Good day one and all and welcome to your latest Campaigns Digest! There’s been no shortage of interest over the past couple of months, even if everything hasn’t gone the way we may have wished. Less to report on the waste and planning front this issue; hopefully we’ll have more news on those areas next time.
Energy & Climate Change
As we went to press for the last issue, MPs in the House of Commons were preparing to vote on an amendment for a clean energy target. This has been the main thrust of the Clean British Energy Campaign over the past couple of months: getting enough MPs in the Commons to commit to a 2030 decarbonisation target.
We had our campaigners there on 4th June getting the inside scoop, with Robert Pass, Jacob Williams, and Michaela Hodges watching the debate and the vote from the House of Commons public gallery. In the event the decarbonisation amendment was vetoed by just 23 votes. A really frustrating climax to all our hard campaigning. However, we would like to express our thanks to all the Birmingham MPs who voted in favour: Gisela Stuart, Jack Dromey, John Hemming, Liam Byrne, Richard Burden, Roger Godsiff, Shabana Mahmood, and Steve McCabe.
However, it’s not all doom and gloom, as the narrowness of the vote meant that the House of Lords was likely to look at a decarbonisation target. Low and behold on 26th June, Lord Oxburgh submitted an amendment for one. The House of Lords is now looking at this in detail, with a vote in the Lords expected in October. The story continues…..
Biodiversity
News came in from the positive side of the fence on 28th June, with the announcement from ‘Bees Minister’ Lord DeMauley that the Government would look to implement a National Pollinator Strategy. At first glance, this appears to be a National Bee Action Plan in all but name, but as always the devil is in the detail, as Rebecca Pollard explains in her article All Abuzz About Something.
We also had a really successful week at BBC Gardeners’ World Live with loads of action cards signed and a fantastic time had by all the volunteer campaigners from the local groups involved. Check out Shaz Rahman’s article BBC Gardener’s World for more details on how this all went.
Transport
The news since last issue is that we got moving on our new campaign on air quality and active transport, Let’s Get Moving. We had a couple of stunts to launch the campaign involving campaigners dressed in gas masks holding our campaign banner. Read the main article Getting Moving by Samuel Jones for the full details of all we’ve been up to so far in the campaign.
In other transport news, it was reported in the Birmingham Post in June that the Council have sold off a small piece of land needed for the re-opening of the line through Moseley and Kings Heath.
While this is disappointing, and could be argued short-sighted, the lack of funds being made available from Central Government and other sources has, for a while now, been the bigger issue with re-opening local rail lines in Birmingham. Needless to say, we’re going to be keeping an eye on further developments to this story.
Julien Pritchard
