun Spiers: Absolutely. They’ve got a really proud track record. And quite a lot of what Labour is doing on agriculture, as you just said, is continuing things, visionary policies that were in that case set up by Michael Gove. But net zero, of course, was introduced by Theresa May. The whole idea of the Climate Change Act, although it was Ed Miliband’s act under a Labour government, there was a lot of pressure coming from David Cameron as the leader of the opposition at that time.

So it has been a real joint endeavour. And that’s been important also, I think, for investor confidence. There’s a lot of money to be made from net zero, a lot of investment that’s required to deliver it. And having some stability, particularly in the context of money leaving the States and looking for a home for low-carbon, zero-carbon investments, it is worrying if people think that this might all be overturned in four years’ time by a Reform government. And let’s face it, Reform UK embarrass themselves every time they open their mouths and talk about energy policy. It’s really based on very little other than crude populism, but it’s something we do have to take seriously.

Lucy Pegg: Yeah, I think it’s a really important role for the environment sector is to be challenging the increasing amount of misinformation out there and misinformation being spread by really quite senior politicians at the moment.

When you look back at the past year, are there any standout moments for you, things where you think, yes, this government has really gone out there and done something big and ambitious that we can be proud of?

Shaun Spiers: I think there are a whole lot of things. At Green Alliance’s summer reception, Ed Miliband did a sort of inspiring speech where he reeled off: lifting the ban on onshore winds, solar, Great British Energy, making Chris Stark head of mission control, the fact that DESNZ, the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero, was the big winner from the spending review with a 16% uplift when other departments were being cut, a bigger uplift in spending than went to the health department or defence. That’s huge. That’s a real vote of confidence.

Keir Starmer speaking at the Energy Security Summit and saying that clean power was in Labour’s DNA, that was an attempt to put pay to all the kind of briefings from Labour figures against the net zero agenda and against Ed Miliband.

Green Alliance has worked for 12 years – we’ve had a circular economy taskforce for 12 or 13 years. That’s been pushing water uphill a lot of that time, very difficult to get politicians interested. Steve Reed immediately gets it. He gets it partly because of a meeting that we were instrumental in him having with somebody from the Netherlands. He set up a circular economy taskforce. Green Alliance’s Libby Peek is on it. I think that will be the most ambitious circular economy strategy that the UK has ever had.

Methane is something that Green Alliance has campaigned on for a long time, something that crosses between the Department of Environment because of methane caused from farming and landfill and Department of Energy because of methane from oil and gas. We’ve been calling for a methane action plan. The government have agreed to that.

And the last thing I just focus on, I think farming has been a really difficult area for the government, not least because of the debacle of the inheritance tax on farmers which they hadn’t prepared anybody for. I think that’s really the fact that the farming budget has more or less been maintained and it’s going to be focused very much on green farming, on nature-friendly farming. That’s a big win for us as well.

Lucy Pegg: We know there’s been a huge amount of positive things that have happened this year where there’s been really good traction for the sector with government. But are there any areas where you think that the environment sector is struggling to cut through or maybe where government are struggling to deliver on what they promised last year?

Shaun Spiers: I think there are lots of areas they’re struggling to deliver, not least because of the financial situation.

The planning acts started off with a good dialogue between the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Matt Pennycook, the planning minister, Steve Reed, the environment secretary. There have been some significant hiccups along the way and the planning act undoubtedly, or planning bill as it currently stands, will weaken nature protections. That’s a big worry. It’s intensified by the ludicrous rhetoric coming from the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the war on bats and newts and jumping spiders. Totally unnecessary, winding up of the sector. I hope that rhetoric has been retired now.

And of course, as ever, the Treasury, which is the most important and influential department in government, is the hardest for any of us to get to. We do have a dialogue with the Treasury. We meet civil servants, but I don’t think any environment group has managed to get the ear of the Chancellor. And although she has made lots of decisions that are beneficial for the environment, and indeed the industrial strategy puts net zero at its heart. Net zero is the economic opportunity of the 21st century. The Treasury has a single-minded vision for growth. The growth mission has become the number one mission, rather than all the missions working alongside each other and the clean power mission being a way to deliver growth. At any point in the Treasury’s view, their version of short-term growth trumps everything else. And that’s what’s led to decisions on airport expansion, new roads, etc. And that’s undermining the environmental agenda. And also, I would argue, the quality of life agenda.

Lucy Pegg: So I think it’s clear there’s been a huge amount of positive wins that we’ve seen from the government since they were elected in July. But there’s still quite a lot of challenging paths that are going to need to take ahead. They’re going to need to be holding together their political coalition whilst also tackling some quite thorny issues, both within the nature and climate world, but also much broader too. And it’s been great to talk to you, Shaun, and to hear your thoughts on one year of Keir Starmer’s government. Thanks for joining us.

