Thank you for contacting me about climate change.
Following the recent Queen's Speech, the Government is introducing an Environment Bill to tackle the biggest environmental priorities of our time and protect our natural environment for generations to come.
This landmark bill will strengthen Britain’s position as a world leader on air quality, environmental biodiversity and plastics reduction, with new measures and legally binding targets that will lead a green transformation, help tackle climate change and ensure governments are accountable, both now and in the future. Clearly, it will take some time for this to pass into legislation, but I do believe this country has a record we can be proud of on tackling climate change, reducing emissions by a quarter since coming to office in 2010 and boosting renewables to a record high.
At the last Conservative Party Conference, we announced some of the measures that will help us to meet our legally binding target of Net Zero emissions by 2050. We will invest in new clean technologies such as fusion, massively expand our electric vehicle manufacturing base and ensure new homes meet world-leading energy efficiency standards.
However, we have to be realistic about the changes we will all need to make; for instance, unions such as the GMB, warn that targeting Net Zero by 2030 is ‘utterly unachievable’ and warned that it would threaten jobs and whole communities, so there is a balance to be struck.