Environmentally conscious Labour readers of this blog may be interested in the candidates' answers to questions put by Friends of the Earth. Below I republish the original FOE blog that can be found HERE
We asked the Labour
leadership candidates to tell us where they stand on green issues. Here is what
they said (or didn’t say).
Two weeks ago we wrote
about the scale of the Government’s destruction of green policies and
the urgent need for strong opposition to these changes from the Labour party.
We also set out 10 key environmental policies we think Ed
Miliband’s successor must adopt, in order to hold the Government to account on
crucial issues like climate change and the depletion of the natural world.
We sent these policies to
the four contenders for the Labour Leadership and asked them to get back to us
with their responses.
What the Labour leadership
contenders think
Despite extending the
deadline (twice) and repeated private and public reminders (here and here for instance), we didn’t hear a peep from
two of the candidates, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. (But see note at the end of the article)
Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn did
get back to us, but with varying degrees of detail.
Andy Burnham's team provided us with this statement and an accompanying email
explaining that many of the “quite detailed” policy positions we put to him
“will be subject to the policy review that will take place leading up to the
2020 [general] election”.
The statement makes clear
that under Mr Burnham’s leadership “environmental issues will be treated with
new energy and will be given a prominent place in what will define the Labour
Party” but provides little in the way of detail.
The clearest policy
position in Mr Burnham’s statement is that “no fracking should go ahead
until we have much clearer evidence on the environmental impact”. This is a
welcome commitment, although short of the necessary pledge to oppose fracking
full stop because of the unacceptable risks it presents to tackling climate
change.
Jeremy Corbyn was the only one of the
four candidates who replied in full to our specific asks.
The responses include a
commitment to “take action now to keep fossil fuels in the ground” and “end
dirty energy handouts, ban fracking and set a target date to end
new fossil fuel extraction, and begin to phase out high polluting coal power
stations with support for workers to re-train”.
Mr Corbyn said he would
“call for unabated coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, to be phased out by
2023” and in a welcome move confirmed that “I am opposed to opencast coal
mining which scars our landscape, and disrupts local communities with noise and
air pollution.”
+++ UPDATE 24 August: Yvette
Cooper gave a speech over the weekend outlining her "six point roadmap" on climate change
ahead of the Paris summit at the end of the year. Read our take on it here. +++
