Labour’s push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is “extremely dangerous”, the co-leader of the Green party has said.
Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley between Norfolk and Suffolk, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament last July in their best ever result. He said and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be as disappointed as they have been.
In recent weeks, Labour has given the green light to airport expansion and vowed to change planning rules to deprioritise nature, while ministers have repeatedly disparaged bats and newts and ridiculed measures to protect fish. The chancellor Rachel Reeves has suggested economic growth trumps the government’s legally binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and there are suggestions the national wealth fund, meant for green projects, will be coopted for defence.
Ramsay said: “This whole depiction the government’s coming up with is completely false and actually extremely dangerous, because green spaces are crucial to people’s wellbeing, crucial to the natural environment, and we can and must do development in a way that not just protects nature … the government is signed up to a requirement to restore 30% of land and sea in the UK for nature by 2030.
“And when Labour talks about growth versus nature, it sort of castigates communities who are working to protect their community, protect the environment from being trodden on by a planning system that that should be there to protect them, but the government’s looking at removing those safeguards.”
Ramsay also questioned whether Boris Johnson was a greener prime minister than Keir Starmer, saying: “[Johnson] did have some understanding of the need to regenerate the natural world, which Labour are very weak on. While there were early signs of some positive moves on renewable energy targets, that’s now being undermined by climate-wrecking decisions around things like airport expansion.”
Ramsay, who is co-leader with fellow MP Carla Denyer, has had a bruising start to his parliamentary career. One of his biggest critics has been Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, who has accused him of being against renewable infrastructure.
Miliband’s criticisms of Ramsay have resulted in the Green MP being labelled the “UK’s nimby-in-chief” after he used his first day in parliament to call for a pause on plans for a route of 520 pylons passing through his constituency. Ramsay says he is representing his constituents, who want alternatives to pylons to be discussed before they are built. His critics, including Miliband, say alternatives are too slow and expensive to implement and will impede the government in reaching its target to decarbonise the grid by 2030.
Before Ramsay was an MP, he was for many years a Green councillor and worked for renewables campaign groups. Of being referred to as a nimby, he said: “I think that the claims are so absurd that they are laughable. I mean, people have called me Mr Renewables, because my whole career and campaigning background since I was a teenager has been in advancing action on climate and in particular action on renewables. I’m the first to say we’ve got to see more renewables.”
MPs for the rightwing Reform party have also opposed pylons as part of their drive to cancel net zero, of which Ramsay said: “Reform have jumped on a bandwagon quite recently. There’s been a cross-party group with the other four parties in East Anglia, working on these issues for some time.” He said the party was “selling people a pup” because “they’re trying to pretend that they’re there to support the ordinary person, but their policies would undermine the NHS, allow the ultra-rich plutocrats from abroad to buy up our democracy, and crucially, would stop the drive for net zero, which will bring down people’s bills and keep people’s homes warm.”
There are also rumours that Labour is considering weakening plans aimed at ensuring all new homes are powered by renewables. Government sources say new homes will be “technology agnostic”, allowing housebuilders to meet climate targets how they like, rather than mandating solar panels and heat pumps.
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“It would be an absolute outrage if the Labour government does not require renewable energy in all new homes,” Ramsay said. “People say to me all the time, why on earth are we seeing new homes being built without solar panels, without renewable heating systems? And the only reason the government wouldn’t do this is if they caved into the developers, because it’s a win-win all the way around.”
Ramsay said he would continue to challenge Miliband. “My challenge to Ed Miliband is, don’t undermine the whole of your national strategy by allowing this major airport expansion to go ahead,” he said.
“Don’t allow the whole of your carbon plan to be completely undermined by allowing the new Rosebank oilfield. They’re failing to focus on energy efficiency, how we insulate people’s homes to bring bills down, you’ve got to look at energy reduction as well as renewables if we’re going to deliver a green future.
“And in terms of nature, they’re actively opposing the nature restoration agenda with this damaging suggestion that that economic success and nature are somehow at loggerheads. So that’s what’s led environmental campaigners like George Monbiot to increasingly suggest that Labour may be even worse on the environment than the Conservatives were.”
