Rebecca Pow ‘disappointed’ as Tories ‘undersell’ environment record

Ms Pow served in government as the Nature Minister until she lost her seat to Liberal Democrat Gideon Amos at the general election in July, which saw the Conservatives lose 251 seats compared to 2019 as Labour won a landslide majority.

In a column with the i newspaper, she said the Tories failed to showcase the environmental policies they introduced during their 14 years in power, arguing that allows Labour to “claim our victories as their own”.

Those policies include telling housebuilders to deliver a 10 per cent biodiversity net gain and bringing in Local Nature Recovery Strategies.

Rebecca Pow represented Taunton Deane in Parliament between 2015 and 2024. (Image: Newsquest)

Ms Pow also says her party took “major steps to tackle the chronic problem of sewage pollution”, such as fitting all of England’s storm overflows with monitors and lifting the cap on fines for water companies over illegal pollution incidents.

In her column, she wrote: “Concern about the environment is the main reason why I am a Conservative and ran for Parliament.

“I’m proud of what we achieved at Defra (the Department for Farming and Rural Affairs) but am frustrated that as a party we failed to trumpet our record.

“Having lost my seat in Somerset, I know better than anyone the electorate’s harsh judgement on our party’s time in government.

“We made mistakes, we failed to deliver, and we lost people’s trust.

“And people might assume this also applies to our work on the environment. But it doesn’t.

“This is exactly why I have been left disappointed with my own party.

“Despite showcasing ourselves as the party of rural communities, we undervalued and undersold the electoral asset that is our record on the environment.

“We should have championed our record during the election, especially in the traditional blue wall seats and the south west.

“Instead, many of our traditional voters and potential new voters remained unaware of just how much we actually managed to get done.”

A paddleboarder on the River Tone in Taunton. (Image: Newsquest)

A Lib Dem spokesperson accused the Tories of ‘turning a blind eye to water companies pumping filth into our waterways’ and claimed Tory MPs “voted time and time again against taking proper action against the big water firms”.

The Tories came under fire in 2021 for voting down a Lords amendment to the Environment Bill that would have forced water companies “to take all reasonable steps to ensure untreated sewage is not discharged from storm overflows”.

But they argued there were already safeguards in place and the measures proposed in the amendment would have cost billions of pounds.