Our annual Peter Melchett Memorial Lectures aim to challenge orthodoxy and create debate to stimulate fresh thinking on the causes Peter cared about so passionately.

For the annual Peter Melchett Memorial Lecture, we are excited to be joined by keynote speaker Caroline Lucas MP, Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion, along with Soil Association Chief Executive Helen Browning OBE and Rob Percival, Soil Association’s Head of Food Policy.

In her thirteen-year tenure as the Green Party’s sole Member of Parliament, Caroline has been a tireless advocate for a progressive social and environmental agenda, putting issues like a universal basic income and a legal right to access nature on the political agenda. She has said the previously unsayable, only to see it become part of the mainstream, broadening political horizons on multiple fronts. In her letter to constituents in June 2023, Caroline announced she would be stepping down at the next election to focus more energy on the existential challenges posed by the climate and nature crises.

The Soil Association is working to ensure food, farming, and forestry are part of the solution to these crises. In tandem with this lecture, the charity will be publishing a vision for the decade ahead, calling for a better approach to policymaking in an age of ecological unravelling. If the tribalism and cynicism of traditional Westminster politics is impeding the action we urgently need, then the decade ahead demands new alliances, new forms of citizen engagement, a new spirit of pragmatism and courage in political decision-making. It is on this theme – a ‘new politics’ fit for an age of environmental breakdown – that Caroline will speak.