Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Rebecca Long Bailey MP Shadow Business Secretary
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY
SOPHY RIDGE: More than a thousand climate change activists were arrested over Easter calling for immediate action to cut carbon emissions and it seems that some politicians might be listening because today they have announced plans to force a debate in Parliament on Wednesday which would make the UK the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency. So joining us now from Salford is the Shadow Business Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, thank you very much for being on the programme today.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Morning, Sophy.
SR: It’s quite refreshing to start on a subject that isn’t Brexit related, Labour this morning calling for a climate emergency to be described, now is that just an eye-catching phrase or does it actually mean anything?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well we’d be the first Parliament in the world to declare such a climate and environment emergency but that’s the first step in a long list of radical action that we want the government to take. We want them to take action that’s commensurate with this national emergency and in doing so, not just provide a better quality of life but also unlock the huge economic benefits that backing a green industrial revolution, which is what the Labour party has been pushing for for some time and the economic benefits that will bring to many of your communities right across the UK from manufacturing all the way through to energy efficiency measures.
SR: Because what I’m interested in trying to find out is what this actually entails because it’s easy to kind of talk in grandiose terms about climate emergency but it is much more difficult to take the quite challenging decisions that need to happen in order to bring, as Labour wants to see, carbon emissions down to net zero by 2050. So for example are you looking at things like the expansion of Heathrow Airport, does Labour back that?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well it was quite dramatic making this assertion on Wednesday, declaring a national emergency in relation to climate and environment but it’s necessary because from everybody from the Met Office to NASA to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, have stated that if you don’t take radical action across the world, not just here in the UK, we are not going to be able to reverse the damaging effects of climate change and we’ve got to bring our emissions down by 45% compared to 2010 levels by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050 and that requires a national emergency, a mission if you like to unlock public investment but also private investment to get everybody in the UK behind this challenge and we’ve been looking at a range of options, a green industrial revolution is the term that I mentioned earlier and that’s everything from supporting low carbon and renewable energy, technologies such as solar, onshore and offshore wind, home energy efficiency programmes, supporting direct public and private investment in new transport technologies such as electric and hydrogen powered vehicles. Unfortunately at the moment here in the UK we simply are not doing enough, we have reduced our emissions by 2% in the last year, we are not anywhere near meeting our carbon budgets, the third and fifth carbon budgets, so the level of action that’s required is huge and we will need to see significant public support and public investment in this. It is not just in terms of public investment, direct investment, it’s looking at the other policy levers that we can use: the incentivisation to spur on our businesses to become more sustainable through tax incentives and other subsidies, the creation of a market for new technologies such as electric vehicles using policy levers such as procurement to make sure that our public bodies procure electric vehicles where possible. There are many simple things that we can do and there are many complicated things that we can do but what’s clear is very, very simple: we have to take this dramatic action now because if we don’t we are going to see irreversible damage to our environment and our quality of life not just here in the UK but right across the world.
SR: Okay, no mention there of Heathrow expansion which is what the question was actually about. I wonder whether …
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well let me come back to that point. In terms of Heathrow expansion, we were clear when the debate went through Parliament that the Labour party thought that the expansion of Heathrow Airport didn’t meet many of the objectives that we’d set out in relation to climate change. The evidence hasn’t changed since then, we remain sceptical but what we want to see is significant investment and public action and governmental action in relation to sectors such as aviation, shipping, the transport sector, to bring emissions down but that will only happen, that research and development, those new technologies, with a real government incentive and drive behind it.
SR: Okay, another difficult decision if you like, radical action that will help cut carbon emissions is fracking and the government fracking tsar quit today saying that actually the policy has been guided by fear-mongering rather than science. Would Labour support fracking as one of these difficult decisions to try and bring carbon emissions down which is what you want to see?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: We want to ban fracking, we don’t think that it’s responsible for a government to lock the UK into another fossil fuel industry quite frankly. Aside from the other air quality concerns that many communities have, the potential for earth tremors etc, etc, the list is endless. The overturning of local democracy because many councils let’s remember have voted against having fracking in their areas yet they have been ignored by government but we just don’t think it is responsible to lock us into that fossil fuel related future at a time when we should be throwing our weight behind low carbon and renewable technologies.
SR: Okay, one of the reasons why we are talking about the environment at the moment is because of the protestors and the Extinction Rebellion protestors who have ground the capital to a halt with some of their demonstrations. Now your colleague, Barry Gardiner, likened them to the Suffragettes and Chartists and I wonder where you are in relation to the protestors. Are they just an annoyance to commuters or are they the modern day Suffragettes?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Yes, I mean the climate change protestors, Extinction Rebellion and the school children who have been on strike recently, the represent a whole cross-section of British society and let’s remember, in the last week we had an unprecedented day where we saw a statement on climate change from the Environment and Energy Minister and we also saw an urgent question on climate change at a time when the whole debate in Parliament had been dominated solely by Brexit. So they spurred on politicians and people right across society to start dealing with this issue and to consider it as an emergency and I think that it’s great that if anybody wants to raise this issue politically within their community they should do so because it really is a national emergency and that’s the whole point of us having this debate next week, to make sure that we declare a national climate and environment emergency.
SR: Right, now I did say at the beginning of the show that it was refreshing to talk about things other than Brexit but given the fact that you are one of a very select group of people in these cross-party Brexit talks along with the Shadow Brexit Secretary, Kier Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn, I do want to ask you how it’s going because Conservative sources have been saying to us that Labour is dragging its heels, that you’re not serious about trying to get a deal across the line that would mean that European elections didn’t need to happen. How are the talks going?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well we’re certainly not dragging our heels by any stretch of anybody’s imagination and I have to say that honestly, the discussions so far have been productive, we’ve gone into a lot of detail, there seems to be a willingness on both sides to move towards some form of consensus but as yet we haven’t seen the government move on any of their red lines. We are having further discussions this week and hopefully we will see some movement but at the moment we are focusing on the detail, where we stand in relation to our relevant positions and where potentially we could move to but we want to see hard and fast movement on those red lines as quickly as possible.
SR: So you are saying the government aren’t moving on their red lines, what are Labour’s red lines and where are you prepared to compromise? So really, really specifically, if you could be as crystal clear as you could, is a second referendum a red line for Labour in these talks?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well I wouldn’t couch it in terms of a second referendum but our party policy has always been that firstly we want to get a Brexit deal that puts our economy and living standards first and protects our environmental protections, workplace protections, health and safety standards. We want a customs union arrangement in order to keep our borders open so that our manufacturing industry isn’t detrimentally affected and we keep the movements of goods as free flowing as possible and we want a strong single market relationship. Now we’re not being hugely prescriptive on the minute detail of specific elements because we are willing to be compromising, we are willing to be flexible and we have reiterated that numerous times to the government and there has been movement in certain areas. We have been having fantastic discussions on working rights for example and the government seemed quite amenable to moving towards clearly what I’ve been asking for but we are waiting to see at the moment whether that turn in to pens on paper in terms of legislation and real hard, fast entrenchment provisions but we have been having productive discussions and I’m hopeful that over the coming weeks that we will see some movement and certainly that’s the intention that I’m going into the discussions with and indeed the Labour colleagues that are sitting with me.
SR: So listening to your answer there, if you’ve got what you wanted on a customs union and a close relationship with the single market, would Labour be prepared to sign off that deal if it wasn’t put back to the public again?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well what was said in terms of the policy that was set out at our conference last year, was to avoid damaging the …
SR: We’ve moved on from last year though haven’t we? I’m talking about the cross-party talks that are happening now.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well in order to be happy with a deal it would have to satisfy what the Labour party has been trying to achieve in terms of that close economic relationship, that close collaboration with Europe, with no undermining of environment, climate change, health and safety standards, workers’ rights etc, etc and that’s what we’re trying to move towards in terms of our deal but if we don’t get a deal that satisfies those objectives, it’s a damaging deal, a damaging Tory Brexit deal or there is the risk of us moving towards a no deal, in that circumstance we have said that all options should be on the table and that includes campaigning for a public vote but our priority in these negotiations is to find the consensus and to get a deal that we know will protect the economy.
SR: So it sounds like to me that a second referendum is not a red line for Labour in the talks, correct me if I’m wrong.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well no, a public vote in the event of the situation that I’ve just outlined has always been our party policy, now we have to be flexible in where we move and we have to keep all options on the table and that’s what we’re doing so until we find out what the final deal will be. We are of course pushing the government to consider that the policy option that we have, which is a public vote in order to avoid a damaging no deal Brexit or a bad deal and they are considering that, they haven’t come back with any confirmation as to whether they will move on that red line as they haven’t with a number of their other red lines but certainly we are outlining our party policy very, very clearly.
