Maria Eagle MP, Labour’s Shadow Environment Secretary, responding to Liz Truss’s speech on the Government’s strategy for the environment, said:

“The Tory-led Government’s environment strategy is so devoid of content that Liz Truss will today announce that beehives will be installed on top of her department’s offices. Gimmicks and empty rhetoric about being the ‘greenest Government ever’ do not add up to a proper plan.

“The reality is that David Cameron will be remembered as the Prime Minister who went from promising to lead the ‘greenest Government ever’ to instructing his ministers to ‘cut the green crap.’

“Liz Truss has managed to publish a pollinator strategy based around voluntary reduction of pesticides which simply asks farmers to ‘think carefully’ about using them. 

​“Labour has a proud record of standing up for nature. Labour governments created the National Parks, gave the public the right to roam in our mountains, moors and heath and legislated to protect the whole English coastline. The next Labour Government will succeed where the Tories have failed and set a course for the recovery of nature.”