Friends of the Earth’s Perspective

Lucy Pegg: Now that you’ve heard what Shaun and I think about Starmer’s first year, I thought it was time to get a verdict from some people working elsewhere in the environment sector. Abdi Suleiman is political affairs lead at Friends of the Earth, working in Westminster and beyond to create a sustainable future. Friends of the Earth is also the UK’s largest grassroots environmental organisation, with local activists and groups across the country.

So, Abdi, how has the first year of a Labour government felt to you?

Abdi Suleiman: It’s been a mixed one, right? So, in some ways, I think we all turned up with massive expectations. And on some things, I think we can be super happy. We can be happy that the ban on no new licence for oil and gas is there. We can be happy that the ban on onshore wind has been lifted. There’s a whole bunch of things we can be happy about. But I think we can also be quite concerned about some other areas, I think, as well.

Lucy Pegg: Are there any sort of particular big wins, apart from the ban on new oil and gas, that you want to highlight?

Abdi Suleiman: I think the continued investment in warm homes, again, it’s another one of those where initially we were hoping that they would stick to their £6 billion a year. Then they promised £13.2 billion over the course of the Parliament. And we did have rumours that they would cut back on that. And again, it is really reassuring that they have stuck to that.

Lucy Pegg: Thinking about the Clean Power 2030 mission, that’s really driven a lot of Labour’s work, especially in the climate and energy space. And I just wondered if you’d be able to reflect on how you think mission-driven government has changed the way that environmental policy is delivered.

I think after the election, there was a lot of reflection on what does mission-driven government mean? Is that a different way of working or is that just a phrase? To you, how has that felt different, both in terms of the broader political picture, but also on environmental stuff specifically?

Abdi Suleiman: Okay, so I think you could say mission-driven government all you want. And I think you can assert it, you can assess it. You could say it because it makes you feel good, right, sometimes. But if you end up in a situation where you’ve got five missions, 16 bullet points, 22 steps, 24 whatevers, a lot of that doesn’t really matter so much as can we be sure that the government understands the scale of the problem that it has, that it’s willing to commit enough political capital to it, and that it is willing to hold when, to be honest, the interests of oil and gas, which are incredibly wealthy, come up against you.

And I think on the mission stuff, I’ll be honest with you, there’s an argument that a lot of this has been driven by Ed Miliband and his team and their passion and their desires to deliver on this, right? There’s an open question as to just the level of commitment Keir Starmer personally has, just the level of commitment Rachel Reeves personally has, just the level of commitment other senior figures in the Labour Party have. There are some people that you’ve got to ask open questions about. If they were not being pushed, and frankly, if DESNZ was actually offering quite a coherent idea of what it would like to do, would they still deliver on it?

And I think that’s why organisations like Friends of the Earth, our job is to whoever the government is, to be kind of a critical friend who is both willing to criticise them, willing to take them to court, but at the same time also willing to push them to do things better.

And I think we also have to be very good in our part of the, in our world, not to always be in a bad mood. We should be concerned and we should be worried and we should be angry and frustrated and always feel like enough isn’t being done. But we also should be in the business of when something good happens, going, that was good, more of that, please.

Lucy Pegg: I think it’s a good segue as well to talk about, obviously Friends of the Earth does have these groups all across the country who are working locally to pressure their MPs, their councils, to do more, to be more ambitious on climate and nature and deliver for them locally. And how have they found the past year? How have they found suddenly perhaps a lot more of them having a Labour MP to talk to, perhaps finding they’re getting a more positive response? What’s the mood been of those groups?

Abdi Suleiman: The engagement’s been much better. There’s been much more, we’ve heard less of what we used to have, which is people saying my MP refuses to meet us, refuses to engage with us. But I will say something, and I think this is almost a warning to those Labour MPs, which is I’ve definitely sensed like a growing impatience amongst groups if they don’t feel like their MP is really doing enough on climate, nature and rights.

We have been getting people getting a little bit more frustrated. I think that’s a warning to MPs that saying that the whip won’t let you do something might be a very good argument when you talk to lobbyists. It’s not a very good argument to constituents, right? Constituents are a lot less convinced by some character called the whip who said that you can’t do something. They want to know why they elected you to go do something and you’ve come back and invented some character who says that you can’t. I’m not saying it’s invented, but who is this person and why are you answering to them instead of to me, right? To me, right? And I think I would advise MPs to be quite careful about the types of excuses they give in response to requests from local groups and local constituents.

Lucy Pegg: Yeah, I definitely think we had this huge amount of positivity just after the election. It suffered some knockbacks, both from internal Labour politics and the world externally. And now there is Labour MPs need to not take for granted that they got elected. And obviously lots of them are very aware that they were elected on quite small majorities. Already, I think people are thinking towards the 2029 election. What do they need to do to get reelected?

Just as a final question before we let you go, Abdi, thinking about the next 12 months ahead, what are you looking forward to and what are you really hoping we’re going to see from government?

Abdi Suleiman: We’ve got a long list of things we’d like them to do in terms of policy. But I would say this: I would like government to recentre a renewable, clean power revolution at the centre of how they intend to get to the growth they talk about. They talk of growth a lot. But if you look at the stats and then they’re offering 0.2% growth this year, 0.5% that year, whatever. And at the same time, if you want to play the game of growth, well, China’s on God knows how many percent of growth every single year. And other countries are going through incredible amounts of growth and they’re making investments in renewables.

So what I would say to them is what we’re really hoping is a real change in even the scale. I think they already think they’re doing a lot of good work and they are doing some good work. But we take a real scale when it comes to clean power and recentring at the heart of their economy. The renewable sector is growing at 10%. The rest of the economy isn’t, right? If growth is the game, then do some growth.

I mean, obviously on the question of the Friends of the Earth Palestine, we would like a ceasefire and arms embargo and would like protection of lives. But the other thing is this: If I was to make a prediction, I think it could be quite chaotic here, right? I think it could be an incredibly chaotic year. It could be a year with leadership challenges. It could be a year in which Reform keep marching the way they’re marching and keep pushing an anti-climate denial kind of narrative into wider society.

And so the other thing is I would ask and I would hope is that they have the backbone to defend the science and defend where we are all heading with a bit of courage and rebuild that climate consensus. Because the irony is that we have got closer to the point at which climate change is potentially, we’re getting closer to the cliff, to put it bluntly. We’re getting closer and closer to the cliff. And yet as we get close to the cliff, the political will has diminished. And that is the great irony of this. So I guess that’s the other thing is that more political will.

Lucy Pegg: Thank you so much for talking to us, Abdi.

Abdi Suleiman: Thank you so much.

National Trust’s View on Nature and Climate

Lucy Pegg: I’m now here with Georgie Holmes Skelton, head of government affairs at the National Trust. She works on a range of issues connected to the Trust’s work, including climate and nature. So Georgie, first of all, expectations were really high for Labour’s first 12 months. What were you expecting and how do you feel the government have delivered on that?

Georgie Holmes Skelton: Yeah, I think it’s been a little bit of a mixed bag. I think we felt that we had some good existing connections and relationships with the incoming Defra team. We got them to know Steve Reed and his team a little bit whilst he was out of government. He’d been working with and talking to NGOs for a few months before the election took place. But I think it became quite quickly clear once they got into government that the economic context was going to be hugely constraining in terms of the ambition that they’d set out in the manifesto.

And the clear interest and desire to make things better from a nature perspective is really being challenged by that economic context and their ability to deliver in that space. And I think that’s sort of been the story of the year in many ways, that constraint that’s being applied by the need to rein in spending has been playing out in terms of the political messaging, in terms of the policy, in terms of funding decisions that we’ve seen.

Yeah, it’s been a mix of some really positive stuff, but also some of that challenge coming through.

Lucy Pegg: Yeah, absolutely. It’s really felt like the Chancellor is setting the boundaries of what all of the departments can do and they’re sort of struggling at meeting what they need to do to deliver on everything that was in their manifesto. We spoke to Abdi a lot about the clean power mission and how there has been a lot of genuinely amazing things happening there and quite a shift since last government.

Do you think that progress on nature restoration, which is obviously a big part of the National Trust’s work, has matched that ambition that we’ve seen on clean power?

Georgie Holmes Skelton: It’s an interesting question. We’ve been hugely supportive of the clean power mission and that needs to deliver transformational change to achieve net zero is absolutely fundamental. And that’s important for a whole range of issues that connect into that climate challenge.

And we just published actually just this week our climate transition plan for the National Trust. And we’ve got a goal to achieve net zero by 2030, which we’re on track to achieve, which is brilliant. It’s an absolutely huge existential challenge for us all. But I think we have worried that we haven’t always seen the same levels of energy going into the nature piece, which is, if we’re being realistic, it’s absolutely as critical and as existential in the long term for all of our well-being, whether that’s social well-being, whether that’s economic well-being, our health, you know, everything is connected into nature in as many ways as it’s connected into that climate challenge.

Lucy Pegg: There have been some really good moments for nature. We saw a fairly good settlement for the farming budget at the spending review. But it is obviously the planning bill. Lots of nature organisations have concerns about that. And like you say, that tension between the obviously the undeniable need to fix the housing crisis in this country. But at the same time, the need to protect nature and that that is so integral to tackling the climate crisis.

