As a former Environment Editor at the Observer and the Times, I have a long history of environmental advocacy and passionately believe in protecting our local environment.
At a national level, I was elected Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Environment in 2020. This parliamentary group is dedicated to strengthening the influence of parliamentarians on public policy and public debate on the environment and assisting parliamentarians by improving their access to specialist information. I also spoken in debates on the Environment Bill, helping to draft and then announce an amendment to reduce sewage discharge that every Liberal Democrat voted against, while serving on Bill Committees such as the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill to secure a clean energy future for Britain.
But I have always been committed to protecting South Cambridgeshire. That means preventing overreaching developers and their allies in SCDC from concreting over our greenbelt, and ensuring badly designed public transport projects are looked at again. It means listening to our residents, who want better cycleways, protected bridleways, and clean rivers. And it means enhancing our existing environment, be that through planting more trees or encouraging more wildlife reserves, or ending the cycle of sewage discharge into our waterways. We must protect South Cambridgeshire's natural heritage! I am doing this by:
- campaigning to protect our valuable chalk streams, areas of great natural beauty and significance
- urging the Government to take the strongest possible measures to end sewage discharge into rivers and streams
- legislating to combat climate change and supporting the pledge made by local and national government to go carbon neutral by 2050
- supporting the inquiries I called for following reports of water toxicity in Stapleford and the Shelfords
- encouraging tree planting across the district
- visiting local wildlife reserves and calling for better access to open space for residents
You can find out more about many of these campaigns by clicking the links to the left, or going to my news page for my latest releases and columns.