SR: Okay, so we’ve got the local elections looming next week, what would be a good performance by the Labour party?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well I think it would be naïve of me to not think that Brexit would play a big part in our local elections. Certainly from the feedback that I’m getting on the doorstep in my constituency, many of our residents are talking about Brexit on the doorstep as well as all of the other issues that affect their lives in relation to living standards and austerity and to think that that wouldn’t have an effect on people’s voting intentions I think would be, as I say, naïve. We have also got to remember the last situation that we were in when we saw such large scale local elections was 2015 at the time of the general election where turnout was a lot higher so I couldn’t, without a crystal ball, state what I think the outcome of those elections is going to be. Certainly from the doorsteps that I’ve been on there have been discussions about Brexit but ultimately a lot of our Labour support is still there and I feel quite positive about our domestic policy agenda and certainly the agenda that our local councils are setting out to try and limit the damage that this Conservative government is doing to our local communities and I hope that people certainly bear that in mind when they are going to the ballot box in the local elections.
SR: Now before I let you go I just want to talk about you for one second because you are clearly in the leader’s circle of trust, you are one of the people in these Brexit talks, we know that you are spoken of as someone who is close to John McDonnell as well. You are talked about as a future leader of the Labour party so do you think you’ll make a good Prime Minister?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: [Laughs] Well I think it’s a bit absurd and crazy to be talking about things like that. When I read things like that in the press it does make me chuckle a bit and clearly my priority and the priority of the whole Shadow Cabinet is to get a Labour government elected under Jeremy Corbyn with him being our Prime Minister, that’s what we’re all working towards and …
SR: That’s a PR answer, I understand, but do you think you’d make a good Prime Minister?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I’ll be totally honest with you, it’s not something that I’ve ever considered or would consider any time soon.
SR: Okay, okay, sticking strictly to the script there, fair enough. Rebecca Long-Bailey thank you very much.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Thanks very much.
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED
SOPHY RIDGE: More than a thousand climate change activists were arrested over Easter calling for immediate action to cut carbon emissions and it seems that some politicians might be listening because today they have announced plans to force a debate in Parliament on Wednesday which would make the UK the first country in the world to declare a climate emergency. So joining us now from Salford is the Shadow Business Secretary, Rebecca Long-Bailey, thank you very much for being on the programme today.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Morning, Sophy.
SR: It’s quite refreshing to start on a subject that isn’t Brexit related, Labour this morning calling for a climate emergency to be described, now is that just an eye-catching phrase or does it actually mean anything?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well we’d be the first Parliament in the world to declare such a climate and environment emergency but that’s the first step in a long list of radical action that we want the government to take. We want them to take action that’s commensurate with this national emergency and in doing so, not just provide a better quality of life but also unlock the huge economic benefits that backing a green industrial revolution, which is what the Labour party has been pushing for for some time and the economic benefits that will bring to many of your communities right across the UK from manufacturing all the way through to energy efficiency measures.
SR: Because what I’m interested in trying to find out is what this actually entails because it’s easy to kind of talk in grandiose terms about climate emergency but it is much more difficult to take the quite challenging decisions that need to happen in order to bring, as Labour wants to see, carbon emissions down to net zero by 2050. So for example are you looking at things like the expansion of Heathrow Airport, does Labour back that?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well it was quite dramatic making this assertion on Wednesday, declaring a national emergency in relation to climate and environment but it’s necessary because from everybody from the Met Office to NASA to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, have stated that if you don’t take radical action across the world, not just here in the UK, we are not going to be able to reverse the damaging effects of climate change and we’ve got to bring our emissions down by 45% compared to 2010 levels by 2030 and to reach net zero by 2050 and that requires a national emergency, a mission if you like to unlock public investment but also private investment to get everybody in the UK behind this challenge and we’ve been looking at a range of options, a green industrial revolution is the term that I mentioned earlier and that’s everything from supporting low carbon and renewable energy, technologies such as solar, onshore and offshore wind, home energy efficiency programmes, supporting direct public and private investment in new transport technologies such as electric and hydrogen powered vehicles. Unfortunately at the moment here in the UK we simply are not doing enough, we have reduced our emissions by 2% in the last year, we are not anywhere near meeting our carbon budgets, the third and fifth carbon budgets, so the level of action that’s required is huge and we will need to see significant public support and public investment in this. It is not just in terms of public investment, direct investment, it’s looking at the other policy levers that we can use: the incentivisation to spur on our businesses to become more sustainable through tax incentives and other subsidies, the creation of a market for new technologies such as electric vehicles using policy levers such as procurement to make sure that our public bodies procure electric vehicles where possible. There are many simple things that we can do and there are many complicated things that we can do but what’s clear is very, very simple: we have to take this dramatic action now because if we don’t we are going to see irreversible damage to our environment and our quality of life not just here in the UK but right across the world.
