Amber Rudd needs to protect green initiatives from cuts

Climate Change Secretary's leadership abroad is at odds with Government’s poor record on environmental matters at home

Amber Rudd, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary (Getty Images)

After a euphoric visit to Paris, it was back to earth for the Energy and Climate Change Secretary Amber Rudd. Ms Rudd deserves credit for helping to steer the global climate‑change deal through, chairing meetings that ran into the early hours of the morning.

But her leadership abroad is rather at odds with the Government’s increasingly poor record on environmental matters at home, something the Commons Energy and Climate Change select committee pressed home yesterday in a combative hearing.

It is all very well to set ambitious global targets. But the UK is set to run over its own carbon budget for the mid-2020s and will need greener policies to meet the independent Committee on Climate Change’s proposed fifth carbon budget, which covers the period from 2028 to 2032.

If the post-Paris rhetoric is not matched by action here, these targets – and the UK’s claim to responsible climate management – will fall by the wayside.

The odds do not look good. MPs on the select committee’s panel was caustic about the Chancellor’s decision to scrap £1bn of funding for carbon capture and storage technology, which removes CO2 from the atmosphere. Many condemned the recent proposed withdrawal of subsidies for solar energy, a decision that has crippled the fledgling industry. Ms Rudd offered no convincing defence in either regard.

It appears the Chancellor has calculated that, as the environment falls low on the list of voter priorities, measures to combat climate change can be squeezed without consequence. This is short-term thinking. The pace of proposed cuts has scared off investment in British industry, and Ms Rudd, if she is to go down as anything more than a puppet of Mr Osborne, must prevent the Chancellor from stripping 90 per cent from solar subsides at such short notice. Paris demands that U-turn, at the very least.