My record on environmental issues

Conservative parliamentary candidate Jesse Norman responds to the Guardian’s climate score article

Your article (Guardian climate score: how did your MP do?, 11 October) notes that “the approach used has certain limitations”. In fact it is massively flawed in its methods, and misleading and partial as a result. It takes just 16 climate-, energy- and environment-related votes in parliament among hundreds cast between 2008 and 2018, and adds a narrative based on the register of MPs’ interests.

But not all votes are the same, and many of these issues are highly contested. The landlord energy efficiency vote, for example, was on just one of many amendments to the 2011 energy bill, and reasonable people can (and did) disagree about its likely effect. Yet the climate score includes it, and yet somehow ignores the energy bill itself, a major piece of environmental legislation.

It also ignores, for example, the vote on the government’s commitment to decarbonise the UK economy by 2050 – an absolutely path-breaking step for such a major global economy. Indeed, one could read the Guardian’s climate score all through and be wholly unaware that the government has massively reduced greenhouse gas emissions to their lowest levels for 100 years, cut plastic bag use by 90%, and boosted renewables to levels unimagined in 2010, among numerous other achievements.

As for the narrative: this sought to associate me with the Global Warming Policy Forum, an organisation I have never met or had any relationship with.

As a minister I have vigorously promoted offshore wind and other renewables, launched the Road to Zero strategy to decarbonise transport, and strongly supported cycling and walking investment, among much else. These are matters of public record.
Jesse Norman
Conservative party parliamentary candidate for Hereford and South Herefordshire