Labour has this afternoon urged the government to tell the
truth about its climate record.
This morning at Prime Minister’s Questions, Cabinet Office
Minister denied that the government
was “off track” to meeting its climate targets.
This is despite official figures – and the government’s own
independent climate watchdog, the Committee on Climate Change –
showing that the UK will not meet the fourth and fifth carbon
budgets under current government policy.
, Labour’s Shadow
Energy Secretary, raised a point of order in the House of Commons
to request that the record be corrected.
MP, Labour’s Shadow
Energy Secretary, said the following:
“The Minister for the Cabinet Office may have
misled the House when he said, in responding to a question about
the UK’s carbon budgets, “we are not off track to meeting those
targets at all.”
“The Government’s official advisers on climate change, the
Committee on Climate Change, reported in 2018 that the UK is off
track to meeting its fourth and fifth carbon budgets.
“Official statistics published by BEIS in April 2019 showed that
the UK is off track to meeting these targets by an even wider
margin.
“It is a matter of established fact that the UK is off track to
meeting its targets.
“Can you advise how we can correct the record?”
Ends
Notes to editors
- At Prime Minister’s
Questions, denied that the government
was not off track to meeting its carbon reduction targets.
[Excerpt from and exchange at PMQs. Italics
added.]
RLB: Figures released in April show that the UK is set to
miss its own carbon budgets by an ever widening margin. Would the
Right Honourable Gentleman like to explain why the Government is
off track to meeting its own targets?
DL: Mr Speaker, we’re not off track to meeting
those targets at all.
- The Committee on Climate Change – the
arms-length government body that advises on carbon reduction
targets – has warned that the UK is set to miss legally-binding
carbon reduction targets under the fourth and fifth carbon
budgets:
- Furthermore, figures released by the
government in April show that the gap between our actual
emissions reduction performance and what is needed to meet these
carbon budgets is actually widening:
