Sunak holds emergency cabinet meeting on net zero plan after backlash from left and right – UK politics live

And here is a thread on X/Twitter from Rachel Wolf. Like Ian Mulheirn (see 12.19pm), she is a serious figure in the policy world, but unlike him she is on the right, not the left. (She co-wrote the 2019 Tory manifesto.).

Wolf, who now works for Public First, a consultancy, also thinks it could be a mistake to assume that a net zero U-turn would appeal to voters. And she says a lot of voters may think Sunak is watering down his targets because the government is too incompetent to meet them.

My assumption is that the govt is watering down their net zero commitments because they want to make it harder for Labour to demonstrate economic credibility in the election campaign. It will be to generate cost and tax stories. BUT (1/4)

There’s a huge cost to this outside specifics on support for net zero (which leavers share!) – namely it is yet another thing the Tories have abandoned. Outside schools, and maybe employment, what consistent good story could you tell about about the Conservatives? (2/4)

And no, it’s not credible to repeat 2019 and appear like an entirely new administration at this point. Nor can you credibly now sound like you care about net zero. Envt was just about the only piece of domestic progress of the last few years and now you can’t talk about it. (3/4)

And from our own research, lots of the public will assume the reason the target has been watered down is because the government is too incompetent to meet it. (4/4)

Ian Mulheirn, an economist at the Resolution Foundation, posted a thread on X/Twitter last night looking at whether the Tories might benefit from net zero scepticism, as they did from Brexit in 2019. It starts here.

And here is is conclusion.

So as we foretold back then, a move like this was always a risk. But the identities probably aren’t strong enough for it to work electorally.

Big risk of alienating both pro-business Tories and rural conservatives without any ‘red wall’ payoff?

It could be an awkward cabinet meeting for Michael Gove, the levelling up secretary. In July, in the days after the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, when No 10 was starting to wobble on net zero policies, Gove gave an interview declaring that the government’s commitment to 2030 as the date when the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars would come into force was immovable.

No 10 has now confirmed that Rishi Sunak will deliver a speech on the changes to his net zero policies in Downing Street this afternoon. Unless the reporting has all been 100% wrong, and no one from government has been minded to correct it, it is going to amount to one of the biggest U-turns of his premiership.

Sunak will also take questions from journalists. The speech is due around 4.30pm, although that could change.

Pippa Crerar says there was panic in Downing Street when the story leaked, and Sunak wants to take control of the agenda again.

Rishi Sunak seems to have begun rethinking his net zero policies in the light of the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, which showed the Tories benefiting electorally from their opposition to a green measure that was going to increase costs for some voters. Most drivers in the constituency won’t be affected by the rollout of Ulez (the ultra-low emission zone) to Uxbridge, but a small number will be, and with the byelection taking place shortly before the rollout came into force, the Conservative party weaponised the issue successfully.

But, as the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit thinktank points out, the net zero measures that Sunak reportedly wants to ditch or delay aren’t going to cost consumers money any time soon anyway. Peter Chalkley, the ECIU’s director, says:

The fact is the gas boiler and petrol car phase-out aren’t set to have any impact on those struggling with bills for at least a decade. The boiler phase-out would start in 2035 but only for those whose boiler breaks. The vast majority, 80%, of drivers buy second-hand and second-hand petrol cars would be on the market for literally decades to come. Delaying this policy will push up the cost of motoring as cheaper second hand EVs [electric vehicles] that are much cheaper to run than petrol cars will be less available.

The one measure that would have brought down bills is the landlord energy efficiency rules [which Sunak reportedly wants to delay, so that landlords do not have to spend extra money on insulation]. Rented accommodation is some of the worst quality and so most costly to heat with tenants having no power to insulate themselves. We’ve had the lowest rates of home insulation for years during a gas crisis thanks to his flatlining programmes.

The off gas grid boiler phase-out has been watered down already in the energy bill and would only affect 0.2% of homes a year from 2026 anyway. These measures will add to the cost of living for those struggling, not make things easier.

1h ago06.34 EDT

Helena Horton

Climate scientists have expressed dismay at reports that Rishi Sunak is to row back on net zero commitments, arguing that this would be harmful not just environmentally, but economically too.

Prof Myles Allen, professor of geosystem sciences at Oxford University, said:

We haven’t heard the actual speech yet, but we all have to hope the PM is true to his word that he is looking for better ways to deliver net zero, not just slower ways. As we have found time and again in Britain, dithering costs money. The USA is seeing other countries’ faltering as an opportunity to get ahead. It will be sad indeed if we just see it as an opportunity to join the laggards.

There were strong words from Prof Dave Reay, executive director of the Edinburgh Climate Change Institute at Edinburgh University. He said:

It’s not pragmatic, it’s pathetic. This rolling back on emissions cuts for short-term political gain will undermine the transition to net zero and with it the future opportunities, prosperity and safety of the entire country.

And Prof Ed Hawkins, professor of climate science at Reading University, reminds us that reducing net zero ambitions will have devastating – and costly – consequences due to the natural disasters burning fossil fuels causes. He explained:

Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide which causes global warming which amplifies the consequences of extreme weather events, as we have so clearly seen this summer. Climate change will continue until we reach net zero globally, and we will then have to suffer the consequences of that warmer world for decades or more. It also matters how we reach net zero, not just when – delaying action means more emissions which means more severe consequences.

Rishi Sunak is holding a cabinet meeting today via conference call to discuss his new net zero policies, Kitty Donaldson from Bloomberg reports.

This was not scheduled. There was a normal cabinet meeting only yesterday.

The Conservative party used to pride itself on being the party of business. That has not been the case since Brexit and Boris Johnson, but the news that Rishi Sunak is about to water down net zero targets will do fresh damage to the party’s standing with corporate UK.

We have already highlighted the reaction from car manufacturers. (See 9.52am.) Here is some wider business reaction that landed in my inbox this morning.

This is from Alfonso Martinez, managing director of ALD LeasePlan, a vehicle leasing company.

We urge the government to stay on track with its 2030 target and maintain the UK’s position as a leader in zero-emission technologies. Now more than ever, we need to demonstrate consistency and commitment to achieving environmental and sustainability goals. Pushing back timelines could send a confusing message to both businesses and consumers and hinder the ongoing efforts to decarbonise the mobility sector.

This is from Laurence Wainwright, a lecturer at the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford.

It is extremely disappointing, and quite bewildering, to see that the UK government wants to shift from climate leader to a chop-and-change laggard. The home secretary this morning justified the ambition scale back on the basis that “We’re not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people.” This argument however does not stack up with the evidence. Oxford Smith School modelling shows that the faster we transition to net-zero, and hit the necessary interim goals along the way, the more cost-effective it will be.

This is from Tara Clee, an ESG (environmental, social and governance) analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, a fund management company.

While pushing the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035 might sound minor to some, this signalling from the government undermines businesses at the forefront of the net zero transition. The UK has been a trailblazer for net zero – encouraging innovation and investment to benefit the UK economy.

Car manufacturers Ford and BMW for example, have been investing in electric vehicle production to meet the challenge of full electrification by 2030. This summer, Ford ended the production of its highly successful Ford Fiesta in a move towards carbon neutrality. BMW Mini on the other hand has just announced a huge investment in an electric Mini factory in Oxford. These high-profile investments create jobs alongside long term shareholder returns.

And it’s not just the automotive industry impacted by the expected policy changes, the housing and energy industries now have to grapple with meeting prior climate commitments whilst remaining commercially viable. Many energy companies have committed to shift to cleaner energy sources, such as OVO Group who has pledged to be net zero by 2035. Large listed energy firms facing pressure from shareholders to invest more in renewables research and development now have another excuse to kick the can down the road.

More broadly, global asset managers, wards of trillions of pounds of retail and institutional investors’ savings, have committed to increasingly investing a portion of their assets in climate solutions and announced strict engagement frameworks to support businesses across all sectors to reach 2030 interim net zero targets. The market has been directing capital to the net zero transition and has been working in good faith against the government’s climate ambitions. These changes send a message that nothing is set in stone, and committing in earnest to a movable goalpost could be a major business risk.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, has said Meta’s planned rollout of end-to-end encryption will create “safe havens” for paedophiles online unless robust safety measures are introduced, PA Media reports.

Braverman accused the company, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, of failing to provide assurances that underage users will be protected from sexual predators. Along with security minister Tom Tugendhat and safeguarding minister Sarah Dines, she has called on the firm to “work with us” and enable police officers to access data to build investigations where appropriate, PA says.

In an interview with LBC this morning, Braverman said:

Here in our country we arrest about 800 perpetrators a month. We safeguard about 1,200 children a month. Those are monthly figures, not annual figures. We estimate there are up to 800,000 individuals in the country who pose a risk of sexual harm to children in some form or another.

