Environment secretary runs for prime minister

Michael Gove has put himself forward to become the next leader of the Conservative party and prime minister.

The secretary of state for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, announced on Sunday (26 May) at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival that he is putting his hat in the ring to take the top job in the government.

He said he would be putting forward a “positive set of ideas” in the contest to become prime minister.

As secretary of state at Defra (The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), Gove has adopted an interventionist approach on environmental issues and has been a harsh critic of the water companies.

The first post on the secretary of state’s Twitter account following his leadership bid announcement, a retweet over the weekend, hailed the UK’s new record of coal free electricity generation.

Gove, who was a leading figure in the 2016 campaign to leave the European Union, gave the keynote speech at the launch of the Conservative Environment Network in 2014 and is listed as a supporter of the liberal Tory thinktank Bright Blue, which has championed more vigorous policy action on climate change.

He is joined in the leadership race by his predecessor as Defra secretary of state Andrea Leadsom. The Northamptonshire MP was minister of state for energy from 2015 to 2016 and highlighted “climate crisis” as one of the issues that delivering Brexit would enable the UK to tackle when announcing her leadership bid on Twitter last week.

Another former Defra minister contending for the Tory top job is Rory Stewart who served in Defra as water minister from 2015 to 2016.

Since taking over as secretary of state for international development last month, the former diplomat has highlighted the importance of climate change issues as did his fellow leadership candidate, foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, on a recent trip to Nigeria.

In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, announcing his leadership bid, ex-exiting the European Union secretary of state Dominic Raab said that one of his priorities as prime minister would be to “end consumer rip-offs to deliver a fairer deal” in a number of areas including pensioners’ energy bills.

Leadership race front runner and former foreign secretary Boris Johnson recently told the Extinction Rebellion campaigners that they should protest in China instead of London. However he defended the solar industry from the withdrawal of feed-in tariff support when he was mayor of London.

Steve Baker, deputy chair of the European Research Group, questioned whether climate change is man made in a blog in 2010 for the Conservative Home website.

The remaining three candidates to have declared that they are running for the Conservative leadership when Utility Week went to press this week were housing minister Kit Malthouse, home secretary Sajid Javid and ex-work and pensions secretary of state Esther McVey.