The Conservative party has not given up its green agenda, the environment secretary has said.
Thérèse Coffey said the party must show that it cared about the environment and insisted that “despite the noise over the last week”, the government was still committed to reaching net zero by 2050.
Last Sunday, Rishi Sunak ordered a formal review into low-traffic neighbourhood schemes, which are adopted by councils to reduce car usage and emissions, and has criticised the Labour party as “anti-motorist”.
The prime minister also attacked the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, for pledging to ban new North Sea gas and oil exploration and promised the Conservatives would “max out” all remaining reserves.
In spite of Sunak’s recent comments, Coffey insisted the government was not “walking away from the environment”.
“It’s a Conservative government that has cut carbon faster than any G7 nation, and we did that while proving you don’t need to add burdens on people,” she told the Mail on Sunday.
“Any Conservative knows that to have sustainable food security and economic prosperity you need to protect the environment.”
“Conservation is literally in our name. There’s been a lot of noise over the last few weeks about this government walking away from the environment – but the reality couldn’t be further from the truth,’ she said. “Trust us on our record, not on the clickbait.”
In June, the government’s plans to hit net zero were heavily criticised by its own advisers, who admonished it for the greenlighting a new coalmine in Cumbria and new oil and gas fields in the North Sea, which they said were “utterly unacceptable”. The report published by the Climate Change Committee also expressed the view that there was a lack of leadership on climate within government.
Sunak stepped up his criticisms of green policies in the wake of the Tories’ byelection victory in Uxbridge and Ruislip, with senior Conservative and Labour figures attributing the loss to the mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s plan to expand the ultra-low emissions zone (Ulez) charge on high-polluting vehicles to the city’s outer boroughs.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph last week, the prime minister took aim at Labour’s “anti-motorist” positions. He attacked the opposition for criticising his fuel duty freeze, “not wanting to clamp down on eco zealots for disrupting traffic”, and condemned the Welsh Labour government for blocking major road building projects.
Despite her thinly disguised criticisms of Sunak’s rhetoric, Coffey said the prime minister was committed to the environment and dealing with climate change. She pointed to a campaign he backed as a local MP – he endorsed making the “coast-to-coast path” a National Trail to help “improve people’s access to some of the loveliest parts of our country” – to prove his green credentials.
But not all Tory MPs are happy with the prime minister’s approach. In June, Zac Goldsmith resigned as a minister, accusing Sunak of being “uninterested” in the environment. He went on to criticise the prime minister for attending the party hosted by Rupert Murdoch instead of an international environmental forum.