And what we’re seeing is an increasing level of incidents of perpetrators, child sexual abusers, choosing, I have to say in the main, fora like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct, both owned by Meta, to conduct these evil crimes. They groom children. They identify children. They solicit children online. They pretend that they are children. They dupe them. They gain their trust and then they manipulate them into performing sexual acts, indecent acts, pornographic acts … And that is child abuse. That is criminal behaviour. And this is happening on an industrial scale.

And what Meta is proposing – they’re proposing to roll out end-to-end encryption without safety measures – will fundamentally make fora like Facebook Messenger and Instagram Direct safe havens for paedophiles to operate in the dark.

As PA reports, Meta has said it already restricts people aged over 19 from messaging teenagers who do not follow them and expects to continue providing “more reports to law enforcement than our peers”. A company spokesperson said:

The overwhelming majority of Brits already rely on apps that use encryption to keep them safe from hackers, fraudsters and criminals.

We don’t think people want us reading their private messages so have spent the last five years developing robust safety measures to prevent, detect and combat abuse while maintaining online security.

We’re today publishing an updated report setting out these measures, such as restricting people over 19 from messaging teens who don’t follow them and using technology to identify and take action against malicious behaviour.

As we roll out end-to-end encryption, we expect to continue providing more reports to law enforcement than our peers due to our industry-leading work on keeping people safe.

Broadly the way Conservative MPs have responded to the news that Rishi Suank is about to water down net zero targets in predictable ways, with rightwingers sceptical about climate measures delighted, and green Tories alarmed.

But last night there was an interesting intervention from Simon Clarke. Clarke was one of Liz Truss’s most loyal supporters when she was PM, and last night her team were pointint out that she explicitly called for net zero targets to be watered down. She said:

We should – as many other Western countries are already doing – delay implementing Net Zero commitments such as the ban on new petrol and diesel vehicles from 2030. Other environmental regulations which are hiking the cost of living, like enforcing the replacement of gas and oil boilers, should also be abandoned.

Clarke was levelling up secretary in Truss’s cabinet. But he is also MP for Middlesbrough South and East Clevelend, in the north-east where the car industry is a big employer, and last night he posted a thread on X (Twitter) arguing that Sunak was on the verge of making a terrible mistake. It would be wrong to “shatter” the consensus on net zero, Clarke said.

Our climate is changing dramatically. The UK has carved out a world-leading role delivering net zero in a market-friendly way that will deliver clean, secure energy and thousands of jobs in deprived communities like Teesside. My Red Wall constituents overwhelmingly support it.

We should be exceptionally careful of seeking to extract political advantage on this issue when the efforts of successive Prime Ministers – the majority of them Conservative – have been dedicated to upholding what Margaret Thatcher called a “full repairing lease” on our planet.

Businesses rely on certainty to make major investments like that just secured from Tata in Somerset. It is unclear how they are to plan at all if we respond to one byelection in west London by tearing up key planks of government policy.

When the history of this period of @Conservatives government is written, our leadership on climate issues will be one of our main achievements. We are fortunate to have a broad, non partisan consensus in the UK. How does it benefit either our country or our party to shatter it?

I am very clear: the delivery of net zero should not be a hair-shirt exercise. But I am equally clear that it is in our environmental, economic, moral and (yes) political interests as @Conservatives to make sure we lead on this issue rather than disown it.

Suella Braverman, the home secretary, was doing the media round this morning on behalf of No 10. As Aletha Adu reports, without giving details of what Rishi Sunak will announce, she backed the idea of watering down net zero targets.

Braverman told Times Radio:

We’ve achieved a huge amount in the last decade … but ultimately, we have to adopt a pragmatic approach, a proportionate approach, and one that also serves our goals. And we’re not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people.

And, in an interview with the Today programme, Braverman implied the current net zero targets were “punitive. She said:

We need to make sure these [net zero] targets are achievable. We need to make sure, whatever goal we set, is going to be affordable, it’s going to be sustainable, and ultimately that it’s deliverable. We don’t want to set targets which are totally unrealistic and punitive.

Asked if she was saying the targets were totally unrealistic when Boris Johnson set them, she said targets always had to be assessed in the light of “changing factors’.

