Guest election blog – Labour by Mark Avery

I am one of the co-founders and co-directors of Wild Justice but I write this in a personal capacity. I am a scientist (evolutionary biologist and ecologist) by training, and I worked for the RSPB for 25 years. Since 2011 I have done pieces of freelance work for several wildlife organisations, written several books, blogged, campaigned and helped set up Wild Justice.

I first voted in the 1979 general election and have rarely voted for a successful candidate. I am a member of the Labour Party and have, in the past, voted Labour (often), LibDem (rarely but where they stood a chance of displacing the Conservatives) and Green (mostly in local and EU elections). I’ll be voting in the Corby and East Northamptonshire constituency on 4 July.

This is my review of, and my thoughts about, the environmental implications of the Labour election manifesto.

Things I like:

• ‘Clean energy by 2030’ and ‘Clean energy superpower’: both sound good and are given prominence and priority, as they should be. Labour is willing for the state to be a major player including through public investment, not a bystander hoping markets will deliver public goods (which they rarely do). Doubling of onshore wind by 2030 is bold and a good aim, likewise trebling of solar and quadrupling of offshore wind.
• Nuclear power: I remain keen on nuclear being part of the way forward, because its footprint is small and its contribution potentially large and clean (even if slow and expensive) so I agree with this (unlike many environmentalists).
• No new oil or gas fields and no new coal: yes.
• Warm homes: insulation and domestic solar etc. Yes, we should all be part of this and I hope that the next government does give this a big boost. Most governments say they will, none has done enough so far.
• Climate adaptation: good to see, should be given equal prominence with mitigation.
• Clean water: this sounds very good with new regulation and criminal sanctions.
• Meet our Environment Act targets: this is good to see given prominence and we must make sure this happens
• Work in partnership with civil society, communities and business to restore and protect our natural world: if this is code for not listening to vested interests then it is very good as recent governments have been unduly influenced by shooting and farming interests, to the detriment of the natural environment and the general population. Our wildlife charities will have to raise their game.
• Stronger animal welfare: this seems a little odd in a chapter on being a clean energy superpower but, hey! it’s good to see it somewhere. And good that this gives just about equal prominence to welfare of wild animals (eg trail hunting which doesn’t hunt trails and snares) and domestic, laboratory and farmed animals.

Things I don’t like:

• Energy: too often framed in old-fashioned economic terms (growth, jobs, lower bills) and not often enough in terms of the impacts on people and other living creatures across the globe. I’m worried how much nature will be trashed by unthinking deployment of the right solutions in the wrong places.
• Protecting nature: this section is short, vague and doesn’t give the impression that the authors know much about the subject. The nine new river walks sounds more like a sop to Right to Roam than a serious policy deserving mention in this tiny passage on wildlife. If I were a Hen Harrier, Skylark, Water Vole, Marsh Fritillary, Badger or Herring, I wouldn’t feel that much protection were coming my way.
• The Conservatives have left Britain one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world: apart from the fact that Britain isn’t a country, the same could be said for the Blair/Brown Labour governments, and the Thatcher/Major Tory governments, and the Wilson, Heath, Callaghan etc etc governments – in fact, this statement might well have been true when William the Conqueror landed here in 1066 so I blame the Saxons. There is plenty to blame the Tories about for the last 14 years but this isn’t in any way solely down to them. Therefore, it’s either a cheap shot or a shot that shows the writer knows little about the subject they should read my book Reflections).
• Planning: I’m not convinced that the current planning regime is a major brake to economic growth, but Labour says it is and so will bring in planning reform. However, I am convinced that the planning regime gives some protection against unsustainable economic growth – and so it should! I wonder whether Labour has been captured by the house building industry rather than by the need to provide more housing. Planning controls are there to protect us from bad built development. That used to mean ‘ugly stuff’ but now it means ‘unsustainable stuff’.
• Devolved power: It is noticeable that power tends to get devolved to big places with lots of people – City Mayors for example. Where I live in Northamptonshire we haven’t got any big places so I see us being rather disempowered, and that will apply even if Northampton were laughably seen as a ‘big place’. Protecting the quality of rural areas for carbon storage, food production, wildlife, flood protection and landscape appeal may become even more of a challenge.

Things that appear to be missing:

• Great British Energy: I don’t really understand this and I blame the manifesto not myself. Sounds good, but will it be good?
• Warm homes plan: seems to rely on upgrades to existing infrastructure but we also need new build (domestic and industrial) to meet high energy generating and efficiency standards – planning regulations and building standards are needed. Why only upgrade old housing when high standards for new build is cheaper and quicker?
• Clean Water: water companies need to be renationalised (as Labour intended in a previous manifesto). The arguments for Great British Water are just as strong as for Great British Energy (maybe stronger), and water companies own large areas of land that could be managed for carbon storage, flood alleviation and nature
• Introduce a land use framework: sounds promising and we certainly wouldn’t get this under a Conservative government – but what is it? And related to that…
• The uplands: Labour manifestos always read to me as though we all live in cities and large towns but although many of us do, many of us don’t. What about the areas where few people live? Are they irrelevant? Our uplands, for example, should be regenerated from sheep-wrecked hills to carbon storing, clean water producing, flood reducing, wildlife rich hills.
• Grouse shooting and wildlife crime: nothing on these that I can see. Probably not surprising for such an urban party.
• Badgers: work to end the ineffective Badger cull whilst aiming to eradicate bovine TB is good, but no timescales and no hint as to the mechanism (maybe cattle vaccination?). This doesn’t feel like hitting the ground running to me.
• Swift boxes in new buildings: easy, totemic, cheap and popular – and absent.

Overall assessment: The treatment of ‘Protecting Nature’ in the manifesto is cursory and gives me no confidence that those at the top of the party have a clue what Labour in government will do. Yes, there is a back-up policy document which looks pretty good but the manifesto has nothing worthwhile on this subject so my own party has not convinced me that it is serious on nature.

Would I vote for these environmental policies?: I will vote Labour but, as in many other years, despite, rather than because of, Labour’s environmental policies. I’ll vote Labour again because I cannot support the Conservatives, and the Greens and LibDems have no earthly chance of winning in Corby and East Northants. But also, because I harbour a hope, maybe misplaced, that, as in 1997, Labour will do much better for the environment than its pre-election-winning manifesto suggested. Maybe a Michael Meacher will emerge from the ranks and do great things. I hope so.

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.