HBC backs Climate and Nature Bill

Hastings Borough Council has joined the growing ranks of supporters of the Climate and Nature Bill, which aims to oblige the government to produce a ‘joined up’ strategy for combating climate change and reversing the decline in nature. Action by the council is also called for. Nick Terdre reports.

The motion committing Hastings Borough Council to back the private member Climate and Nature Bill was proposed by Green councillor Amanda Jobson at the Full Council meeting last week. It received 17 votes for, and none against, while there were 11 abstentions. (These figures may have to be corrected as they were Mayor Judy Rogers’ recollection shortly after the issue had been decided.)

“I am very pleased for Hastings and St Leonards that the Climate and Nature motion was passed,” Cllr Jobson told HOT. “It gives me some hope we can take action for Climate and Nature with our community…

“It’s an important time with climate change affecting our town’s infrastructure, our Green councillors share climate ethics: it’s integrated into all our policies.  Making sure we have a plan mapped out ready for funding is vital for our town.

“Supporting our community making sure we help deliver a climate resilient town is essential for all. But we will need support from central government — like many coastal towns, erosion and landslips are affecting our ecological landscape and residents’ homes.”

Back in Parliament in January

The bill was rebuffed five times since 2020 during Tory governments, most recently last May, when its name was changed from the Climate and Ecology Bill. It will be introduced to Parliament again on 24 January by Liberal Democrat MP Roz Savage.

According to Zero Hour, a website providing a focus for action around the issue, at the last count the bill had cross-party backing from 188 MPs (of whom 84 are Labour) and 58 peers, 371 councils of all stripes (town, parish, community, city, borough and district, including Eastbourne Borough Council and Lewes and Rother District Councils, but only one county council and that is not East Sussex) and now HBC, many scientists, ecologists, academics and medical professionals and multiple organisations and companies, such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England, the Women’s Institute and the Co-operative Bank.

Local MP Helena Dollimore has been asked to support the bill but has declined, Jobson told HOT.

The composition of Parliament has changed radically since early July but it remains to be seen what reception the bill, which is critical of inadequacies in current legislation, gets from the government. If passed, it would require the government to develop a joined-up environmental plan, bringing together the needs of climate and nature.

Among other measures, more rigorous steps would have to be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to ensure the UK plays its part in achieving the 1.5C limit on global warming as agreed at the Paris COP in 2015, and to halt and reverse the destruction of nature by 2030.

HBC commitments

Whether the bill succeeds in Parliament or not, by supporting it, HBC has committed itself to various actions, including the establishment of a cross-party working group on climate action to identify priorities with an emphasis on protecting the most vulnerable from the effects of climate change.

A climate action officer will also be appointed to work on the development of a climate adaptation plan for the town. The working group will be tasked with ensuring the council makes substantive progress on the climate strategy action plan adopted by the council in 2020, which has the ambitious target of making Hastings carbon neutral by 2030.

Jobson told HOT she would be attending the 2 December Cabinet meeting to discuss how to take the climate strategy action plan forward following approval of the motion.

The proposed use of officer time drew criticism from Cllr Paul Barnett of the Hastings Independents who argued that the council could ill afford the cost of employing a specialised officer while trying to tackle a housing and homelessness crisis and widespread poverty.

Supporters however maintained that all these issues are intertwined, and failure to tackle the climate crisis would have a detrimental effect on the living conditions of many town dwellers. The preamble to the motion notes the recent incidence of serious flooding and subsequent landslips, and possible repeats, which pose risks to houses and infrastructure.

The most vociferous opposition, however, came from Cllr Mike Edwards, the new leader of the Conservative group, who claimed that Ed Miliband, the Labour government’s minister for energy security and net zero, was the “most dangerous man in Britain today,” and the notion of net zero was fatuous. These claims did not go down well with the bloc of bill supporters who made up most of the public present.

But his was a lone voice, and two of his Tory colleagues backed the motion. Others, including Edwards, abstained, as did the Labour group. The Greens and Hastings Independents voted in favour.

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