Steve Reed says any Heathrow expansion would see ‘proper consultation’, and defends past vote against third runway

Environment secretary Steve Reed has said any revived Heathrow airport expansion plan would be accompanied by a “proper consultation”, and spoken up  about the reasons for his past vote against a third runway.

In a wide-ranging Q&A and speech at the Fabian Society’s New Year Conference in London on Saturday, he also spoke about why Labour  are the real “conservers”, the lessons from Morgan McSweeney’s breakthrough 2006 campaign, and a pledge that Labour will not “rip up environmental protections’ to speed up growth.

Reed called reports this week Labour could back airport expansion at Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton,  to boost growth “speculation”.

But he also said if such a proposal were to be put on the table “there would be proper consultation, hopefully not lasting decades”.

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The environment secretary also explained his previous vote against a third runway at Heathrow was one based on the fact he was “in favour of expanding Gatwick” instead, given the potential economic benefits to his south London constituency.

That vote, and similar opposition by other current ministers, has been widely reported this week amid questions over how far expansion approval could divide the government and wider party,.

‘Cameron told voters to ‘vote blue, go green’ but instead he gave them brown’

In his opening speech, Reed said Britain was a “green and pleasant land” that had been celebrated in poetry and song”. But after 14 years of Conservative rule, he said “Britain is one of the most nature-depleted countries on earth”.

“We’ve lost 97% of our wildflower meadows since the 1930s. A quarter of our mammal species and half our bird species are at risk of extinction. Our pollinators, bees and butterflies are vanishing – putting entire ecosystems at risk.”

It was now Labour’s role to be the “conservers”, not the Conservatives, he said.

“Cameron told voters to ‘vote blue, go green’ but instead he gave them brown as our rivers, lakes and seas filled up with record levels of sewage.”

Amid speculation over how far the government’s growth agenda risks trade-offs with its ambitious enviromental plans, Reed’s speech included a pledge to “not rip up environmental protections” to boost growth, even though Labour is “reforming the rules to speed up economic growth”.

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He highlighted plans to have developers pay into a new national nature restoration fund.

The Times reported on the scheme earlier this week as a bid to “strip environmental quangos of their power to delay” construction projects. There are plans to replace the current scheme – where developers must mitigate damage before construction starts – with financial contributions to wider government initiatives to protect nature.

Reed also said “decline is not inevitable”, highlighting plans to strengthen sanctions and enforcement against water firms over pollution to “clean up our rivers, lakes and seas”, as well as incentivising firms to reduce packaging and banning single-use vapes.

‘Pick up the bins’

Reed was also asked about the 2006 local elections in Lambeth, where he was then-council leader, and where a young Morgan McSweeney helped them to win the election by focusing on “picking up the bins”.

“Morgan was my campaign organiser, it turns out he’s quite good at that. We won that election in a year where we lost councils right across the country.”

He said Labour won Lambeth by a “landslide” because they “focused on the hyper-local”.

“It was around your local leisure centre, litter on your streets, antisocial behaviour on the local high street. It was the really local things that people cared about and – because we connected with it – when that big swing against Labour in that year happened, it didn’t affect us.

“We went the other way because we were talking about things in a way that people could connect with.”

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