Tag: Ed Miliband

The comments made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Business Secretary, on 12 November 2021.

It’s clear that the aim of this summit to keep 1.5 alive is in mortal peril.

There has been some welcome progress on strengthening the pathway out of Glasgow in the new draft. But there is still too much ambiguity about the responsibility of all countries to align their targets with 1.5 degrees and important language on keeping fossil fuels in the ground has been watered down.

It is absolutely vital that there is no backsliding, no fudges, and no bending over backwards for the big emitters over the next crucial hours. It is also imperative that the developed world finally delivers the long-promised finance and support for developing countries.

The Government has a vital role to play in fighting for ambition, strength and clarity in the last stages of this summit.

The speech made by Ed Miliband, the Labour MP for Doncaster North, in the House of Commons on 19 October 2021.

I thank the Minister for his statement, and send my warmest congratulations—as I have already done directly—to the Secretary of State on the birth of his new baby.

Let me start by saying that it is good that tackling the climate crisis is a shared national objective across the House, and that we want the Government to succeed at COP26 in just ten days’ time. However, there are two central questions about the strategy that has been published today: does it finally close the yawning gap between Government promises and delivery, and will it make the public investment which is essential to ensure that the green transition is fair and creates jobs? I am afraid that the answer to both questions, despite what the Minister said, is no. The plan falls short on delivery, and while there is modest short-term investment, there is nothing like the commitment that we believe is required—and we know why. When asked at the weekend about the Treasury’s approach to these issues, a source from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said:

“They are not climate change deniers but they are emphasising the short-term risks, rather than long-term needs”.

The Chancellor’s fingerprints are all over these documents, and not in a good way.

We have waited months for the heat and buildings strategy, but it is a massive let-down. We are in the midst of an energy price crisis caused by a decade of inaction. Emissions from buildings are higher than they were in 2015. The biggest single programme that could make a difference is a 10-year house-by-house, street-by-street retrofit plan to cut bills and emissions and ensure energy security. There are 19 million homes below EPC band C, but according to the best estimates of today’s proposals, they will help just a tiny fraction of that number. Indeed, there is not even a replacement for the ill-fated green homes grant for homeowners. Can the Minister explain where the long-term retrofit plan is? Did BEIS argue for it and get turned down by the Treasury, or did he not make the case?

According to the Government’s own target, we need 600,000 homes a year to be installing heat pumps by 2028, but the Government are funding just 30,000 a year, helping just one in 250 households on the gas grid. Why does the Minister’s plan on heat pumps fall so far short of what is required? As for transport, we agree with the transition to electric cars—and I support and welcome the zero emissions mandate—but we need to make it fair to consumers. We should at the very least have had long-term zero-interest loans to cut the costs of purchasing electric cars. What is the plan to make them accessible to all, and not just the richest? Will the Minister tell us that in his reply? On nuclear, I was surprised, given the advance publicity, that the word did not even cross the Minister’s lips. We have seen a decade of inaction and delay on this issue, so can he tell us why there is still no decision on new nuclear?

The failure to invest affects not just whether this transition is fair for consumers but workers in existing industries. Take steel: it will cost £6 billion for the steel industry to get to net zero over the next 15 years. If we want a steel industry—as we do across the House—we will need to share the costs with the private sector. However, there is nothing for steel in this document, and a £250 million clean steel fund some way down the road will not cut it. Can he give us his estimates of the needs of the steel industry and how he thinks they can be met?

The same is true of investing in new industries such as hydrogen. There is a global race in these areas and I am afraid that the UK is not powering ahead but falling behind. Germany is offering €9 billion for a new hydrogen strategy; the UK is offering £240 million, and we are putting off decisions until later in the decade. We see the same pattern across the board, including on land use, industry and transport, and because of this failure to invest, there remains a chasm between promises and delivery.

Finally, it was noticeable that the Minister did not say that the plan would meet the target for the 2035 sixth carbon budget, but surely that is a basic prerequisite of the strategy to 2050. At less than halfway to net zero, do the policies in this document meet the target, or fall short of it? Despite hundreds of pages of plans, strategies and hot air, there is still a chasm between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality? My fear is that the plan will not deliver the fair, prosperous transition that we need and that is equal to the scale of the emergency we face.

The comments made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Business Secretary, on 19 October 2021.

This is a plan torpedoed by the Treasury. Once again, it has failed to recognise that the prudent, responsible choice is to sufficiently invest in a green transition.

Homeowners are left to face the costs of insulation on their own, industries like steel and hydrogen are left hobbled in the global race without the support they need, and the government cannot even confirm they will meet their climate target for 2035.

While Labour has a bold climate investment pledge of £28 billion extra each and every year to 2030, the government offers a tiny fraction of that.

This does not meet our ambitions for British industries to thrive, prosper and lead the world or show the government leadership required to tackle climate breakdown and bring the benefits of a green transition to Britain.

The comments made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Business Secretary, on 5 October 2021.

Another day, another distant target from government not backed by a plan.

There is a yawning chasm between this government’s promises on climate and their failure to deliver them. Pledges not supported by policy or investment is greenwashing, plain and simple.

Unlike the Conservatives, Labour is committed to scaling up our zero carbon energy supply and has pledged to invest at scale to tackle the climate crisis. Meanwhile, climate action barely featured in Rishi Sunak’s conference speech and he appears deeply uncommitted to this agenda.

It is the Government’s failure on zero carbon energy that has left our country so reliant on the international gas market and vulnerable to soaring gas prices. The Conservatives just cannot be trusted on climate or tackling the cost of living crisis.

The speech made by Ed Miliband, the Shadow Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary, in Brighton on 26 September 2021.

Friends it’s great to be back. Last time I spoke to you I was leader of our party.

Remember David Cameron’s warning. “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice – stability and strong Government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.” Didn’t work out so well for him did it?

Or more to the point for the country. Instability? Weak government? Chaos? Friends, I didn’t get everything right.

But I’ll tell you one thing: I’d have done a damn sight better than this miserable shower. I want to thank you, party members, for having kept me going.

There is a lesson in all this. We don’t give up. And we don’t give in.

We stay and we fight. Not for our own sake but for the big causes that brought us into politics.

That’s why I’m still here when my past opponents – Cameron, Clegg, Osborne – are all gone.

Today I want to talk to you about the biggest cause of all, the cause I came back to fight.

The climate crisis where the future threat of yesterday is the devastating reality of today.

We have seen it all too clearly this summer around the world and this is just a foretaste of what is to come if we don’t act.

As David Attenborough has said, the decisions we make in the next few years will “profoundly affect the next few thousand years.” So, to our generation, is given a unique responsibility that we cannot shirk.

We are at five minutes to midnight. We cannot deny the crisis we confront. There is still time to act but only just.

That is why the stakes are so high. That is why we need a Labour government. And I am here to tell you not just that we must confront the climate crisis but that as we do we can and must confront the other great cause of our time.

The scar of inequality. The glaring gaps in wealth and income between the richest and everyone else.

An economy based on low pay and insecurity, which simply does not have enough of the good jobs at good wages that the British people have a right to expect.

This crisis is a deep, moral shame on our country. As we respond to the climate crisis with all the transformation that entails, we have a fateful choice to make:

We could try and put a green coat of paint on an unfair, unequal, unjust Britain. Or we can make a different choice and see the opportunity in front of us to change our economy and society.

For a green Britain where there is an irreversible shift of income, power and wealth to working people. A green Britain where we deliver good secure, unionised jobs for people across our country. A green Britain where there is clean air and green spaces for everyone everywhere in our country. A green Britain where there are warm affordable homes for all, wherever they live and where we end fuel poverty. A green Britain where public and alternative models of ownership play their proper role in making the transition affordable, secure and fair.

I know what choice we need to make. Britain needs a fairer economy. Britain needs a green industrial revolution. Britain needs a green new deal. This is the cause I came back to fight for.

Now I get that some people think it can’t be done. Some say that if we put the climate crisis front and centre of our agenda that we will not solve and may deepen the wounds of economic and social injustice.

Don’t go too fast they say. They worry that families already struggling to pay their heating bills will struggle even more.

About workers in oil and gas. Let me say to those people, including in this hall, I get your worries. I grew up in the 1980s.

I am an MP in Doncaster. A former mining constituency.

We remember what the Tories did. I know our responsibility – this climate transition must leave no worker, no family, no community behind.

If we fail that test we won’t take you or the British people with us and we won’t deserve to do so. I tell this conference – our party cannot, will not, must not shirk the fight for economic justice.

Now at the same time as those saying we are going too fast, there are others who worry that no government, no political party is doing enough to tackle this climate threat, including in this hall. They say we are going too slowly.

They believe we are on course to leave the most awful legacy in human history and they are right.

If we do not act on climate, it won’t be the richest or the most powerful who suffer it will be the poorest and most vulnerable, here and around the world.

I say to them: our party cannot, will not, must not shirk the fight for climate justice.

This then is our historic responsibility. To be the party of green and red together. To be the party of climate and economic justice together.

Let me tell you, if we don’t do it nobody else will. Can the Tories do it? No way.

Friends, the Tories are not climate deniers, they are something even more dangerous. They talk green but fail to act. They refuse to rise to the scale of the emergency and they will not make the investments we need.

They are climate ditherers. They are climate pretenders. They are climate delayers.

When it comes to COP26 in Glasgow in November, the most important climate conference ever held, Boris Johnson is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. That isn’t just bad for the planet, it costs the British people.

Gas prices are surging here not because we have done too much to go green but because we haven’t done enough. That’s why we are so vulnerable to the price instability of the international gas market.

The Tory cuts to home insulation means greater energy use, it costs the planet and it costs the British people. The Tory moratorium on onshore wind, cuts to solar subsidies and failure to move forward on nuclear costs the planet and it costs the British people. The Tory failure to have a green recovery and invest in the industries of the future costs the planet and it costs the British people.

