Cameron to defend green record

Oliver Hayes

11 December 2012

At approximately 4.45pm this afternoon David Cameron will spend three quarters of an hour being grilled on the environment by the Liaison Committee - a group of senior MPs.

I'll be watching online and tweeting about it because this is the first time since he became Prime Minister that we'll hear Cameron put on the spot about his Government's environmental record.

In the past Cameron has given some truly compelling green speeches. Who in the environment movement would disagree with much of this belter from 2008?

But since assuming power in 2010 his green silence has been deafening.

For more than two years Cameron has batted away questions about his "greenest government ever" pledge with half-hearted boasts about two stuttering initiatives - the Green Investment Bank and the Green Deal.

They're vitally important projects, but both are at big risk of falling flat and virtually unheard of in the real world.

So if you're the PM, you can't really spend two and half years saying "You want to know how green we are? LOOK! A bank that isn't a bank and a home insulation programme that will reduce the number of houses we insulate!" (I paraphrase) without people thinking you're, well, stretching the truth.

So this afternoon's session could be very telling: will Cameron reveal himself to be:

a) a husky-hugging green hero, somewhat distracted for two years but now committed to over-turning his Ministers' chronic mishandling of policies on renewables, gas, energy efficiency, nuclear, the green economy, ash trees, badgers, forests, buzzards, floods etc., or

b) the consummate PR man, leaping on the environmental bandwagon when it suits - and bailing out when it creates a spot of bother with his increasingly unpopular Chancellor.

Cameron was a driving force behind the UK's world-leading Climate Change Act. He called for early versions to be toughened - he even said the independent Climate Change Committee should set and enforce "annual binding targets for carbon reduction" so that reducing emissions would be "free of political interference".

So why does his Government now reject the very same committee's advice on the energy bill and the perils of Osborne's dash for gas?

That's one question we hope MPs will ask the PM this afternoon, along with many others such as these pulled together by our friends at BusinessGreen.

This afternoon is a golden opportunity for the PM: he's got 45 minutes to provide long-overdue and much-needed leadership on the environment. We'll warmly welcome it if he does, but he must follow up by putting his weight behind the policies that will drive investment in renewable energy and green business in 2013 and beyond.

Why not ask him to do exactly that?