Environmental rules around new homes and packing would also be in the wood-chipper if a party that oversaw one of the biggest ever declines in UK living standards gets its way.
The Conservative Party conference is now underway in Birmingham. Addressing delegates yesterday, Monday 5th October, Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith outlined a plan to focus fiscal policy on unobstructed economic growth to the detriment of regulations.
As many were expecting, green legislation is being targeted in particular, with the Environment Agency and Natural England likely to be axed as separate bodies if the Tories win the next General Election. Their functions would instead be brought into the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, just one step in what has been described as ‘the most ambition deregulation project in a generation’.
The Future Homes Standard — which is aimed at significantly improving energy performance in new houses and apartments by forcing developers to include low carbon heating equipment — would also be scrapped. According to the Conservatives, this could bing down the cost of a new home by as much as £50,000, although this doesn’t take into account the reduction in utility payments per home which would allow most owners to have paid off the extra mortgage costs in around 11 years.
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has also pledged to repeal the Climate Change Act and ‘replace it with a proper strategy that actually works’, describing herself as a ‘net zero sceptic’ rather than a climate change sceptic. Extended producer responsibility for packaging would be cancelled, too, with a view to removing the £1.5 billion burden for businesses introduced by the scheme which sees companies charged based on the amount of waste and pollution they create.
‘Today’s announcements would do nothing to encourage growth or deliver development,’ said Craig Bennett, OBE and Chief Executive of conservation charity The Wildlife Trusts. ‘Instead, they will expose the UK’s economy to dangerous weather, the UK’s food supplies to biodiversity collapse and UK homes to flooding and extreme heat… In an age when climate change and nature loss are a growing security threat, abolishing environmental regulators and safety standards amounts to gross negligence from any party that aspires to Government.’
Climate and environmental charity Friends of the Earth also voiced criticism at the proposals, suggesting should the Tories regain power they would risk returning the country to time when hit was the ‘Dirty Man of Europe’. They also pointed to the connection between proposed policy measures and the needs of major companies rather than public good.
‘These are policies that serve the interests of greedy corporations and those who profit financially from them – not the communities who will pay the ultimate price of weaker environmental regulation,’ said Friends of the Earth senior campaigner, Sienna Somers. ‘It’s a cheap political ploy from a party which has a legacy of some good – although increasingly long-forgotten – leadership on the environment.
‘The party is pitching its assault on environmental action as an offer to big business, which would give free rein to polluters,’ she continued. ‘In the midst of a rapidly accelerating climate crisis this is clearly nonsensical, with this summer’s successive, searing heatwaves and the increased risk of severe flooding over the coming months evidence enough of the need to act.’
According to the Resolution Foundation, the UK’s annual average real household disposable income (RHDI) per person during the last Conservative government was the weakest on record. Meanwhile, the 2022-23 financial year saw the biggest single-year decrease in disposable income according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Spending cuts on health and social care, rolled out in the name of austerity following the enormous bailout of the financial markets following the 2008 crash, led to life expectancy falling by three months for the typical British man and five months for women.
Image: Devin Avery / Unsplash
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