Departing MP urges public to get outdoors and get active

Trudy Harrison said she would spend her remaining months as an MP championing the great outdoors.

Trudy Harrison will not seek re-election (Stefan Rousseau/PA) (PA Archive)

A Conservative MP has said she wants to use her remaining time in Parliament to help people get active outdoors.

Environment minister Trudy Harrison, who announced on Monday that she would leave Parliament at the next election, said she wanted to champion more outdoor exercise such as walking and cycling in the name of public health.

She said: “We have the third most obese population in Europe with all the serious and life-limiting conditions and restrictions that brings, yet our country’s landscape is incredible and already quite accessible.

“My priority is not just encouraging, but positively enabling more people to be more active in the, often low cost or no cost, Great British outdoors.”

Ms Harrison, who was elected as Copeland’s first Conservative MP in 2017, said she would be embarking on a 182-mile coast-to-coast walk from St Bees, in her constituency, to Robin Hood’s Bay in North Yorkshire to promote outdoor activity, with the route soon to be designated a National Trail.

She added: “Perhaps ironically this was the very first conversation I had with our now Prime Minister, sometime in spring 2017, when we were both backbenchers.

“As the new constituency MP for one end of the route, Rishi (Sunak) wanted to secure my support for the National Trail designation and now, as access minister in Defra it falls to me to ensure its completion before October 2024.

“I therefore know that the Prime Minister values an active lifestyle and the great outdoors, as I do.”

After six years in Parliament, Ms Harrison said she had decided to step down as her constituency was due to be abolished, and she wanted to return to focus on community activism in West Cumbria.

Prior to her time as environment minister, Ms Harrison served as parliamentary private secretary to Boris Johnson while he was prime minister, and as a minister at the Department for Transport.

Looking back on her time in Parliament, the former Sellafield technical clerk said she was most proud of securing greater support for the nuclear industry, including investment at Moorside in her constituency.

She said: “By far the greatest priority to effect positive change in West Cumbria is civil nuclear.

“If you remember in February 2017 the then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had been caught on camera, some years earlier, advocating the decommissioning of all existing nuclear power stations with firm instructions not to build any new facilities.

“In 2017 the Conservative Party were also rather lukewarm on atomic energy with Hinckley Point C under question and Moorside looking unlikely.

“Those were the old days and this is the turnaround I’m most proud of.

Ms Harrison said she had advocated for nuclear power “every day” while assisting Mr Johnson, emphasising its ability to provide not just clean power but also good jobs outside South East England.

Mr Johnson was an enthusiastic supporter of nuclear power, and announced £700 million of funding for a new reactor at Sizewell, in Suffolk, during his final days in Downing Street.

After plans for the Moorside power plant fell through in 2018, focus has moved onto securing small modular reactors (SMRs), with Ms Harrison campaigning to bring the UK’s first SMRs to Copeland.

She was also a strong proponent of the plan to open a new coal mine in Copeland, which was finally approved by the Government earlier this year.

Now she plans to return to activism in her home area, saying: “The Government’s recent policies are what West Cumbria needs to thrive and I’ll be able to use my policy knowledge, system thinking skills, national and international contacts and most importantly local connections to ensure we reap the benefits of those national changes.

“Of course I still have much work to do, with potentially a further year to 18 months left before a general election.

“I have every intention of working hard, both as a minister serving in Rishi Sunak’s Government and Copeland’s MP until the very last day, my foot will remain firmly on the throttle.”