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Rachel Reeves aims to be ‘first green chancellor’ as she announces party’s biggest spending pledge to date



Labour would invest £28bn a year in climate measures to protect Britain from disaster, Rachel Reeves has announced in by far the party’s biggest spending pledge to date.

The amount would quadruple the government’s current capital investment, and Labour said it would hope to attract a matching sum of private investment in green technologies. In total, the party will commit to spending £224bn on climate measures over the next eight years.

Reeves, the shadow chancellor who has stressed the party’s commitment to fiscal responsibility, told Labour’s conference in Brighton she would be “the first green chancellor” and that the costs of climate change would be greater if the government did not invest now.

The party is pledging an additional £28bn of green capital investment a year until 2030 – equivalent to more than half the current defence budget. Under Labour, Reeves said, there would “no dither, no delay” in tackling the crisis.

Targets for spending would include gigafactories to build batteries for electric vehicles, the hydrogen industry, offshore wind turbines manufactured in Britain and more everyday infrastructure such as home insulation, cycle paths, tree planting and flood defences.

Labour said the public spending was justified to prevent costs spiralling further, quoting the Office for Budget Responsibility’s 2021 fiscal risks report, which said delaying significant investment by a decade could double the costs of a green transition.

Reeves and the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, will hope the policy provides a definitive answer for swathes of the membership who feel the party has been insufficiently bold in tackling the climate crisis. On Sunday, Starmer was chased by Labour activists from the campaign group Green New Deal Rising, calling for £85bn of infrastructure investment to create green jobs.

“Value for money means knowing when and where not to spend,” Reeves told the conference hall. “But it also means knowing when and where to invest – to prevent far greater costs further down the line.

“There is no better example of this than in the case of climate breakdown. As chancellor I will not shirk our responsibility to future generations and to workers and businesses in Britain … We will provide certainty and show leadership in this decisive decade. I will be a responsible chancellor. I will be Britain’s first green chancellor.”

Rachel Reeves waters down Labour £28bn green projects pledge



Labour has rowed back on its pledge to invest £28bn a year in green industries if it wins power, saying it needs to be "responsible" with the public finances.

In 2021 Labour promised to spend £28bn a year until 2030 on green projects, funded by borrowing.

Instead shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said she would now ramp up investment over time from a 2024 election win, reaching £28bn a year after 2027.

She told the BBC it was important not to be "reckless" with spending.

Speaking to Radio 4's Today programme, Ms Reeves said the Tories had "crashed the economy", adding that after prices and interest rates increased "financial stability has to come first".

"The truth is I didn't foresee what the Conservatives would do to our economy," Ms Reeves said.

"We will get to the investment that is needed. But we've got to do that in a responsible way."

However, pressed on how much investment there would be in the first year of a Labour government, Ms Reeves would not commit to a figure, arguing the economic backdrop would not be clear until closer to the time.

Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands said Labour's main economic policy was "in tatters" after they realised "it would lead to disaster".

"It doesn't matter if they try and pretend otherwise, Labour's plan remains to stick £28bn of borrowing on the government credit card which will lead to higher inflation and higher interest rates," he said.

The SNP's Westminster leader Stephen Flynn said the move was "the latest in a long line of broken promises" from Labour, which "could have very real and damaging consequences for Scotland's green energy potential".

Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay said Labour had offered a policy which "does not go far enough" and then "row[ing] back at the first sign of any difficulty".

Labour ditches £28bn green investment pledge



Labour is ditching its policy of spending £28bn a year on its green investment plan in a major U-turn.

An official announcement will be made on Thursday.

The plan to spend £28bn a year on green energy projects, like offshore wind farms and developing electric vehicles, was first announced by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in September 2021.

That pledge was watered down last June, with the £28bn target adjusted so that a Labour government would meet it about halfway through its first term rather than in its first year.

At the time Ms Reeves said the party needed to be "responsible" with the public finances, given the poor economic backdrop and rising cost of borrowing.

Since then there have been growing questions about whether the policy could be scaled back further.

The move was criticised by left-wing campaign group Momentum and Unite, Labour's biggest union backer.

"This latest Starmer U-turn represents yet another capitulation to right-wing interests," a spokesperson said.

"Sadly, there is a huge gap emerging between the scale of the economic and environmental crises facing us, and the solutions being offered by a Labour leadership afraid of its own shadow."

Unite leader Sharon Graham said: "The Labour movement has to stand up to the Conservatives' false accusations of fiscal irresponsibility.

"There is a catastrophic crisis of investment in Britain's economic infrastructure."

Carla Denyer, co-leader of the Green Party, said: "This is a massive backward step - for the climate, for the economy and for good quality jobs.

"Both the security of our planet for future generations and the UK's future prosperity is dependent on greening our economy and that requires large scale investment."

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott said: "This is a serious moment which confirms Labour have no plan for the UK, creating uncertainty for business and our economy.

"On the day that Labour are finalising their manifesto, Keir Starmer is torpedoing what he has claimed to be his central economic policy purely for short-term campaigning reasons."

Tories launch ‘Where’s Ed Miliband?’ website after green pledge U-turn



The Tories have accused Ed Miliband of going into hiding after Labour ditched his flagship £28 billion green spending plan.

‌Conservative Central Office launched a “Where’s Ed?” website with a ticker claiming that Mr Miliband, the shadow climate secretary, was last seen 141 days ago.

On Thursday, Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, announced that he was abandoning his party’s green spending pledge, blaming the Tories for making it unaffordable.

‌Mr Miliband was reportedly deeply unhappy with the U-turn and argued against it at a meeting with the leadership on Tuesday, only to be overruled. His allies have insisted he fully backs the decision and is not dodging scrutiny.

‌The Tory claim that he has not been seen for 141 days relates to his last appearance in the broadcast media, which was on Sept 21.

Mr Miliband has backed the decision to drop the £28 billion plan in writing, though he has not so far appeared in public since the move to do so was announced.‌ In a written statement, he said Labour still had “a world-leading agenda on climate and energy”.

‌He then posted a series of tweets in which he blamed “the Conservatives’ economic mismanagement and their scorched earth policy” for the U-turn.

Sir Keir insisted on Thursday afternoon that the shadow climate secretary would be appearing in public on Friday and that he backed the decision, saying: “Ed is fully signed up to this. We’ve talked it through and everybody’s signed up to this plan.

“And you’ll all be pleased to know that all three of us will be on airwaves near you in the next 24 hours. So Ed will be out, Rachel [Reeves] will be out, I will be out. You’ll see all of our smiling faces. And, as you’d expect, that’s the way that we reach decisions.”

‌Mr Miliband did not appear on Friday’s morning broadcast round, with Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, stepping into the breach alongside Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor.