Steve Reed's speech at Labour Conference

Steve Reed MP, Labour’s Shadow Secretary for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs addressed the Labour Party conference.

"It’s easy to forget, standing in this humming metropolis, that we are just a few miles from the Dee Valley.

Only a little further to Snowdonia and the Scottish Highlands.

The beauty of our countryside has been ever present in our nation's history.

That green and pleasant land of rolling hills, rivers and forests.

What Shakespeare called “This scepter'd isle… this other Eden… demi-paradise”.

But the future of the rural communities that live in our great countryside is in peril.

They have been abandoned by this Conservative government.

Places like Penrith and Solway, Scarborough and Whitby.

Once thriving farming heartlands - that have been left to slide into decline.

They’ve seen public transport dismantled.

Good, local jobs stripped away.

Falling pay and rising poverty.

But Labour will turn the tide.

Under a Labour government we will have the biggest ever transfer of power from Westminster to the British people.

We will empower rural communities with new powers over skills and transport to turbocharge their growth.

We will give rural communities their future back.

Farmers too have been abandoned.

Tory trade barriers paralysing them and blocking food exports.

Skyrocketing inflation on energy forcing over 7,000 food producers out of business since 2019. 

Leaving consumers with soaring food prices and empty supermarket shelves

Enough is enough.

We will slash the costs and red tape at our borders.

Through a veterinary agreement with the EU.

We will make Britain a clean energy superpower to cut farmers’ energy bills.

Britain’s farmers will get our support because food security is national security.

Labour will give farmers their future back.

It is not just farmers and rural communities whose future is in peril.

Our countryside is too.

There is no clearer proof than the dumping of millions of tons of raw sewage into British waters.

I’ve spotted some delegates out for a morning run along the Mersey.

I don’t know if any of you have been brave enough for a morning dip in the water? 

I’m not sure I’d recommend it.

Sewage was pumped into the Mersey over 5000 times last year.

It's not just the Mersey of course.

This is going on right across the country; the highest level of illegal sewage discharges in history.

And why?

Because the Tories have hobbled the Environment Agency.

They slashed monitoring, enforcement and prosecutions.

Trashing bio-diversity.

Wrecking tourism.

Putting our kids’ health at risk.

Rishi Sunak wouldn’t put up with raw sewage in his swimming pool.

So why is he happy to treat the British countryside as an open sewer?

Let me be clear: the regulators are too weak.

We will give them the powers they need.

The next Labour government will end Tory negligence and put the water industry under “special measures” to force them to clean up their toxic mess.

We will force water companies to monitor every single water outlet.

Bring in severe and instant fines for every illegal sewage dump.

And use the money to pay for an enforcement regime the water bosses can no longer ignore.

Right now, water bosses are pocketing millions of pounds in bonuses while trashing our environment, and leaving consumers to pick up the bill.

Not with a Labour government.

Today I pledge that we will strengthen Ofwat’s powers to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses until they’ve cleared up their filth.

And we will go even further.

Under a Labour government, rogue water bosses who break the law in an extreme and persistent way will face personal criminal liability for their crimes.

They will face the full force of the law if they keep breaking the law.

With Labour, the polluter - not the public - will pay.

And it isn’t just our waterways.

Our entire nature is under threat.

Under the Tories, the UK is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.

Over a million species face extinction.

Without healthy ecosystems and rich biodiversity there is no economy, no food, no health, no human society. 

They have increasingly positioned their party against nature, as if it’s just another front in their divisive culture wars.

Let’s compare this to the Labour party's proud environmental legacy:

We created Britain’s National Parks.

We introduced the Rights of Way Act.

We delivered the world’s first legislation to set a target to curb greenhouse emissions.

And now we will take this legacy forward:

We will restore our great British countryside.

Turn the tide on the destruction of our natural environment.

Restore nature across our country.

Grow nature-rich habitats like wetlands and forests.

The Tories might have given up on nature but we haven’t.

Labour will give nature its future back.

Farming and rural communities have not left their best days in the past.

Their success is central to our future.

We will grow our economy and protect nature.

We will produce our food and restore health to our land and waterways.

We will build the homes we need without destroying biodiversity.

In every city, in every town and throughout our countryside, Labour will give Britain its future back."