The mayor of Bristol has urged the new prime minister Liz Truss to come up with a plan for action on climate change. Marvin Rees said he asked Ms Truss, who became prime minister on Tuesday to review how Westminster works with local authorities like Bristol City Council. He urged her to make a “major, world-leading announcement” this autumn on decarbonising cities.
He slammed both Ms Truss and her rival in the Tory leadership race, former chancellor Rishi Sunak, for “not speaking with any substance” on the environment and climate change. He recently wrote a letter to both candidates, asking them to review what cities are.
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During a council cabinet meeting yesterday, he said: “We’re in the process of organising meetings with the incoming cabinet members, particularly in our role as chair of the core cities, and the Local Government Association city regions board. I did write to Rishi Sunak and Lis Truss before the election.
“It was a closed letter—we didn’t write an open letter, because I think open letters aren’t actually written to the person after the word ‘dear’, they’re written to the press and tend to be ignored. We wanted to act with some seriousness so we wrote to them privately. But we can now share the contents of that.”
Three points made in the letter called on Westminster to reset its relationship with local councils, review the understanding of cities, and prioritise the need for huge funding for new projects to cut carbon emissions and tackle climate change. It’s unclear if either candidate read or replied to the mayor’s letter.
Mr Rees said: “With an incoming prime minister, it’s an opportunity to reset the relationship with local government, and that’s about funding, national leadership and the scale of challenges and opportunities we face. We have to be thinking about how we use the full capacity of local government.
“The second point, which you’d expect to come from Bristol, is we would like the government to review its understanding of UK cities. What are we, what do we need them to be, how do we help them become what we need them to be to benefit the UK? They need to be dense, decarbonised, inclusive, engines of economic activity, providing jobs, all these things.”
He added: “The third point we made came off the back of the Ted talk I gave in April. Actually none of the candidates have spoken with any substance about the environment. But if you recast your relationship with local government and the cities, we could put in place a plan to decarbonise UK cities.
“Lots of work has been done already, and you could turn up at COP [UN climate conference] and make a major announcement that was world-leading in terms of its commitment to decarbonising the nation’s cities.”
