Dear Mr Reed, 1

Dear Steve Reed, just think, in a month’s time you may be in your second day in your new job as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. How will your first day in the job have gone?

I’m a Labour Party member, living in the marginal seat of Corby in Northamptonshire, and expecting to get some leaflets later this weekend to deliver in the streets of the former shoe-making town of Raunds where I live. So, I am writing to you as a Labour supporter but also as an environmentalist of long standing. I’m five and a half years older than you are, and I have worked in nature conservation for most of my life after training as an ecologist. I was conservation director of the RSPB for 13 years and I am a co-founder of Wild Justice with Ruth Tingay and Chris Packham.

I want the next Labour government to excel on wildlife, climate and rural issues. So I’ll be dropping you a line every now and again through the next month (maybe longer!) to give you some constructive advice.  You can take it or leave it, and you may never even see it, but it is offered from a left-leaning environmentalist with no vested interest whatsoever – how often have you had that in the last couple of weeks?

Just 10 points to get your attention and get you thinking:

1. Hilary Benn was the best Labour Environment Secretary of the Blair/Brown era – have a chat to him.
2. David Miliband made a massive difference to Defra on day 1 of his time there – ask him how he transformed the department and its civil servants so quickly
3. many environmentalists vote Labour despite Labour’s environmental policies, not because of them. We’d all being voting Green if only we had Caroline Lucas or Carla Denyer as candidates in our constituencies. But someone, most probably you, is going to have to ‘do’ environment for a Labour administration. If you screw it up, we’ll all be voting Green next time around.
4. the NFU is, to my mind, an anti-environment organisation. Just remember that in every State of Nature report, farming is the area with greatest wildlife losses. ‘Guardians of the Countryside’  or ‘Guardians of their Income Streams’? I might come back to this in more detail.
5. land management on a broad scale (eg what are National Parks for?) and a detailed scale (eg how do we want hedgerows managed?) are crucial for delivering reduced carbon emissions, less flooding, more wildlife. These are, I’m afraid, quite nerdy and complex areas. You and your civil servants will need a lot of help from civil society to get them right.
6. the state should own more land – Land for the People. I might come back to that too.
7. Labour is a terribly urban party, and its advisors are mostly terribly urban people. How many pairs of wellington boots does the shadow cabinet own? Don’t pretend you know a lot about rural issues because you don’t, and you’ll look like fools to those who do. You’ll need a lot of help from civil society (I said that before didn’t I? – that’s because it is true and important).
8. Rivers – a shit show. There is a strong case for taking water companies back into public ownership. The only other option is to regulate with fierce determination. Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat and the water companies (ie unrestrained capitalism) have failed. You won’t make things better with headlines, only with game-changing action. Very tough regulation or public ownership – the choice is yours?
9. Two weeks today there is a march for wildlife in London – be there and get some other recognisable Labour faces there too – loads of you have got safe London constituencies, it shouldn’t be too much of a chore. Be there!
10. Labour is going to win the general election, you are probably going to have the environment portfolio (although nothing is certain) – the Tories have been awful, you shouldn’t find it difficult to do better, but you need to do much, much better. You’ll need some help from civil society.

 

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