The UK government’s advisers have said that Rishi Sunak’s U-turns over net zero have delayed progress on vital infrastructure that is needed for economic growth.
Sir John Armitt, who is the chair of the National Infrastructure Commission (NIC), said that good progress had been made on renewable energy in the past five years, but changes to key policies, including postponing a scheme to boost heat pump takeup, had created uncertainty and delay.
He was quoted as saying that the government could no longer “duck key decisions”, as Britain was falling behind on vital infrastructure, from rail transport and energy to water, flood defences and waste.
In its latest annual review, the NIC found that failure to catch up would stymie economic growth, and imperil climate targets. Since last September, when he watered down key net zero policies, Sunak has repeatedly referred to the need to be “pragmatic” on net zero.
Armitt said: “I can understand the need to seek to be pragmatic, but every time you seek to be pragmatic you take your foot off the gas and you provide an encouragement to people to say: ‘Well, do I really need to do this?’. “The message clearly has to be that this is something we’ve got to do if we believe in our carbon targets.”
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He said that heat pumps in particular, which the NIC found to be the only viable alternative to gas boilers for home heating, must be a top priority. Armitt called for this government, and the next, to act swiftly. “It’s not too late to catch up in many of the areas we’ve highlighted, if the goals are matched with policies of sufficient scale. But the window is closing,” he said.
“Ducking big decisions over the next 12 months will put the major goals of net zero, regional economic growth, and environmental protection in jeopardy,” he warned.
Greater investment was needed in public transport, the NIC found. Uniquely in Europe, the UK’s second and third cities showed lower economic productivity than the national average, largely because of poor transport links, the review found.
The axing of the next phases of the HS2 high-speed rail project left a “critical gap” in rail connectivity between the Midlands and the north, with northern cities likely to “remain poorly served” without further investment.
Given long-term growth in demand “a do-nothing scenario north of the proposed connection of HS2 and the west coast mainline at Handsacre is not sustainable”, the report found.
Story was adapted from the Guardian.
