It’s the issue facing all MPs this recess: what do you do for your summer hols? It’s not just Covid causing confusion this year, with approved travel lists going from green to amber at a moment’s notice – there’s also the environmental question to consider. Some MPs are reluctant to cast aspersions on their eco-credentials by jet-setting abroad at a time when constituent homes remain flooded, in this, the year of COP26, when Net Zero (and its associate costs) are all the rage.
Indeed for Labour MP Luke Pollard, the floods have served as a ‘wake up call’. The shadow environment secretary has been everywhere this week, furiously firing off quotes proclaiming the ‘urgent need to decarbonise faster;’ decrying the ‘shocking’ ‘lack of ambition’ from the government, how ‘we won’t solve the climate crisis by tinkering around the edges’ and that ‘we all need to play our part.’
So Steerpike is glad to remind readers how Pollard has played his own part in tackling the climate change disaster in recent years. Prior to his election back in 2017, Labour’s environment spokesman was the face of the UK travel industry body ABTA. As head of public affairs between 2009 and 2013, he boasted of his lobbying efforts to help kill off an EU wide per passenger air tax and a ‘cooling off’ period between two holidays.
He also demanded that ‘red tape’ be ‘scrapped,’ bemoaning how ‘each year excessive and out-dated regulations cost our industry millions of pounds.’ Pollard also urged increased airport capacity across the UK and warned against additional taxes on travel. Since being elected to Westminster, the shadow environment secretary’s support for the aviation industry has extended to flying domestically from Edinburgh to Bristol, as his IPSA expense claims from 2018 show.
Labour is yet to formulate a substantive policy response that would explain how (and why) Britain could cut its emission rates faster than current targets. Already the Net Zero commitments are expected to cost each family up to £400 more per year, with ministers embroiled in interminable rows over banning gas boilers.
Whatever their proposals, Steerpike wonders whether if the onetime aviation lobbyist is really best placed to argue for this?
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