Rachel Reeves Aide Aims To Pull Green Agenda Away From The "Culture War"
Strathern after winning is by-election in October 2023 (Alamy)
4 min read
Cross-party working and consensus is key in giving investors confidence in the UK’s green agenda, according to new chair of the Environment APPG, Alistair Strathern.
Strathern, who also serves as Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ PPS, told PoliticsHome that the Treasury and the government are “unwavering” on the importance of the green agenda, despite the downgrading of the promised £28bn green prosperity plan earlier this year.
The Labour MP worked in climate at the Bank of England before being elected to Parliament for the first time last year.
He thinks that the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) is “really important” in terms of policy thinking, but also in building a sense of cross-party ambition beyond parliaments and governments, that could help attract long-term investment.
Strathern believes the group will be “leaning in behind the much more ambitious evidence-led approach this government is taking on climate and nature issues, but looking to do that in a way that builds out the cross party consensus needed to sustain ambition on it”.
He explained: “To deliver some of the really ambitious investments we want to see if we're going to get to net zero, that will only happen if investors have got confidence that this is going to be a multi-government and multi-party agenda, and this is a really useful forum for pushing that forwards.”
The MP for Hitchin said that cross-party ambition is important because in the run up to the last election "it felt like certain parts of our politics were more keen to use it as a culture war wedge issue than a chance to actually bring people together around pragmatic solutions to the problems we’re facing”.
Then-prime minister Rishi Sunak scaled back some net zero targets last September, including those on electric vehicles and heat pumps.
“With such a big new intake of MPs, with such strong commitment across all parties now, I think across the new intake to work on this agenda, there is no better time to try and [re-find] the cross party consensus that began to exist on this issue five or 10 years ago," Strathern added.
Earlier this year, Keir Starmer announced that Labour had scaled back its green prosperity plan from £28bn, following weeks of speculation over whether the party would stick to its cornerstone environmental and energy plan.
The decision was criticised by green groups at the time of the announcement.
Despite those changes, Strathern said that Labour “went into this election ringfencing some of our most significant capital spending” and measures such as Ed Miliband’s announcement earlier this week that the budget for this year’s renewable energy auction – when companies bid to develop energy projects in the UK – would be increased.
Strathern claimed that the Treasury “gets” green investments “as a vehicle” for growth.
“The Treasury gets this, it gets it as a vehicle. The fiscal environment is going to be controlled. As we saw last week even now we’re uncovering things that are well beyond the worst nightmares we would have feared we were inheriting and tough choices are going to have to continue to be made.
“But throughout all of this, our commitment to this has been unwavering in terms of where it has been prioritised, and that gives me great confidence that this is a government that understands how important it is.”
Strathern was elected to Parliament in a by-election in October 2023, winning the previously safe Conservative seat of Mid-Bedfordshire. Following the boundary changes at the election, he stood in 2024 in Hitchin, which contained parts of his old patch.
PoliticsHome reported during the election about the concerns of voters who had previously voted Conservative when it comes to green issues, and how that could impact who they intended to back in 2024.
Strathern described his patch as one “that’s got so much brilliant nature and brilliant countryside” and recognised a sense of dissatisfaction on the doorstep with how environmental issues had been dealt with by the last government.
“Whether it was the failure to really get going on green energy and the impact it’s having on our farmers in terms of crop yields [...] whether it’s the failure to act on sewage pollution, here was a real sense of the last government was letting down the environment in a way that felt quite deeply antithetical to a lot of long term Conservative voters who always prided conservation as part of their identity and part of their politics.”
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