The leadership election has energised our party again, but we must not forget why we are here.
The last election was a painful one for every Conservative. This makes the honour of being elected as Member of Parliament for South West Devon even greater.
This is where I was born, raised and now live. I couldn’t be prouder to represent this beautiful constituency.
During the election, along with my team of volunteers, we listened to the thousands of people from across my constituency and from across the political spectrum. And we heard the same issues come up time and time again on the doorsteps: local flooding, water pollution, and support for our farmers.
My constituents care about the environment around them.
We all feel this connection withour land instinctively as conservatives and want to protect our community for future generations. When our environment is protected and allowed to flourish, the positive impact on our community is clear.
The people of South West Devon therefore wanted and deserve a strong voice on the environment. And so, in my constituency, we worked to try and show the Conservatives are the only party that can protect our environment and grow our local economy. And they supported us for it. But this is something voters around the country are also craving.
With hindsight, embracing our strong record on the environment more would have enabled us to speak to this desire.
After all, it was our party which completely reformed farmers’ finances, harnessing our Brexit freedoms to go beyond the EU’s flawed Common Agricultural Policy, to instead support farmers to be more resilient and productive. We required developers to consider nature alongside housing projects, and set councils on the path to drawing up new plans for local nature restoration.
This was all underpinned by our target to halve species decline by 2030.
And we lifted caps in fines for water companies polluting our waterways, using this money to then clean our rivers. This is clear evidence of our ability to deliver and we should have been shouting about it from the rooftops, instead of toning down and undermining our achievements on the environment.
This level of delivery is even more impressive when compared to Labour’s plans for farming.
The fact that the Labour manifesto only contained 87 words on farming is shocking. Nearly 500,000 people in this country work in agricultural jobs – to spend so few words on the sector that feeds our nation shows where Labour’s priorities lie.
When Labour was so weak on nature and standing up for our farmers, we should have done more, standing on the shoulders of generations of Conservatives who have fought for our rural communities.
There is of course, more we will have to do. As the weather gets more unpredictable, farmers will face more uncertainty around crop yields. The next five years will be crucial to increasing the resilience of our farms. Conservatives must be there for farmers and rural communities and ensure that they can continue to produce food while protecting nature, just as we have done for generations before.
To protect our farmers and our communities, we should be ambitious and take further steps to mitigate climate change. Labour talks a good talk on climate but it is still betrayed by its authoritarian instincts and a belief that nationalisation is the key to solving all problems.
GB Energy risks crowding out private investment, which since 2010 has taken our energy grid from 7 per cent renewables to 40 per cent. We need to present a clear alternative, underpinned by Conservative values, that is market-led, pragmatic, and supportive of businesses. This means not leaving the job of powering the country to the state but supporting the private sector which can provide renewable energy more cheaply and with more choice.
I have joined the House of Commons as one of only 121 Conservative MPs. There are many reasons why this is the case, but I wonder whether there might be more of us if we had championed our environmental record more. I know my constituents cared about the environment, which is why I promoted it locally.
Should our party have talked about our environmental record more, given how important it is for every constituency up and down this country? Talking to others at conference, I know I am not alone in asking these questions.
We cannot make the same mistake again.
In this Parliament, we need to rediscover our pragmatic environmental voice and ambition, hold Labour to account, and create a path to winning the next election by supporting our rural communities.
First published by ConservativeHome. Rebecca Smith is the Member of Parliament for South West Devon.
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