General Election 2024

I would pass a law requiring all companies to label their products in a standard way and requiring them to make a steadily increasing proportion of what they make fully reuseable. I would impose even stronger controls on the packaging and distribution companies. We seem to put all the pressure on the consumers and incredibly little on those who are producing the problems. The whole of Skipton and Ripon is covered by a thin layer of microplastics. We are on track to have more plastic in the sea than fish. We have microplastics in our own and our children's bodies. Yet the amount of plastic produced each year is still INCREASING. It is not going down
I would subsidise the installation of home energy saving measures with a particular emphasis on reducing peak time consumption. I would get the funding by scrapping wasteful schemes like Hinkley Point which is currently expected to cost £46 billion. Policies so far have focused on how we produce extra energy by supposedly green methods. That is never going to be as effective as cutting demand at peak periods. Battery technology now allows homes to store energy at 2am in the morning when little is used and the vast majority of that comes from wind farms. That energy can then be drawn on at 5pm on a Friday night when the gas power stations are currently being run. If we do that it will be much easier to achieve the energy security and carbon reduction targets we need to hit.
I would impose very strict environmental controls on water companies and proper checks from the Environment Agency. Any water company that could not afford to meet those standards I would allow to go bankrupt without any compensation to the share holders. I would then wish the British government to set up a new nationalised industry without debts so that we could invest in a future when we don't have sewage in our rivers.