Let’s be clear friends, this energy price crisis is a disaster made in Downing Street, a disaster caused by a decade of Tory climate inaction. Of course they are making the cost of living crisis far worse by cutting Universal credit.

If they really cared about the cost of living crisis, if they really cared about the fuel poor, it’s time to cancel the cut in universal credit that takes place in just five days’ time.

Let’s lay to rest the idea that these Tories can somehow manage a just or fair green transition. A couple of months back Boris Johnson was challenged on Tory credentials on climate change.

He joked that Mrs Thatcher closed the pits and gave us a head start. This guy laughing about people losing their jobs, communities losing their lifeblood, generations losing hope. How dare he?

How dare this arrogant, contemptuous, cruel, shameless, duplicitous, out of touch charlatan, laugh about the devastation of coalfield communities.

It tells you so much about who he really is, who they really are. I say this: our country desperately needs the decency, integrity and values of Keir Starmer over the double-dealing, duplicity and dishonesty of Boris Johnson.

They fail on climate and they fail on fairness and all the while we lose the most precious gift of all: time. That is why it falls to us to seize the moment and tackle the crisis in this decisive decade

So let me tell you what we would do. Look at what Joe Biden is doing in the United States with a ten-year plan to invest at scale in the green transition. That’s what we need to do here.

The most unaffordable, irresponsible, reckless choice is not to invest. It makes sense to invest now because we relieve the burden we place on future generations. It makes sense to invest now because not acting will cost more than acting. It makes sense to invest now because it will enable us to create wealth, jobs and lead the world in the industries of the future.

Take steel – a massive test of whether we get the green transition right. Steel is a vital strategic industry for our country, crucial for our national security and the foundation of our manufacturing industry. It provides tens of thousands of jobs for our communities.

But here is the challenge. We need to green steel. It’s more than 10 percent of our manufacturing emissions.

The Tories are woefully failing to make our steel industry strong for the future. Their delay, their inaction, is a recipe for throwing tens of thousands of workers on the scrapheap.

Under Labour, we won’t let it happen. If we want a future for steel, we have to invest and we will.

So today I can announce we are making an unprecedented 10-year commitment for the steel industry to go green, investing up to £3 billion, in collaboration with business, over the coming decade.

We will make the steel industry not simply a proud industry of our past and present but a proud industry of our future. No other country is yet showing the same ambition.

That’s what I mean by a green industrial revolution. That’s what I mean by delivering climate justice and economic justice together.

Same with our car industry. Vital to the climate fight, vital to the strength of our economy, and providing tens of thousands of jobs in communities across our country.

The Tories are losing the global race for electric car manufacturing. That’s why a Labour government would help fund the investment in the gigafactories we need.

Not just subsidy but public equity stakes taken by government to ensures a people’s dividend from the green transition. That’s what I mean by delivering climate justice and economic justice together.

The green industrial revolution is about no worker being left behind. We need the skills, expertise, know-how of the people who work in fossil fuel industries for our zero-carbon future.

People say under the Tories the low carbon jobs have not been delivered and they are right. We would change that.

That’s why we would increase the investment in our ports and it’s time our world leading status in offshore wind generation finally led to jobs for workers in the UK.

So, we will raise the requirements for domestic content so we can buy, make and sell British, not the Tory offshoring of jobs in offshore wind. That’s what we mean by delivering climate justice and economic justice together.

Just because a job is in a green industry it doesn’t give a free pass on rights and protections at work. Jobs in our renewable industries should be good jobs at decent wages with strong trade unions.

That is what we mean by delivering climate justice and economic justice together and this is just the start: Climate education in our schools; a net zero and nature test for every policy; climate apprenticeships for our young people.

Working with our brilliant Labour local authorities to push ahead with local Green New Deals. That’s what we mean by delivering climate justice and economic justice together.

Just as business is a crucial partner in making the transition happen, so they must be accountable for playing their part. Many of our leading companies are already ahead of the government in setting ambitious climate targets. But we need the rest to step up.

A Labour government will require every major business to tell us their carbon footprint and how it is consistent with net zero. That’s what we mean by delivering climate justice and economic justice together.

Under a Labour government, every department will be a climate department. Every department delivering climate justice and economic justice together.

There is a lesson for us in the climate crisis. Tinkering around the edges will not answer the defining challenges of this century. We must match the crises of our time with the scale of our response.

So let us resolve today to be the first country in the world to implement a Green New Deal. A Green industrial revolution.

Good jobs at decent wages. Nurturing and supporting our great businesses. Protecting the planet for future generations. The morally responsible, fiscally responsible choice.

Delivering climate justice and economic justice together. This is the cause I returned to fight for. This is the cause that summons our party. This is the cause of our day, our decade, our generation. This is the cause that is the destiny of our country.

For the sake of ourselves and generations to come, let us fight with everything we have because the whole future far beyond our own time depends upon us.