SR: Okay, no mention there of Heathrow expansion which is what the question was actually about. I wonder whether …
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well let me come back to that point. In terms of Heathrow expansion, we were clear when the debate went through Parliament that the Labour party thought that the expansion of Heathrow Airport didn’t meet many of the objectives that we’d set out in relation to climate change. The evidence hasn’t changed since then, we remain sceptical but what we want to see is significant investment and public action and governmental action in relation to sectors such as aviation, shipping, the transport sector, to bring emissions down but that will only happen, that research and development, those new technologies, with a real government incentive and drive behind it.
SR: Okay, another difficult decision if you like, radical action that will help cut carbon emissions is fracking and the government fracking tsar quit today saying that actually the policy has been guided by fear-mongering rather than science. Would Labour support fracking as one of these difficult decisions to try and bring carbon emissions down which is what you want to see?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: We want to ban fracking, we don’t think that it’s responsible for a government to lock the UK into another fossil fuel industry quite frankly. Aside from the other air quality concerns that many communities have, the potential for earth tremors etc, etc, the list is endless. The overturning of local democracy because many councils let’s remember have voted against having fracking in their areas yet they have been ignored by government but we just don’t think it is responsible to lock us into that fossil fuel related future at a time when we should be throwing our weight behind low carbon and renewable technologies.
SR: Okay, one of the reasons why we are talking about the environment at the moment is because of the protestors and the Extinction Rebellion protestors who have ground the capital to a halt with some of their demonstrations. Now your colleague, Barry Gardiner, likened them to the Suffragettes and Chartists and I wonder where you are in relation to the protestors. Are they just an annoyance to commuters or are they the modern day Suffragettes?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Yes, I mean the climate change protestors, Extinction Rebellion and the school children who have been on strike recently, the represent a whole cross-section of British society and let’s remember, in the last week we had an unprecedented day where we saw a statement on climate change from the Environment and Energy Minister and we also saw an urgent question on climate change at a time when the whole debate in Parliament had been dominated solely by Brexit. So they spurred on politicians and people right across society to start dealing with this issue and to consider it as an emergency and I think that it’s great that if anybody wants to raise this issue politically within their community they should do so because it really is a national emergency and that’s the whole point of us having this debate next week, to make sure that we declare a national climate and environment emergency.
SR: Right, now I did say at the beginning of the show that it was refreshing to talk about things other than Brexit but given the fact that you are one of a very select group of people in these cross-party Brexit talks along with the Shadow Brexit Secretary, Kier Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn, I do want to ask you how it’s going because Conservative sources have been saying to us that Labour is dragging its heels, that you’re not serious about trying to get a deal across the line that would mean that European elections didn’t need to happen. How are the talks going?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well we’re certainly not dragging our heels by any stretch of anybody’s imagination and I have to say that honestly, the discussions so far have been productive, we’ve gone into a lot of detail, there seems to be a willingness on both sides to move towards some form of consensus but as yet we haven’t seen the government move on any of their red lines. We are having further discussions this week and hopefully we will see some movement but at the moment we are focusing on the detail, where we stand in relation to our relevant positions and where potentially we could move to but we want to see hard and fast movement on those red lines as quickly as possible.
