Labour has slashed its original £28bn green borrowing plan by 80%, blaming Liz Truss, and unveiled a new tax raid on oil and gas giants to bankroll the Net Zero drive. The Telegraph has more.
Sir Keir Starmer announced that his flagship clean energy policy has been downgraded to just £4.7bn a year in the biggest about-turn of his leadership.
Speaking to reporters in Parliament he blamed the Tories for “maxing out the credit card” and insisted that the original pledge was no longer affordable.
Under the new slimmed down blueprint public funding for a major home insulation drive has been reduced from a planned £6bn a year to just £1.2bn.
Meanwhile the budget for Great British Energy, a publicly owned energy company that Labour plans to set up, will be handed £1.7bn a year of taxpayers’ cash.
Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, said it will be financed by hiking tax on energy producers’ profits from 75% to 78%, raising £2.2bn a year.
Starmer told reporters:
We will not reach the £28bn – the £28bn, therefore, is stood down and we focus on the outcomes.
We want to get to that place because at the moment all you ever asked about is the size of the cheque and we want to have an argument about the outcomes, which is what matters.
We announced the £28bn two and a half years or so ago, when interest rates were very, very low. Since then Liz Truss crashed the economy and other damage has been done. [Interest rates] are now very, very high – interest on Government debt is already tens of billions of pounds a year.
Liz Truss crashed the economy? Her mini-budget was a mere blip compared to the ruinously expensive lockdown and Net Zero policies – which Labour enthusiastically supports – that have piled on the debt and crippled the economy with long-term underlying costs and harms. But hey, let’s blame the woman who was Prime Minister for 49 days.