Environment
QUESTION TIME
issues, the government will have their back. (This more robust approach is already evident in Ofwat’s decision to investigate every wastewater company in England and Wales over sewage spills.) On the old cliché that what you don’t measure doesn’t get managed, it is also encouraging to note that the new government promises that the Bank of England will “have to give due consideration to climate change in its mandate”. That said, pressure groups such as Friends of
HOW WILL THE NEW LABOUR GOVERNMENT IMPACT THIS COUNTRY’S ECO STANCE - AND YOUR BUSINESS?
What shade of green will this Labour government be? As startlingly green as a broccoli? Or as insipidly as one of those pale green interior paints that, to the untrained eye, look off-white? The new government has made some eye-catching promises on sustainability, most notably the target of achieving zero carbon electricity by 2030, and specified the sums it is prepared to spend (if the necessary private investment is forthcoming) to achieve that, including £1bn on carbon capture and £500m to support the manufacture of green hydrogen. Although Ed Milliband, the new secretary of state for energy security and net zero, is often demonised in the right-wing media, he, like his fellow ministers, is convinced that clean energy will reduce the comparatively high energy costs that have plagued British business in the last five years. These bills were a key concern for 79% of wide-format print providers in Image Reports’ Widthwise 2024 survey which comes as no surprise given that, according to Red Flag Alert, the business intelligence platform, energy costs for British companies quadrupled between 20231 and 2023.
The increasingly sceptical ‘nothing to see here’ attitude
towards global warming adopted by the Conservatives after Boris Johnson’s defenestration in the summer of 2022 has already been reversed. Ed Milliband, the new secretary of state for energy security and net zero, emphasised, in his first message to the department’s civil servants, that “the climate crisis imperils our world”. Such messaging reassures regulators that, if they do take a tougher stance on environmental
the Earth and Greenpeace, which rated Labour’s sustainability strategy as four times as green as the Tories’, are muttering that the new government’s plans lack detail. You can understand their concerns if you scrutinise the new government’s election manifesto. To achieve its landmark pledge to build 1.5m new homes in the next five years, Labour has promised: “We will implement solutions to unlock the building of new homes affected by nutrient neutrality without weakening environmental protections.” As nutrient neutrality - which requires builders to show that their proposals will not introduce more nutrients into rivers, marshes and wetlands - is itself an environmental protection, it would take a rare kind of genius - or hypocrite - to square this particular circle. The government’s strategy for the circular economy is even vaguer: it vows to encourage it, as part of its plans to improve “responsible access to nature”, with the creation of new river walks and national parks, but doesn’t really specify how it plans to do that. To be fair to Milliband, and the new government, you can understand their reticence. Their critics in the media have consistently accused them of planning to tie up the UK with ‘green tape’ - new environmental regulations - which Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth would certainly welcome but have not, as yet, been outlined. Pundits have warned that the clean electricity programme, rumoured to entail the installation of thousands of new pylons, across the country, will be stymied by the nimbyism of local (especially rural) councils. You can’t really call this a backlash because there
THE GOVERNMENT HAS MADE SOME EYE-CATCHING PROMISES ON SUSTAINABILITY
have, so far, been few concrete initiatives to lash back against. But a recent Daily Mail column by Andrew Neil, former editor of the Sunday Times who seems to share his old boss Rupert Murdoch’s cynicism about global warming, gave a preview of forthcoming conflicts when it declared: “The policies green zealot Milliband is already pursuing will hinder growth, kill jobs and increase energy bills. One day Starmer will wonder aloud why he gave this one-man wrecking ball the job.”
Despite his conspicuous intelligence - and expertise
in skewering politicians who make unsupported claims when he is interviewing them - Neill has, in a rare moment of gullibility, fallen for the false dichotomy that you can prevent climate change or grow the economy but not both.
The most likely scenario is that this government will disappoint both those fighting most fiercely against climate change, and those who vehemently oppose any such action, but that may, ultimately, prove to be a decent outcome for British business, wide-format print providers and their customers.
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