The Lib Dem’s record on the environment doesn’t stand up

September is here and the so called ‘silly season’ of summer stories is meant to be over. But that hasn’t stopped the Liberal Democrats publishing a wish list for a greener, cleaner Britain.

Nick Clegg would have us believe that only the Liberal Democrats in Government could achieve new rights to access green space, clean air and action on reducing carbon emissions. But voters won’t be fooled for a second because the reality is that we have had the Liberal Democrats in Government and they have totally failed to get any of these things done.

Take the natural environment for example. The last Labour Government understood that the decline in the quality of our natural environment needed a robust political response. That’s why we commissioned the Making Space for Nature Report to review England’s wildlife and ecological corridors. The coalition at first endorsed the report but four years later its key recommendations remain unimplemented despite Dan Rogerson, a Liberal Democrat minister being responsible for policy in this area.

Let’s also look at the Liberal Democrats record on clean air – another issue they’ve pledged to address in the next parliament despite being responsible for it today. Air pollution causes 29,000 premature deaths a year in the UK and is one of the primary causes of cancer.The UK currently has one of the worst records of any European country for exceeding EU air pollution limits, and next year we could face fines of hundreds of millions of pounds for our failure to meet targets for safe air quality. Yet the government’s approach to tackling air pollution was described by the Healthy Air Campaign (which includes organisations such as the British Heart Foundation and Asthma UK) as “designed to mask the true scale of England’s air quality crisis rather than make any attempt to solve it”. Last December, the government had to scrap their consultation on ‘Local Air Quality Management’ because the evidence suggested it would have made the problem worse and it now has no strategy whatsoever.

The Liberal Democrats have even put a commitment to a decarbonisation target for electricity generation in their next manifesto. This is something they voted against last year when the Labour Party put it forward as an amendment to the energy bill. The Liberal Democrats are acting like they’re in opposition. At this rate Nick Clegg will be telling us that he’ll scrap tuition fees in the next parliament.

By contrast, Labour can be rightly proud of what we achieved in Government. At the Kyoto talks the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott negotiated hard for the toughest deal obtainable. We then led by example, by cutting carbon emissions in excess of the targets we had agreed to meet. Ed Miliband was the first Secretary of State in a new Department established specifically to lead on tackling the climate threat. He piloted the Climate Change Act 2008 through Parliament and into law. It remains the most ambitious legislative framework on climate anywhere in the world today. And when Labour left office, we left a green goods and jobs sector that was growing at four times the rate of the rest of the economy – and the economy was growing again too. This is a record I’m proud of and one I’ve committed to build on if Labour return to power in 2015.

The environment matters and it must be taken seriously. I’ve said repeatedly that no sensible government can operate in these challenging times without putting tackling climate change at the core of what they do. It must be done consistently over time, beyond just the confines of one parliament, across all government departments led by the prime minister. Let’s hope that voters who care about the environment judge the Liberal Democrats and their coalition partners the Conservatives by their actions rather than their words.

Maria Eagle is the Shadow Environment Secretary