Speaking in his constituency of Kingston, the energy secretary condemned the Conservative Party for neglecting energy efficiency and vowed that, from 2018/19, the Liberal Democrats would spend a further £2 billion a year on improving energy efficiency in homes.
He said: “It’s really weird that building power plants and supplying new power is part of the National Infrastructure programme, but saving money, so you don’t have to build the power plants, isn’t part of the National Infrastructure programme.
“I’ve argued with my Conservative colleagues that this isn’t the right thing and I haven’t always won that argument, but it’s going in our manifesto to make sure energy efficiency investment is seen at the same scale.”
Davey declared that his party’s manifesto will include a ‘green Magna Carta’ of five new green bills: the nature bill, the zero carbon bill, the green transport bill, the zero waste bill and the green homes bill.
He concluded: “If Liberal Democrats are the next government, we’ll not only build on what we’ve achieved – and I do believe we’ve achieved quite a lot – but we’re going to do more and faster.”