Sunak’s retreat on net zero is a betrayal – and it won’t win him votes

The Conservative Party – the party of business – has had a bad month. It has failed the offshore wind industry, which was in many ways its own creation; angered most motor car manufacturers; and thrown the construction industry into turmoil. The words of the chairman of Ford will long resonate in judgement. He demanded a government that was “ambitious, committed, and consistent”.

Consistent? Hardly a description of a government that in July said the 2030 date for the end of petrol and diesel cars was “immovable” and in September moved it. Ministers can’t expect industry to invest when they don’t keep their word.

Committed? In the annual contracts for difference, the UK signs up new generating capabilities. Last month, for the first time, there was not a single bid for offshore wind. Grant Shapps, the then secretary of state, had overruled all advice and fixed an impossibly low reference (maximum) price level. That means the UK will miss out on a whole year’s turbine construction and we’ll have to use yet more gas. Consumers will pay the significantly higher price.

Another blow in the cost of living crisis – like the effect of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero sacking the energy efficiency taskforce while not producing any effective energy-saving programmes.

Ambitious? Even for those of us who have not been vocal fans of HS2, the idea of spending £40bn to build a railway that doesn’t go from the centre of London and doesn’t arrive at the centre of Birmingham seems wholly bizarre – even if the journey does save a quarter of an hour. What’s more, junking the link to Manchester would give even more credence to the belief that the Conservatives have no interest in the North of England.

Of course, Rishi Sunak’s electoral position is dire and much of his inheritance toxic. The only bit of good news was his failure to lose the Uxbridge by-election. Unhappily, those 495 votes have distorted his advisers’ judgement and they’ve decided that creating a green gap between a “sensible” Conservative policy and the “extremist” Labour Party will bring electoral dividends.

We’ve been here before. David Cameron’s retreat from “green crap” meant we’ve built a million and a half new homes which aren’t properly insulated, use far too much energy, and which will have to be retrofitted. More generally, it is estimated that Cameron’s slowdown in renewable energy deployment has put £2.5bn on UK energy bills.

The prime minister’s announcement on electric vehicles was wholly unconvincing. No wonder he waited till the House of Commons wasn’t sitting before making it. Questions on the floor of the House would have been devastating. How could he have explained his vaunted commitments to avoid seven waste bins; oppose any taxes on meat; and stop forced car-sharing?

No serious person has ever suggested any of these things. He even emphasised that people would still be able to buy and sell internal combustion cars after 2035 – as if that weren’t true were the target date still 2030. This was simple party political manoeuvring – repeated later in Conservative Party messages to their members – although even they dropped the seven wastebins story as too ridiculous.

All this won’t win votes. Very large numbers of people are not sure how to vote. They don’t like the Conservatives, but they haven’t yet jumped ship. These are the voters who won’t be impressed that, in this last year, Britain has fallen from being the world leader on climate change to a questionable and questioned follower. They know that this bodes ill for their future.

The huge strides that the US has made under President Biden, the big advances in the rest of Europe, the vast expansion of renewables in China, and the commitments of Japan and South Korea show the way the world is moving – in part because of Britain’s previous leadership. This is no time to be falling behind if we want investment, jobs and contracts.

When the government cites its success in getting inward investment it is an achievement based on its past policies and its earlier successes. The prime minister’s announcements on climate have put that into reverse and caused consternation among investors who now have plenty of other more dependable places to take their money.

Sunak seems not properly to have valued the one jewel in his tarnished inheritance. Britain has punched well above its weight on climate. It has been the driving force behind the world’s response to this existential threat. Our leadership was clearly shown in Cop26 in Glasgow and the world looked to us to lead on the issue of oil exploration and exploitation.

The International Energy Agency made it quite clear that we should not open up new oil fields. The world is already producing all it needs if we are to keep to 1.5C increase in global temperature. By 2030 it will be awash with oil supplies far beyond what is still wanted.

The emergency increase in North Sea gas production because of Vladimir Putin’s war was necessary, but vastly to increase our oil production into the 2030s is wholly counterproductive. Rosebank is only the beginning of an enterprise which cancels any chance of us leading developing countries to move straight to renewables without the dirty emitting stage of gas and oil.

Big oil is frantically and expensively encouraging them to develop oil and gas fields. Britain had a real chance to counter this. Our action in the North Sea makes that leadership impossible.

All this retreat on climate change is a betrayal of a great Conservative inheritance. Margaret Thatcher – in whose government I served as a minister – was the first major world leader to warn about global warming, going to Rio and the United Nations to demand action. Conservatives in opposition wrote the Climate Change Bill and engaged all other parties to make it a cross-party measure introduced by a Labour government.

A Conservative prime minister, Theresa May, committed us to net zero and her successor, Boris Johnson, to world leading commitments for 2030 and 2035 in his hosting of the successful Cop26 in Glasgow.

Britain should live up to this inheritance and profit from the jobs, investment, and exports that will flow from it. That is the place in which the party of business should be.

John Gummer, Lord Deben, served as Conservative Party chairman under Margaret Thatcher and as environment secretary in John Major’s government