Guest election blog – Reform by Rosie Pearson

I am a planning and environmental campaigner, co-founder of the Community Planning Alliance, founder of Essex Suffolk Norfolk Pylons action group, co-founder of the North Essex Farm Cluster and columnist with The Telegraph.

I do not have any strong party allegiances.  I’m interested in policies, not politics.

This is my review of the environmental implications of the Reform Party’s election manifesto.  Here are my highlights and lowlights.

Things I like:

• Brownfield first for housing (although we need to remember that this should always be on a case-by-case basis.  Some brownfield is a wildlife-rich haven).
• Incentives for new technology in housing and for modular and smart homes.   There is definitely room for anything that can reduce CO2 emissions in housing, both during construction and once properties are occupied.   A Parliamentary report in 2022 – click here – found that the UK’s built environment (commercial and residential) is responsible for a quarter of our emissions.   It’s ripe for improvement.
• Repurposing unused offices and vacant high street properties – again, yes please, albeit with checks and balances to ensure that conversions are of a good quality. Retrofitting and reuse of existing buildings also has the benefit of keeping carbon locked in.

Things I don’t like:

• Most of the rest of it!  Aside from the fact that the manifesto does not mention ‘nature’, ‘biodiversity’ or ‘wildlife’ at all, when it does refer to the environment (four times) it is twice with intent to remove environmental regulations, once to protect country sports and also in this very weak paragraph about tree-planting, “We can protect our environment with more tree planting, more recycling and less single use plastics. New technology will help, but we must not impoverish ourselves in pursuit of unaffordable, unachievable global CO2 targets.” This, depressingly, misses the point that climate change itself will impoverish us (or worse) and that there are economic benefits to a green economy.
• Reform will ‘Stop the War on Drivers’ by legislating to ban ULEZ Clean Air Zones and Low Traffic Neighbourhoods.   Come on, Reform – there are numerous studies showing the benefits and popularity of these proposals.   We need to put public transport, cycling and walking at the top of the agenda and give people affordable options so they do not have to rely on their car.
• And finally, a pledge which makes me want to cry because I have seen at first-hand how nature is benefiting – one to scrap climate-related farming subsidies.    The environmental farming subsidies are only just starting to be applied. It is an exciting time.  Farmers are showing us how they can grow food and protect the environment.  Reverting to flat-rate subsidies would be a short-sighted disaster.  If we don’t protect our soils, aquifers and water-courses and rural environment, we will not be able to grow food at all.

Overall assessment:

This was a painful read and nothing short of terrifying for the environment, nature and biodiversity.

Would I vote for these environmental policies?

Unequivocally, no.

This is one of a series of opinion pieces on the political parties’ 2024 general election manifestos. They were commissioned by Wild Justice several months ago by approaching a wide variety of conservationists and environmentalists long before the date of the general election was known. Some people who originally agreed to write pieces found the date and short timescale impossible and had to back out. We did not know what they would write and their only brief was to pick one or two political parties’ election manifestos and tell us what they liked and didn’t like about their environmental policies. We didn’t tell people what to write and we haven’t edited what they wrote (except to squeeze things into a common format, to correct minor grammatical and spelling errors and typos). The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Wild Justice.

If you think you could produce a review of one of the 2024 general election manifestos then we would need to receive it as soon as possible, but in any case before 26 June, in a similar format to that above, as a word file and with a .jpg or .png image of yourself, the author. Send any potential texts to admin@wildjustice.org.uk and we will look at them. We’ll let you know if we want to publish your piece and we may be able to pay you a small amount for it.