This article by former Environment Secretary, Theresa Villiers, was published in The Spectator on 2nd April 2025:
"Giorgia Meloni had it right. ‘There is nothing,’ the Italian prime minister said in 2022, ‘more right-wing than ecology. The right loves the environment because it loves the land, the identity, the homeland.’ Like centre-right parties across Europe, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party is committed to net zero. While Kemi Badenoch was correct in her recent speech to challenge the way we forge a path to clean energy, I hope that the policy commission she has launched will recommend keeping the goal of ending the UK’s contribution to harmful planet warming.
Throughout the long history of the Conservative party, we have stood for the principle of protecting the institutions and ways of life that we value for future generations to enjoy. We have championed farming and the countryside, and we introduced the Protection of Birds Act of 1954 and the Clean Air Act of 1956. In the late 1980s, Margaret Thatcher was ahead of her time in warning that water pollution and greenhouse gases could cause ‘irretrievable damage’ to the earth.
Recent Conservative governments worked hard to protect Britain’s natural environment. Who would have thought in 2010, when renewables made up just 6.8 per cent of our energy generation, that the grid would be getting nearly half its power from renewable and low carbon sources by the time we left office 14 years later?
Thanks to Brexit, new farm payment schemes have replaced the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, funding space for nature and delivering one of the most important environmental reforms for decades. Restoring domestic control over our fisheries has led to tougher protection for the marine environment, and the Blue Belt safeguards an area of ocean larger than India. Under Boris Johnson, the Conservatives were the first government in the world to make a legally binding commit to halt species decline by 2030. A future Conservative government should build upon these successes.
Kemi’s policy commission should consider the cost of climate change, not just the cost of net zero. Her speech expressed understandable concern about the cost of decarbonisation, but this needs to be weighed against the huge financial damage that will be caused if global heating continues unchecked. Flooding, for example, already costs the UK £2.2 billion a year. The Labour government strained in the Spring Statement to increase the defence budget this exact amount. Growing crops in the Global South will become more difficult in many areas as a result of desertification. Britain should expect increased flows of illegal migration.
Meanwhile, the shift to net zero also provides genuine opportunities, with the net zero economy growing three times faster than the overall economy last year.
The Conservatives can provide a distinctive centre-right alternative to Ed Miliband’s big state, big spending approach to net zero. We can offer pragmatic policies which work with the grain of the way people live their lives; which deploy the incentives, market mechanisms, and technological advances that are at the heart of a centre-right outlook. For example, rather than Labour’s anti-driver ideology, punishing those who need a car or van to get around, we should seek innovative ways to reduce the cost of ultra-low emission vehicles, supporting people to make greener choices.
Kemi was right to highlight concerns about high energy costs, but we don’t need to abandon our commitment to net zero to tackle this. In the longer term, renewables will deliver lower prices than fossil fuels controlled by petro-states and dictators. For more immediate help keeping prices down, green levies inherited from the Blair era could be reduced. Market-based incremental reforms to remove distortions and expose generators to more revenue risk could be made to modernise the ‘contracts for difference’ system. There is also a case for carefully thought through changes to the marginal pricing mechanism which currently means high gas prices often dictate the cost of other forms of energy in the UK.
Polls repeatedly show support for green policies. Whatever might be the case across the Atlantic, there remains in this country a strong backing for action to protect nature and the climate. Moreover, our approach to environmental questions often influences how people view the Conservatives – a litmus test to judge us and our credibility. An ambitious green offer could provide an important means to reconnect with the so-called ‘Boden belt’ voters lost to Labour and the Lib Dems.
Making policies to safeguard our natural environment a prominent part our work to renew our party would help put us back on the path to power."
