‘We are in danger, but not yet in irrevocable danger.’ Margaret Beckett is clear that now is the time to stop global warming. The stakes have never been higher, nor the prize nearer within reach; it is both exciting and frustrating.
‘It is like waiting for Kyoto rather than Waiting for Godot. People are saying “let’s see what happens about it”. Although Kyoto is a hugely important first step – not least because it showed that the international community could reach that kind of agreement – it is very much a first step.’
Over the next year, Britain will hold the chair of the G8 and the EU, both prime positions for pushing forward the environmental agenda. Margaret Beckett stresses that the environment is not an add-on to Labour’s progressive values, it is at the heart of them.
‘If you’re talking about climate change, who are most at risk? The poorest and most vulnerable. Everything that we are trying to do on development could be wiped out by climate change. The latest science suggests that it is likely to be more severe in Africa than in other parts of the world.’
She is also clear that there is sometimes a false choice offered between economic prosperity and the environment.
‘All the economic and the scientific analysis side by side says that actually you can do this without destroying your economy and, indeed, it can be very beneficial for the economy. Companies or individuals who are saving carbon are also saving money.’
‘There are economic opportunities for massively greater efficiency and resource use and on the other side there are huge economic opportunities. There is a global marketplace here, particularly for new and innovative technologies and design – billions of dollars worth of potential markets.’
These markets are not just in the West, or among businesses with a conscience. Beckett cites how the Chinese government has realised that it simply does not have the land area to support US-style development without covering land essential for food production in tarmac. Environmentalism is not just about saving the world – as though that weren’t enough – it is about finding a niche for Britain in the global economy of the future.
On the other hand, is there not something a bit passé about green politics? Is it not like one of those inventions on Tomorrow’s World that goes straight from being the next big thing to being defunct?
‘In one sense it hasn’t gone away but what I think may be the case is that it hasn’t spread as much as people thought it naturally would. I think that it is partly because, although it retains many converts, it was never quite as mainstream as it might have been. Everyone said that it would really take off among the young, and to a degree it did. What also took off among the young, however, was the politics of Thatcherism. The Greens didn’t get their message across, because to a certain extent there was a strain of that politics that was about anti-materialism.’
The political challenge is finding a hope for environmental policies and priorities within the wider progressive movement.
Margaret Beckett’s brief also covers agriculture and the countryside. After years of trying to reform the Common Agricultural Policy and ameliorate its terrible effects on the developing world, the government is having some success.
‘There aren’t many who would think we could get the deal we got on CAP reform. The biggest thing is breaking the link between production and subsidy. That encouraged behaviour that was often damaging to the environment – such as overgrazing and bringing marginal land into use – because the more you produced, the more money you made, whether anyone wanted to buy what you were producing or not.’
The new model for agriculture is not paying people to produce vast surpluses, but instead to pay farmers only for activities that the market does not reward, but which are part of the public good.
‘There is a whole range of things to do with countryside stewardship where there is a genuine public interest. Is there something that they can do to help maximise bio-diversity, and help wildlife thrive? Is there something they can do to stop the potential of flooding? Perhaps sometimes recreating wetlands and water meadows?’ After all, agriculturally managed land covers over 70 percent of Britain. Under the reforms, we are moving toward paying for good stewardship of that land.
Outside her own department, Margaret Beckett is one of the ministers the government deploys as a last line of defence when the press is in a feeding frenzy. Her trump card is calmly puncturing some of the hyperbole and excitement that builds up so readily in the media. She finds that the current political atmosphere can be toxic to ideas and debate.
‘I often think to myself that I feel very sorry for people who are now starting out on their political career. I do think people have to spend much more time working on the media side. The media drives the agenda much more than it used to. When I started out in full-time politics, I was working for the party. If we produced a policy document, you would probably get two stories. One would say, ‘party produces document – it says this’. The other one would be the comment, and if it was an important document it might be the leader column, saying “what a load of old nonsense”. Now, you never get a piece which says what the policy is, you only get the bit which says “what a load of old nonsense”.’
So what should politicians and Labour members do?
‘First, you just need to keep plugging away at it. Second, you have to be professional in dealing with the media as they are. One thing which you must never, never overlook is that even if you have got criticisms and concerns, if you are not also saying what is positive about what the party is doing or about what is positive about the government’s record, nobody else is going to do it for you.
‘It is a Janus face of politics. If, on the one hand, you are not dissatisfied with what’s being done, and you are not saying that is not good enough, then you probably don’t belong in the Labour party. And that is our great strength as a movement. But the weakness, which corresponds with that, is that once you’ve got something, you move on, and you stop talking about it and everybody else forgets about it.
‘I think I am particularly conscious of that because I shadowed social security for five years. During that time, the Tories were wrecking the lives of lots of the most vulnerable people in the country – everything from birth benefits to pension benefits and death benefits were changed for the worse. Every single thing. If you look at what people who used to be forced onto income support used to get for their families when Labour came to power and what they get now, it is never enough but, my God, it is a lot different to what it was. You look at the Sure Start projects, the investment that is going into constituencies like mine that never had a thing for twenty years. It is actually genuinely life-transforming, especially for young children
‘Our biggest mistake, the reason we were out of power for so long, is that people of my generation, who were the first to benefit fully from the welfare state, thought nobody could take it away from them. And the biggest danger we now face, as a party and as a country, is that we are now going to have a swathe of people, especially if we are lucky enough to get a third term, who think nobody can take this away from them. They always can.’