ENVIRONMENT, ENERGY AND GREEN SPACE
The air quality measures in this manifesto appear in Chapter 3, because they are transport measures and should be honest about being transport measures. This chapter covers what remains. Conservation matters: protecting London’s green spaces, its parks and its heritage is stewardship, and it is done best without punishing working people in the name of it.
- Every green space in London protected, in partnership with the National Trust and the Woodland Trust.Green Belt and Metropolitan Open Land protection through the London Plan. Indicative cost: ten million pounds annually.
- A significant increase in London’s renewable and secure energy generation and supply.Delivered through London Power, GLA estate procurement and planning policy, against a published and defined baseline. Indicative cost: provisionally sixty million pounds annually.
- Full cost-impact assessment applied to environmental policy, so that no Londoner is punished in the name of net zero.Applied directly to every mayoral scheme. Argued for nationally.
I want to be plain about the position this manifesto takes on the environment, because it is easily caricatured. I do not accept that cleaning London’s air requires charging the poorest drivers off the road, and I do not accept that opposing a regressive charge means denying the problem. The measures in Chapter 3 are more expensive and more difficult than a charging zone. They are also more effective and they do not send the bill to the people least able to pay it. That is the way to a cleaner city: by consent and by investment, not by tax and by decree.