Green MP warns over Labour's push for growth at expense of nature

Labour's push for economic growth at the expense of climate and nature is "completely false and extremely dangerous", the co-leader of the Green party has said.

- Helena Horton Rachel Keenan

Adrian Ramsay, the MP for Waveney Valley, on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, was one of the five Green MPs elected to parliament in July in the party's best-ever result. He said he and his colleagues knew they would be holding Labour to account, but did not expect to be so disappointed.

In recent weeks, the government has given the green light to Heathrow expansion plans, vowed to change planning rules to deprioritise nature, and its ministers have disparaged protections for bats and newts and ridiculed measures to protect fish.

The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has suggested that economic growth trumps the government's legally binding target of reaching net zero emissions by 2050, and there are suggestions the national wealth fund, meant for green projects, will be co-opted for defence.

"This whole depiction the government's coming up with is completely false and actually extremely dangerous because green spaces are crucial to people's wellbeing, crucial to the natural environment, and we can and must do development in a way that not just protects nature...the government is signed up to a requirement to restore 30% of land and sea in the UK for nature by 2030," Ramsay said.