Treasury gives first hints of climate commitment and nuclear position
Published 8 January 2020
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Tackling climate change will be a “central priority” of March’s upcoming Budget, a Treasury minister has told the House of Commons.
Exchequer secretary Simon Clarke was quizzed during Treasury question time in the House of Commons yesterday (7 January) on whether this year’s set-piece tax and spending announcement, which will take place on 11 March, will be a “Budget for the climate emergency”.
Responding to a question by ex-energy and climate change secretary of state Sir Ed Davey, Clarke said: “We are clear that this is a central priority for the Budget in March.”
And he revealed that prime minister Boris Johnson gave a presentation on the COP 26 summit, which the UK is hosting in Glasgow later this year, at yesterday’s first meeting of the Cabinet following the Christmas break.
Describing the UN climate change summit as the “centrepiece” of the government’s work on climate this year, Clarke said the UK has “maximum ambition” regarding climate change.
“We are committed to the Paris agreement and delivering on it in full, and by committing to net zero we have led the world in this area.”
Clarke also provided MPs with the government’s first post-election statement of support for the role of nuclear in the energy mix.
Responding to a call by Scottish Nationalist Party MP Alan Brown to scrap subsidies for nuclear power and reinvest them in onshore wind, he said: “We clearly need a diverse energy mix to help to deliver on that, and nuclear has a clear role to play within that settlement. We are very clear that we obviously monitor all projects to make sure they deliver maximum value for money, but we do need some baseload power.”
Clarke, who pressed ex-prime minister Theresa May to adopt the net-zero target when he was a backbench MP in the last parliament, also dismissed a call by Labour for the government to adopt its Green New Deal strategy.
“The electorate obviously gave their verdict on the relative credibility of our manifesto,” he said.
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