Steve Reed: Why Labour won’t let green groups veto new homes

Steve Reed has one of the trickiest jobs in government.

The new environment secretary is a key member of Sir Keir Starmer’s inner circle, in a government elected on a pledge to “get Britain building again”.

Angela Rayner, the housing secretary and deputy prime minister, leads the charge on building homes and Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, plans a blitz of solar panels and wind turbines, but Reed, 60, has a grander task: as he put it last month in an address to the Labour Party conference, to “give our children back the natural world that is their birthright”.

So how does he reconcile protecting the countryside, restoring nature and keeping conservationists onside with bolstering the government’s mission to boost economic growth through building?

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