Welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.

We are the charity and think tank that's all about achieving ambitious leadership for the environment.

My name is Sean Spears. I'm executive director of Green Alliance.

I'm delighted to be joined today by Liberal Democrat leader and member of parliament

for Kingston and Serveton, Sir Ed David, for this episode of The Insights podcast. This is a wonderful

gift we can give to future generations. We need to seize it with both hands. So I've talked about

a three-year, 150 billion-pound green economic recovery plan. It's huge.

And if I have only one worry, it's how you'd be able to spend all that money in that period.

Ed was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change during the coalition government

and is also chair of the All-party group on sustainable finance.

So Ed, I'm delighted you could join us today.

Sean, it's great to be joining you.

This is such a critical subject.

It always has been, but probably never more so than today.

Great.

So I just wanted to start with your role as leader of the Liberal Democrats and say that in my

recollection under Paddy Ashdown and then under Charlie Kennedy, it was always always being pretty

clear to me that the Lib Dems had the best policies on the environment of any of the three main

UK parties. And then it seemed to me you had a succession of leaders for whom the environment was less central to their vision for the Lib Dems and sort of slightly lost that leadership position.

And I think we're now in a position also where at a time when all the main parties are competing as to which can be the greenest.

And I just wondered whether they're reasserting the Lib Dems as the greenest

of the main UK parties is part of your mission.

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