Georgie Holmes Skelton: As you say, for farming side, we’ve seen some positive stuff. I think that’s been a mixed bag in itself. They had some really strong commitments in their manifesto around supporting British farming, which is brilliant. And as you say, the spending review outcome was positive. But we also know that’s not enough. Research that the National Trust has done with Wildlife Trust and RSPB shows that we need about £3.1 billion a year in terms of the farming budget in order to address the government’s environmental targets and net zero. So if you take those targets and you say, well, what do we actually need in order to achieve those through the farming budget? That’s the scale that we’re looking at. So it’s great that they protected that budget, but we also know that’s not enough. And I think that’s where the scale of ambition needs to come in.

We’ve seen some positive stuff in terms of the land use framework as well. So they put out a consultation on that earlier in the year. And it’s great to see that sort of step change in terms of how government’s thinking about the way that land is being used and what it needs to contribute to in terms of nature and climate and so forth.

Lucy Pegg: Across this episode, we’ve talked a lot about what government is and isn’t doing. But I think the other thing that we’ve seen since the election is a huge number of new MPs across both Labour, but also a lot more Lib Dem MPs, far more Greens proportionally than they had before. Obviously, the National Trust, you’ve got properties across the country. You work really closely with constituency MPs, often back in their constituencies rather than in Westminster. How have you found working with all of these new people? What are they like?

Georgie Holmes Skelton: It’s been absolutely huge. I pulled out some statistics from the election because it absolutely completely changed our landscape in terms of engagement with MPs. So of the seats with the highest percentage of National Trust land, so where we’ve got a really high concentration of National Trust places and land. Ahead of the election, Conservatives held around 80% of those seats, just over 80%. We were engaging with Conservative MPs. Following the election, that’s reduced down to 23%. And Labour now hold nearly 50% of those seats with the Lib Dems on 22%. So that’s completely changed our sort of advocacy landscape in terms of the MPs that we’re engaging with.

And also, there was just this really huge volume of new MPs, new incomers. There’s about 178 constituencies that contain National Trust land across the whole country. And 59% of those had a new MP after the election. So a huge changeover. So it has been a real challenge for us to get to know everyone across all of those sites across the UK. But it’s really important to us that we put a lot of effort into getting to know local MPs. Obviously, we have need for MPs will often find that there are questions coming to them from their constituents about what’s the National Trust doing here. You can show what we’re up to. We can get MPs out onto sites and show them the work that we’re doing across whether that’s the heritage work, whether that’s the climate work that we’re doing, whether that’s a big nature restoration project. So I think we also we find that like a really positive way to get to know people and bring them into some of the work that we’re doing.

Lucy Pegg: So as we entered a second year of a Labour government, where do you think the government should be focusing its attention now?

Georgie Holmes Skelton: So I think as we go into year two, there’s quite a lot that’s still sort of outstanding in some ways that needs finishing or picking up from the first year. Obviously, we’ve still got the planning and infrastructure bill going through Parliament. So getting that right and really engaging with us to make the changes that are needed to that’s going to be absolutely critical in the long term to making sure we can do more for nature.

I think we’re also still waiting on an updated EIP, so the Environmental Improvement Plan that was promised. And I’m really looking to see some real tangibility in a revised plan about how policy and funding is going to work together to enable delivery of these really substantial legal targets that they need to achieve. And there’s probably something just in general about the kind of overall regulatory framework. So we had the Corry Review report recently, and there were some really interesting ideas in there about how you can work within regulation to actively support nature recovery. So thinking about regulation and how it can actually help us do more, not just about sort of stopping things from happening, but really actually helping things to happen. So those are the things that I think are top of mind for us.

Lucy Pegg: Yeah, there’s so much happening. I feel like we’ve had a busy first year, but we’ve got many more years to go of this parliament and a lot that we’re hoping we’ll see out of government.

Georgie Holmes Skelton: Absolutely.

Lucy Pegg: It was great to hear Georgie’s reflections on not just what working with the new government is like, but what it’s been like getting to know so many new MPs from across parties.

Conclusion

Lucy Pegg: Speaking to Shaun, Abdi and Georgie, it’s clear if nothing else that this has been a busy year. Big wins on renewable energy, keeping fossil fuels in the ground, nature-friendly farming, the circular economy and a green industrial strategy, to name but a few, have been tempered with tensions, particularly when the scale of environmental delivery we need butts head with the strict fiscal rules set out by the Chancellor.

But with four more years left of this Parliament, the government’s job now is to keep moving forward and to build further on its achievements for the past 12 months to make people’s lives better and secure a more resilient future for us all.

Thank you for listening to this episode. Keep checking in as we will continue to bring you specialist interviews and highlights from our events here on your podcast feed. You can subscribe on your favourite podcast app and you can follow us at @greenallianceuk on X and Green Alliance on LinkedIn and Bluesky. We encourage you to use the hashtag #greenalliancepodcast to join in on this podcast and share thoughts, questions and ideas. See you next time.