5 December 2019

This week, the Evening Standard featured an opinion piece from Andrew Sells - the former chairman of Natural England and Conservative Party donor - arguing that the Tories have "responded to the public mood" and that all parties now have "credible" environmental policies.

Scott Ainslie - Green MEP for London - wrote a letter to the Evening Standard in response, stating that the author needs "a reality check" and highlighting the Conservative Party's woeful track record on the environment.

Read the full letter below, or on the Evening Standard website here.

If Andrew Sells — the former chairman of Natural England and, crucially, a Tory donor — truly believes that the Conservative Party has “radical and far-sighted” environmental policies , he needs a reality check. A quick glance at its woeful track record shows that it’s failing our planet on every count.

The UK is now set to miss its legally binding targets to tackle air pollution. Neither are we going to meet our internationally agreed biodiversity targets, and we’ll fall well short of our goal of planting 11 million trees by 2022. Futhermore, the Government has abandoned plans to conserve half of England’s best wildlife sites by next year.

Britain won’t reach the EU’s requirements to recycle or reuse 50 per cent of household waste by 2020. And it’s lagging behind its own manifesto commitment to make the UK zero-carbon by 2050.

And to cap all this — the Prime Minister couldn’t even be bothered to show up to last week’s election debate to defend himself on these colossal failures.

Scott Ainslie, Green Party MEP for London