Sources say party will keep plan to invest in green infrastructure but will in effect cut green ambitions by about two-thirds
In his Sky News interview this morning Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, confirmed the party has ditched its commitment to spend £28bn a year on green investment schemes if it wins this year’s election, Kiran Stacey reports.
Jones said:
The number that we will get to [for green investment], if we are in government, will be subject to two things.
Firstly, it will be subject to the state of the economy. We know we’re going to inherit a bad economy from the Conservatives, but we have plans to turn that around, and of course, we hope to be successful doing that. But it will also be subject to case-by-case business cases that if, I’m the chief secretary to the Treasury in the next Labour government, I will have to sign off.
Labour are now trying to pretend they never said their 2030 energy policy would cost £28bn a year, despite repeatedly saying that their 2030 policy costs £28bn a year.
Labour are resorting to this desperate dishonesty because they cannot say how they will pay for their 2030 spending spree as they do not have a plan.
We will invest £28bn per year to tackle the climate emergency through our green prosperity plan, which will allow us to insulate 19 million homes within a decade; to deliver a clean power system by 2030 ….
Just a little clarification, so the £28bn came from some academic research which looked at the level of ambition an incoming government should have to reach net zero by 2050, not the mission for energy security, clean energy power by 2030. They’re slightly different targets.
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