Sunak throws five outrageous net zero pledges on the scrapheap in huge U-turn
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced he’s binning a raft of ridiculous green policies as part of his ‘new approach to reach Net Zero’.
The PM took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to set out five areas he wants to scrap as the Government pushes through a different strategy on Net Zero targets which Mr Sunak said were “unnecessary and heavy-handed”.
Above a graphic showing the policies being ditched, a statement on the Prime Minister’s X account read: “We will never impose unnecessary and heavy-handed measures on you, the British people.
“We will still meet our international commitments and hit Net Zero by 2050.”
Net Zero policies going in the bin:
- Taxes on eating meat
- New taxes to discourage flying
- Sorting your rubbish into seven different bins
- Compulsory car sharing
- Expensive insulation upgrades
READ MORE… Sunak hits back at Tory rebels in net zero row and outlines green plans
In a speech from Downing Street, the Prime Minister said on Wednesday he would put back a ban on new fossil fuel cars by five years in a major U-turn among a raft of measures.
And he confirmed that households would “never” be forced to “rip-out their existing boiler and replace it with a heat pump”.
Mr Sunak insisted the UK was already ahead of allies in reducing emissions and could not impose “unacceptable costs” on British families.
He said: “The risk here to those of us who care about reaching Net Zero, as I do, is simple: if we continue down this path we risk losing the consent of the British people.”
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Mr Sunak insisted he was standing by the legally binding goal of hitting Net Zero by 2050 despite making other changes, including:
- Delaying the ban on new cars and vans running solely on petrol and diesel from 2030 to 2035
- Weakening the plan to phase out gas boilers from 2035 so households that will struggle the most to switch to heat pumps will not have to make the switch
- Putting back the ban on boilers relying on heating oil in off-grid homes from 2026 to 2035
- Scrapping policies to force landlords to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties.
The Prime Minister detailed the plans to the public after putting them to Cabinet ministers in a hastily arranged call in response to a leak of his Net Zero plans.
Speaking from his press briefing room in front of a podium with the words “long-term decisions for a brighter future”, he said previous governments – both Tory and Labour – had sought to get to Net Zero “simply by wishing it”.
He continued: “No-one in Westminster politics has yet had the courage to look people in the eye and explain what’s really involved. That’s wrong, and it changes now.
“It cannot be right for Westminster to impose such significant costs on working people, especially those who are already struggling to make ends meet and to interfere so much in people’s way of life without a properly informed national debate.”
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