Steve Reed – 2024 Speech at Labour Party Conference
The speech made by Steve Reed, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on 23 September 2024.
Thank you very much Shabana, and good afternoon Conference.
Can I start by thanking my fantastic Ministerial team who were arrayed before us at the front of the hall. Emma, Sue, Daniel and Mary who’s not with us. She’s on her way to address the UN General Assembly about our ambitions for nature.
Conference, so many of our earliest and happiest memories are about exploring the great outdoors.
As a kid, I loved splashing about in the waves on a beach. Watching the fish and crabs darting around a rockpool. Climbing trees in the woods at the end of our road.
But parents today worry their kids may not have the same chances. Our rivers and seas are polluted. We see fewer birds and butterflies in the garden.
Nature is in trouble.
Ask people what makes them most proud to be British and our beautiful countryside is right up there.
This ‘green and pleasant land’ celebrated in poetry and song is our shared inheritance and our shared identity.
But after fourteen years under the Tories, half our bird species and a quarter of our mammal species are at risk of extinction.
Our once-pristine waterways are overflowing with raw, toxic sewage.
There are many times in history when Labour’s had to clean up the Tories’ mess. But never quite as literally as this.
The Tories boasted about their bonfire of the regulations as they shredded the rules that protect us. This led to abuses in so many sectors, including water regulation.
The Conservatives just stood back and watched as raw sewage polluted our rivers and customers’ money was funnelled into multimillion pound bonuses and dividend payments while our sewage system crumbled.
I’m calling time on all that today.
This government of service will fix the foundations and clean up our waterways.
Money ringfenced for investment will be spent on fixing broken water infrastructure and refunded to customers if it’s not.
We will ban the multimillion pound bonuses water bosses paid themselves for overseeing repeated illegal sewage dumping.
Bosses who cover up what’s going on will face personal criminal charges – including jail time.
And we’ll power up the regulator with more staff and give them the teeth they need to prosecute the polluters – and it will be paid for by the polluters themselves.
The work to fix our broken sewage system starts immediately with tens of billions of pounds of private-sector investment that will create good, well-paid jobs in every single part of our country.
That’s the biggest-ever investment in our water sector and the second biggest in any part of the economy during the lifetime of this government.
We’ll back our farmers in the fantastic work they do to feed our nation. And we’ll work with them to restore nature and stop animal waste, fertiliser and pesticide pollution running into our waterways.
We will protect bees, butterflies and the pollinators that sustain healthy ecosystems.
We’ll plant more trees along our riverbanks to help the land hold more water and stop flooding.
And we’ll plant three new national forests as we restore the woodlands that are the lungs of our planet, inhaling carbon and breathing out clean air.
As life returns to our waterways, we’ll celebrate with nine new national riverwalks and open up more of our countryside for every family to enjoy.
We’ll end the throwaway society by creating new jobs reusing and recycling materials as we work towards a circular economy that protects nature and our precious climate.
Conference, this is where change begins.
We’ll clean up our rivers, back our farmers, restore habitats for wildlife, and end the throwaway society.
There’s no foundation we have to fix that’s more important than nature because everything else depends on it. The next generation must have the same chance we had to look up at the night sky and wonder.
Our legacy will be to give our children back the natural world that is their birthright.
Thank you.