SR: So you are saying the government aren’t moving on their red lines, what are Labour’s red lines and where are you prepared to compromise? So really, really specifically, if you could be as crystal clear as you could, is a second referendum a red line for Labour in these talks?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well I wouldn’t couch it in terms of a second referendum but our party policy has always been that firstly we want to get a Brexit deal that puts our economy and living standards first and protects our environmental protections, workplace protections, health and safety standards. We want a customs union arrangement in order to keep our borders open so that our manufacturing industry isn’t detrimentally affected and we keep the movements of goods as free flowing as possible and we want a strong single market relationship. Now we’re not being hugely prescriptive on the minute detail of specific elements because we are willing to be compromising, we are willing to be flexible and we have reiterated that numerous times to the government and there has been movement in certain areas. We have been having fantastic discussions on working rights for example and the government seemed quite amenable to moving towards clearly what I’ve been asking for but we are waiting to see at the moment whether that turn in to pens on paper in terms of legislation and real hard, fast entrenchment provisions but we have been having productive discussions and I’m hopeful that over the coming weeks that we will see some movement and certainly that’s the intention that I’m going into the discussions with and indeed the Labour colleagues that are sitting with me.
SR: So listening to your answer there, if you’ve got what you wanted on a customs union and a close relationship with the single market, would Labour be prepared to sign off that deal if it wasn’t put back to the public again?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well what was said in terms of the policy that was set out at our conference last year, was to avoid damaging the …
SR: We’ve moved on from last year though haven’t we? I’m talking about the cross-party talks that are happening now.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well in order to be happy with a deal it would have to satisfy what the Labour party has been trying to achieve in terms of that close economic relationship, that close collaboration with Europe, with no undermining of environment, climate change, health and safety standards, workers’ rights etc, etc and that’s what we’re trying to move towards in terms of our deal but if we don’t get a deal that satisfies those objectives, it’s a damaging deal, a damaging Tory Brexit deal or there is the risk of us moving towards a no deal, in that circumstance we have said that all options should be on the table and that includes campaigning for a public vote but our priority in these negotiations is to find the consensus and to get a deal that we know will protect the economy.
SR: So it sounds like to me that a second referendum is not a red line for Labour in the talks, correct me if I’m wrong.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well no, a public vote in the event of the situation that I’ve just outlined has always been our party policy, now we have to be flexible in where we move and we have to keep all options on the table and that’s what we’re doing so until we find out what the final deal will be. We are of course pushing the government to consider that the policy option that we have, which is a public vote in order to avoid a damaging no deal Brexit or a bad deal and they are considering that, they haven’t come back with any confirmation as to whether they will move on that red line as they haven’t with a number of their other red lines but certainly we are outlining our party policy very, very clearly.
SR: Okay, so we’ve got the local elections looming next week, what would be a good performance by the Labour party?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Well I think it would be naïve of me to not think that Brexit would play a big part in our local elections. Certainly from the feedback that I’m getting on the doorstep in my constituency, many of our residents are talking about Brexit on the doorstep as well as all of the other issues that affect their lives in relation to living standards and austerity and to think that that wouldn’t have an effect on people’s voting intentions I think would be, as I say, naïve. We have also got to remember the last situation that we were in when we saw such large scale local elections was 2015 at the time of the general election where turnout was a lot higher so I couldn’t, without a crystal ball, state what I think the outcome of those elections is going to be. Certainly from the doorsteps that I’ve been on there have been discussions about Brexit but ultimately a lot of our Labour support is still there and I feel quite positive about our domestic policy agenda and certainly the agenda that our local councils are setting out to try and limit the damage that this Conservative government is doing to our local communities and I hope that people certainly bear that in mind when they are going to the ballot box in the local elections.
SR: Now before I let you go I just want to talk about you for one second because you are clearly in the leader’s circle of trust, you are one of the people in these Brexit talks, we know that you are spoken of as someone who is close to John McDonnell as well. You are talked about as a future leader of the Labour party so do you think you’ll make a good Prime Minister?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: [Laughs] Well I think it’s a bit absurd and crazy to be talking about things like that. When I read things like that in the press it does make me chuckle a bit and clearly my priority and the priority of the whole Shadow Cabinet is to get a Labour government elected under Jeremy Corbyn with him being our Prime Minister, that’s what we’re all working towards and …
SR: That’s a PR answer, I understand, but do you think you’d make a good Prime Minister?
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: I’ll be totally honest with you, it’s not something that I’ve ever considered or would consider any time soon.
SR: Okay, okay, sticking strictly to the script there, fair enough. Rebecca Long-Bailey thank you very much.
REBECCA LONG-BAILEY: Thanks very much.