This week, Higginson Strategy hosted the first Comment Central breakfast briefing with an event on ‘How to place the environment at the top of the government’s agenda’ in Westminster.
The event included a cross-party panel of Parliamentarians including Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee Barry Gardiner MP, Co-Leader of the Green Party Adrian Ramsay MP and Climate and Nature Bill sponsor Dr Roz Savage MP.
Chaired by our founder John Higginson, the briefing event included insights from the panel on how to tackle clean air and littering, Heathrow’s third runway and the Trump effect, with extremely useful insights on how to push environmental issues to the forefront of Labour’s agenda.
Following the panel discussion there were brilliant questions from a range of guests including representatives from Greenpeace, British Beauty Council, Sustrans, Rewilding Britain and Keep Britain Tidy with a packed room representing NGO leaders and FTSE 100 businesses.
The discussion follows events last month where the Government was forced to strike a deal to stop a vote on Roz Savage MP’s Climate and Nature Bill, which would have made the UK’s climate and environment targets legally binding.
The bill, which was pushed by campaign group Zero Hour, had cross-party support as well as huge support from environmental charities, NGOs and public figures.
In order to stop a vote, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband was forced to promise a range of concessions, including input in government policy from the bill’s Parliamentary sponsors and an annual statement on government progress towards international climate and nature targets within six months.
At the event, Dr Roz Savage MP, who co-sponsored the bill, said: “I am looking forward to working with the Defra and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to identify what metrics we measure our climate and nature targets by. I’m hoping to get them to commit to a consistent set of metrics that get reported on year-on-year to ensure transparency for the public.”
We were honoured to host such an important discussion with Parliamentarians and purpose-driven organisations and look forward to supporting with the next event in the series on March 11th .