Tackling climate change ‘no excuse’ for unfair bills, says Miliband

Former opposition leader Ed Miliband said today that energy companies should not use climate change as an excuse to inflate consumer prices.

The former Labour leader appeared on the Today show on Monday morning saying that climate change is “the biggest challenge to politics” because it cannot be addressed as part of a five year parliamentary cycle and needs a long term approach.

But Miliband came under fire for suggesting ‘shorter-termism’ should be avoided in climate policy after his party backed an eighteen month price freeze for energy companies which could hinder company investment in low carbon technologies needed to decabonise the system.

Miliband argued that climate change should not be tackled “at the expense of fairness”.

“Both of them have to go together and in fact lots of the evidence is that it’s the poorest people in the world, and indeed in Britain, who will suffer most if we don’t deal with these issues,” he said.

“I always said when I was climate change secretary that climate change cannot become an excuse for energy companies to make huge profits… and that’s the point I made as leader of the Labour party. And I actually think that events have rather vindicated me because as I understand it the government is now looking at taking action on this issue,” he said.

Miliband wrote for the Guardian newspaper saying that the longer the UK takes to comply with its decarbonisation target the earlier it will need to meet the ‘zero emissions’ mark, and has urged a 100 per cent clean energy supply.

“The last Labour government introduced the Climate Change Act, with all-party support for an 80 per cent reduction in emissions by 2050 – the first country in the world to legislate for such deep, long-term cuts,” he said.

“It is essential we remain on track for this goal, including making the right decisions about the period to 2030 which will face the government in the coming months,” he added.