Rishi Sunak’s high-profile attack on the “extraordinary series of steps” the public will need to take to hit net zero seemingly had two targets in sight.
In interviews defending his crusade against seven recycling bins and taxes on meat, the prime minister repeatedly referenced Labour support for the measures but also their inclusion in plans produced by the Climate Change Committee (CCC). Both claims were rebutted.
The political posturing is to be expected in the lead-up to an election but some commentators have picked out the significance of a government openly opposing its statutory adviser.
Presumably this is a concern for the CCC’s former chair, Lord Deben?
Not at all, scoffs the Tory grandee, because Sunak doesn’t actually believe a word he’s saying. The former MP believes the prime minister has been led by his advisers and expresses his faith in the weight of evidence bearing out the CCC’s recommendations.
He tells Utility Week that Sunak’s speech “won’t have any influence at all, because the CCC has very clearly a legal requirement to base what it says on the facts. And if Rishi Sunak doesn’t like the facts, then that’s a very dangerous thing. You’re getting into very dangerous political work.
“But it’s not Rishi Sunak at all, it’s his advisers who want him to suggest these things. I don’t believe a word. I don’t believe he’s actually understood or read what the CCC has said. Otherwise you wouldn’t make these comments. I think he’s been let down by the people who want it to be true, who want to find somebody they can claim has led the extremist position.
With 16 years of top-level ministerial experience followed by more than a decade chairing the government’s climate watchdog until he stepped down in July, there are few in Parliament better placed to assess the government’s performance on achieving net zero. His impressive and expansive CV includes almost four years as secretary of state for the environment under John Major, as well as numerous other posts under Margaret Thatcher.
Ironically for someone now being associated with a meat tax, Lord Deben was once most famous for a photo shoot in which he fed his daughter a beefburger at the height of Mad Cow Disease fever.
All too aware of the huge deficit Sunak and his party must make up in the polls in order to beat Labour at the forthcoming general election, Lord Deben sees the prime minister’s speech as an attempt to create a dividing line between the two main parties.
He even accuses the government of inventing things in order to rally support behind his beleaguered party, chuckling at some of the ideas Sunak has promised to scrap.
He says: “It’s trying to say, we are committed to climate change fighting, we’re committed to net zero in 2050, but we want to show that we are moderate and reasonable and not forcing people to do things they don’t want to do. And therefore we’re going to make a division between us and the Labour Party because Labour has been very moderate too.
“Of course they have to invent things or give the image that the Labour Party might have suggested ludicrous things like the seven bins and the idea that you were going to force people to have more people in their cars. None of which is true.”