Labour has confirmed its £28bn green investment pledge has been scrapped in a major U-turn.
The party announced today it could not commit to the previous promise to invest £28bn a year – by the end of the next parliament – on Britain’s green energy transformation, blaming the government for crashing the economy.
Leader Sir Keir Starmer said he did not want to have a “row over the size of a cheque” and blamed the Conservatives for the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s decision to “max out” the country’s credit card.
The pledge had previously been watered down from an annual figure to an ambition.
But the party is still committed to its green transition programme, dubbed the ‘Green Prosperity Plan’, in a bid to convert the UK to clean energy by 2030.
It will be funded by a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants as well as borrowing to invest, which the party says meets its fiscal rules.
Starmer added: “I have changed the Labour Party to put it back in the service of working people.
“Our Green Prosperity Plan is about turning a corner on fourteen years of Conservative decline and investing in Britain’s future.
It is a plan for more jobs, more investment and cheaper bills. It’s a plan to get our country’s future back.”
Labour’s green policies include setting up Great British Energy, a publicly owned energy company based in Scotland, which will be launched with £8.3bn in initial investment.
Further schemes include: investing in clean energy, founding a national wealth fund, crowding in private investment to create British industrial jobs, insulating homes via the warm homes plan, rewiring the planning system and national grid, and aiming to make the UK the green finance capital of the world
Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said: “Labour is ambitious for Britain’s future.
“There is a global race taking place in the jobs and industries of the future, and we are determined to lead it. Labour has a plan to invest and to get Britain’s future back.”
And Ed Miliband, shadow energy secretary, said: “Labour will be fighting the election with a world-leading agenda on climate and energy.
“Every single individual policy already announced [is] now confirmed for the manifesto: Great British Energy, a National Wealth Fund, a Warm Homes Plan, a British Jobs Bonus, a Local Power Plan and no new oil and gas licences as well as our 2030 clean power mission.”
Commenting earlier, Rishi Sunak told journalists: “This is a serious moment. This was the flagship plank of Labour’s economic policy and it now looks like he’s trying to wriggle out of it.”
He added: “I think it demonstrates exactly what I’ve been saying, that he U-turns on major things, he can’t say what he would do differently because he doesn’t have a plan. And if you don’t have a plan, then you can’t deliver change for our country.”