In January 2020 Philip was elected Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC).
The EAC shares with the Public Accounts Committee the remit to look across government, rather than shadowing an individual department. This allows the EAC to scrutinise all government departments, and public and private sector impact on our environment, as well as measures to mitigate climate change. This could well be one of the defining policy areas of this Parliament, as we put in place the policies to enable the UK to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible, and certainly by 2050.
In the past two years, Philip initiated the Committee’s enquiry into one of the largest - yet largely hidden – sectors where modern slavery is prevalent today in Britain, and have pushed for more transparency to encourage Green Finance and greening of UK export finance, in improving biodiversity, air, water and soil quality.
It is clear from maiden speeches that many new MPs are committed environmentalists. They will help keep up the pressure on government to deliver policies for the UK to be a leader internationally in addressing climate change. Not least this November when we host the next UN Climate Change conference (COP26) in Glasgow.
Visit the Environmental Audit Committee webpages here: http://parliament.uk/eacom.
Philip Dunne promotes South Shropshire Climate Action’s constituency based plan with practical ideas of what local communities can do to help get to Net Zero and asks if there is scope for such community groups to attend COP26 in Glasgow in order to spread this practice.
Philip Dunne outlines the scale of the task ahead in order to improve the energy efficiency of our homes and urges the Government to work closely with the industry when developing any successor scheme to ensure it has the confidence of the industry and consumers.
Philip Dunne welcomes the Queen’s Speech focus on covid recovery and achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. He particularly welcomes three amendments to the reintroduced Environment Bill which take forward the principles of his Private Members’ Bill to end sewage pollution and address the state of our sewage and drainage infrastructure.