Sarah Ingham is author of The Military Covenant: its impact on civil-military relations in Britain.
Just as “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents”, the British summer isn’t summer without an airport spat over hand luggage. This year’s carry on over carry on concerned Ryanair, a Fuerteventura-Luton flight, and claims of racial profiling.
The mundane reality is that a passenger’s bag was simply too big for the cabin. The airline’s colourfully forthright boss Michael O’Leary (who has surely done more for European integration than all those MEPs and Eurocrats put together) would perhaps advise a peek at the Ryanair website.
Such reluctance to read the small print is widespread. Whenever we buy online most of us blithely tick “I have read and understood the Terms and Conditions” – without doing either.
On which note: how many MPs knew what they were signing up to when they committed the UK to Net Zero by 2050? If they failed to do their homework, it’s unforgiveable but understandable. There was a lot going on.
The Net Zero target might be legal but, increasingly, it lacks legitimacy. Rushed through Parliament four years ago without proper scrutiny, there is scant democratic mandate for it.
Although the 2019 Conservative manifesto stated “We will lead the global fight against climate change by delivering on our world-leading target of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050″, the devil is in the detail. Who voted to get their gas boiler ripped out?
To reach the target, the Government must prioritise Net Zero over other areas of public spending. Last month, the Environmental Audit Committee reminded us that 600,000 heat pumps are expected to be installed by 2028. Are taxpayers subsidising them, at the expense of schools and other vital services?
Net Zero resembles a juggernaut, hurtling out-of-control through Britain’s institutions, fuelled by a mix of hysteria, groupthink and “We’re Here Because We’re Here” resignation. But let’s remember how we got here.
The debates in the House of Commons for the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019 were on 12 June and 24 June 2019. Until then, the previous target was to reduce UK greenhouse gas emissions to 80 per cent (of 1990 levels) by 2050. The Order was to change this to 100 per cent: Net Zero.
As the Order was a Statutory Instrument, any debate was irrelevant; it would have become law anyway.
This target had been recommended by the Climate Change Committee in its report published the previous month. Net Zero: The UK’s Contribution to Stopping Global Warming spelt out the radicalism that was required, including: “Changes in the way we farm and use our land to put much more emphasis on carbon sequestration and biomass production, while shifting away from livestock.”
Had MPs bothered to read the small print?
The target was made legally binding in the time between Theresa May’s resignation on 24 May and the start of Boris Johnson’s premiership on 24 July. From 7 June, the Tory leadership contest was underway.
With her undistinguished tenure of Number Ten, May needed a legacy. Less lame duck than dead-in-the-water, on 12 June the outgoing prime minister announced the Net Zero target – by press release, rather than to Parliament. The Conservative manifesto for the 2017 election had committed to fracking; it had not mentioned Net Zero.
Many of the 27 MPs who spoke during the 90-minute debate on 24 June believed Net Zero was the UK’s chance to give the world a “moral lead”. (As if, by jingo, grateful natives are still yearning for us to set them an example.) Were they saving the planet – or trying to salvage the tattered reputation of the zombie post-referendum Parliament, and of the new Brexit Britain?
Since 2019, taxpayers have been paying the Net Zero piper, but the Climate Change Committee calls the tune, to which ministers and MPs dance apparently without question. The goalposts are arbitrarily moved, too. In 2021, for example: “UK enshrines new target in law to slash emissions by 78 per cent by 2035.” This will affect airlines and shipping.
Net Zero also demands the Great Grid Upgrade [sic], which National Grid represents with a winsome cockapoo and a hairdryer. Less cute is an explosion in the number of pylons planned across rural Britain. Pylons East Anglia conveys the anger felt by many, which sees Conservatives losing out to the Greens – a (paradoxical) danger highlighted by local councillor Richard Rout on this site on Wednesday.
Nick Windsor, the Electricity Networks Commissioner is coy about the extent of the “new transmission circuits”, but identifies the need to “streamline the process” of introducing them – code, apparently, for dumping much of the current planning system.
If the planning process is indeed going to be bypassed, that would be in keeping with the lack of democratic accountability that has surrounded Net Zero since the get-go back in June 2019.
The UK’s contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions is one per cent; emissions are 47.6 per cent lower than in 1990. Huge progress has been made, but the low-hanging fruit of low carbon has gone. From now on, it’s all about sacrifice: the countryside for pylons, gas boilers for heat pumps, less driving, less flying, less livestock farming.
Back in pre-Covid, low interest rate, Greta-worshipping Britain, the CCC assumed that the cost of reaching Net Zero will be the same as the 80 per cent reduction target, i.e. between one and two per cent of GDP every year until 2050 (or roughly £22-£44 billion a year).
In 2019, Philip Hammond warned that it could cost £1 trillion; he was ignored. Last month, he said politicians aren’t being straight with the public about its true costs. Perhaps he could oversee a cost-benefit analysis.
With the CCC and the Treasury at odds four years ago, the Institute for Government argued that the target should not have been “slipped through without proper debate”. In February, the Hansard Society produced a working paper on delegated legislation such as Statutory Instruments. As it pointed out, unless the systemic problems are resolved, “public acceptance of the democratic legitimacy of delegated legislation will come under increasing strain.”
In the 2019 election, all four major party manifestos presented Net Zero as a fait accompli: none made clear the upheaval it demands, the opportunity costs involved or the dramatic impact on our quality of life.
Whether it’s time to pull the plug on Net Zero or supercharge it, some democracy is long overdue.