UK net zero will NOT save the world. It is the worst kind of national self-harm - Sir John Redwood
Sir John Redwood was Conservative MP for Wokingham in Berkshire from 1987 to 2024
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Members of UK industrial Unions wanting to keep their jobs and get decent pay should be angry with this Labour Government.
Everything they do seems designed to speed up industrial closures and job losses in traditional industries. They inherited some anti-industry policies from the previous government and set about making them a lot worse.
Where the last government saw sense and started to improve policy, this Government has gone back to anti-industry measures.
The last government was planning to accelerate the rundown of our own oil and gas industry, by banning new exploration, making it difficult for new projects to exploit proven reserves, and by imposing a windfall tax to put companies off the riskier prospects.
Under Rishi Sunak and Claire Couthino they realised the damage this would do, forcing us to use much more CO2-intensive liquid gas imports.
They changed policy, allowing new licensing rounds and encouraging new developments. Labour has now killed it, stopping new exploration, delaying new projects and increasing a high tax to a penal one.
Labour inherited steel industry proposals to close the remaining UK blast furnaces and only after a period of more reliance on imports to put in some steel recycling.
It was a bad plan forced on the industry by sky-high UK industrial energy prices. How can you defend the country in times of danger if you cannot make your own high-grade steel?
No other leading country is doing this. Labour was rightly critical of the possible job losses when Conservative Ministers were considering the idea, only to adopt it and speed it through once in office.
They decided to sacrifice a critical industry on the altar of national carbon accounts. The high carbon price, emissions trading, high energy prices and high taxes killed the industry.
World CO2 will go up as others burn coal in blast furnaces and use more marine diesel to send steel to the UK. We will be less secure and less well-off.
The last government signed up to some unrealistic targets for switching the UK car industry from making petrol and diesel to making battery cars.
It tried very hard to help sell more battery cars. It offered big subsidies to set up battery-making factories and production lines for new electric vehicles.
It came to realise the timetables laid down were too tight and delayed by five years the transition. It failed to slow the fines-strewn pathway of annual targets.
This government should have immediately relaxed annual targets in line with the five-year delay. Instead, they brought the target forward to ban all petrol and diesel to a totally unrealistic 2030.
They now face the big shrink of our auto industry. Vauxhall began the rush for the exit with the closure of Luton.
Britishvolt - the promised large gigantic factory to make batteries - passed into administration, accepting the reality that China has cornered the market in the materials for battery fabrication, and in production.
Most electric Minis will be built in China, not Oxford. Our remaining large plants are in urgent need of relief from fines based on consumer refusal to go electric.
The auto industry is the most visible example of how fines and net zero policies hit the UK and greatly assisted China. China is dominant in affordable battery cars and car battery manufacture.
The big investments in wind and solar farms also depend heavily on Chinese exports of the equipment. Green investment does create jobs, but mainly in China.
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Other high energy using industries are being similarly crippled by policy. Grangemouth, one of our few remaining large refineries, is closing.
We will be importing more oil products. Glass, ceramics, paper, building materials and other big energy users are increasingly imported as we lose the ability to make them here.
The Business and Industry Secretary says deindustrialisation is not part of his plan for decarbonisation. He should think again.
The government policy is to place decarbonisation above jobs and investment here. Indeed deindustrialisation is the main driver of UK progress to net zero.
The rest of the world produces our CO2 for us as it makes things for us, so we pretend it does not exist.
More imports means more CO2, fewer UK jobs, less UK tax revenue, less UK income.
This is not a great environmental policy to save the world. It is the worst kind of national self harm to satisfy a dangerous carbon accounting target.
Labour used to stand up for working people in factories. Will the Unions talk some sense into Ministers before more factories close and more oil and petrochemical activity is shut down to be replaced by imports?