Braverman is aligned with the wing of the Conservative party sceptical about net zero, and she may have been speaking as she did because she wants to encourage Sunak not to change his mind at the last minute. The BBC was reporting this morning that what the PM will announce has not yet been 100% finalised.

But what Braverman was saying was broadly in line with what Sunak has been saying himself. After the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection in July, when the government was starting to wobble on net zero, Sunak himself said that the policy should be applied “in a proportionate and pragmatic way”. He also implied the current policies were too costly for consumers.

Darren Jones, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, was giving interviews this morning. Echoing the line used by other Labour figures, he said Rishi Sunak’s handling of the net zero targets was “chaotic”. He said:

This is a classic example of Rishi Sunak’s weak leadership. You don’t announce these big changes in industrial policy via a leak from Downing Street and a late-night press release from the prime minister’s bunker.

Ministers didn’t seem to know, we’ve just seen … the home secretary didn’t know the details. Tory MPs didn’t know, which is why they’re furious on the airwaves and some calling for Rishi Sunak to go, and businesses won’t have known, in the weeks where Tory ministers have been signing off hundreds of millions of pounds to help businesses get ready for these long-held targets.

This is a chaotic approach to running the country, it’s completely unacceptable and it’s harming the economy.

Joanna Partridge has more on the car industry criticising Rishi Sunak for reportedly being on the verge of announcing that he is going to delay the point at which the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars comes into force.

Here is the text of the statement Rishi Sunak issued last night confirming that he is set to announce a rethink on some net zero policies.

For too many years politicians in governments of all stripes have not been honest about costs and trade-offs. Instead, they have taken the easy way out, saying we can have it all.

This realism doesn’t mean losing our ambition or abandoning our commitments. Far from it. I am proud that Britain is leading the world on climate change. We are committed to net zero by 2050 and the agreements we have made internationally, but doing so in a better, more proportionate way.

Our politics must again put the long-term interests of our country before the short-term political needs of the moment.

No leak will stop me beginning the process of telling the country how and why we need to change.

As a first step, I’ll be giving a speech this week to set out an important long-term decision we need to make so our country becomes the place I know we all want it to be for our children.

Sunak’s opening sentence about politicians of all parties not being “honest about costs and trade-offs” seems to be a swipe at Boris Johnson. He is arguing that Johnson was cakeist about net zero, implying that people could enjoy the benefits of tackling the climate crisis without having to pay the costs.

Good morning. Last night we learned that Rishi Sunak is about to announce a major scaling back of some of the government’s net zero targets.

After the news broke, first on the BBC, Sunak issued a late-night statement in effect confirming the story. “Our politics must again put the long-term interests of our country before the short-term political needs of the moment,” he said, stretching credibility to breaking point because at Westminster it is probably impossible to find anyone who does not think putting “short-term political needs” ahead of the long-term national interests is precisely what Sunak is doing. The Conservatives’ electoral prospects are dire. Campaigning on small boats has not worked (for reasons explained well in a Twitter thread starting here). And so Sunak seems to be trying another electorally-motivated gambit, inspired partly by the outcome in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in the summer, which now could end up being seen as the most consequential byelection of modern times.

Last night we were reporting that Sunak was due to give details in a speech on Friday. Now there are suggestions it will be brought forward, with Chris Mason, the BBC’s political editor, saying this morning it could even happen today.

So far, reaction has been intense – but largely predictable.

In favour: Rightwing Conservative MPs who have always been sceptical about net zero policies, and the Tory papers. Here is the Daily Mail splash (which is quite similar to the one it ran on the day after Liz Truss’s mini-budget).

Against: Green-leaning Tory MPs, opposition parties (although Labour is not saying it will reverse anything Sunak announces), environmentalists (in the UK and abroad), and the car industry.

We have just had a statement from Lisa Brankin, the chair of Ford UK, saying that if, as reported, Sunak abandons the plan to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars in the UK from 2030, that would undermine the investment Ford has been making in the British car industry. She said:

This is the biggest industry transformation in over a century and the UK 2030 target is a vital catalyst to accelerate Ford into a cleaner future. Our business needs three things from the UK government: ambition, commitment and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three. We need the policy focus trained on bolstering the EV [electric vehicle] market in the short term and supporting consumers while headwinds are strong: infrastructure remains immature, tariffs loom and cost-of- living is high.

Sam Coates from Sky has the full quote.

The Commons is not sitting today, and so Sunak will not face questions from MPs. There is not much in the political diary, but I will be focusing on this issue most of the day.

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