00:00What about Keir Starmer's ability to reset net zero targets?
00:06He laid out his plans yesterday.
00:08Now, as the shadow minister of all of this, this comes under your responsibility,
00:12what do you think about what's happening and what direction we're heading in?
00:17Well, frankly, I mean, he hasn't reset the party or the government's position on net zero.
00:22They remain rigid in their belief that net zero by 2050 isn't just achievable,
00:26but in the national interest, that is wrongheaded.
00:30Which is why Kemi Bidnik just two weeks ago announced that we were ditching our net zero by 2050 commitment
00:35because it is making this country poor, it's driving away investment, and it's killing our heavy industry.
00:40And I think if he was to take a radical approach to the tariffs being imposed by the US,
00:44he might want to think again about sticking to this plan, which is doing such damage to the British economy,
00:50at the same time as the rest of the world is not keeping up.
00:53How do you keep up? How do you do? What would you do?
00:56Well, as I said, we've got rid of our net zero by 2050 commitment,
01:02and as a result of that, we are now looking at what the individual policies on energy and the environment will be,
01:08should we be lucky enough to get back into government.
01:10But what we cannot have is a continued situation which we have right now,
01:14where heavy industry, manufacturing, be that ceramics, be that automotives, be that a whole host steel, for example,
01:20are leaving the United Kingdom because of carbon taxes and rigid arbitrary targets which they are expected to meet,
01:27with no discernible positive impact for the UK or the UK economy.
01:30We're seeing unemployment in Scotland as a result of their position in oil and gas,
01:34and we're going to be seeing more of that across the country as a result of these wrong-headed policies.
01:38So a radical position for the government to take to combat these tariffs might be to look again at whether net zero by 2050 is in the national interest.
01:45Yeah, but, you know, you may say, well, we can't afford to do it.
01:49There'll be a lot of people screaming at you, screaming at this screen this morning and saying,
01:53we cannot afford not to do it.
01:58Well, look, we're not saying we don't believe in decarbonisation,
02:01or that we should do what we can to pass the world on in a better place than in which we found it.
02:06But we just think setting an arbitrary target, a date that was set in legislation with no discussion,
02:11for no reason other than we needed to have a date,
02:13is not the best way to proceed when we're talking about something of this magnitude.
02:17We're very proud of our record on decarbonisation.
02:20We cut our carbon emissions faster than any other G7 nation by half in the period in which it is carried.
02:26So we built the first to fifth largest offshore wind farms in the world.
02:29But we did that while still investing in the UK economy and indeed growing the economy.
02:33So it can be done.
02:35But the direction of travel from this government seems to be net zero by 2050 at the expense of everything else.
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