Labour’s plan to decarbonise the energy network by 2030 will cost up to one million jobs, decimate working communities and push up bills for the poorest, the boss of a major union warned yesterday.
GMB leader Gary Smith branded the Government’s flagship net-zero pledge ‘bonkers’ and ‘fundamentally dishonest’ – and claimed it was ‘not rooted in the real world’.
Speaking at a fringe event at the Labour conference, Mr Smith also blasted ministers’ decision to accelerate the phasing out of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
He dismissed government claims that shifting to renewables will create 650,000 UK jobs by the end of the decade, saying roles were mostly being created offshore because wind turbines and other renewables infrastructure is largely being built abroad.
The target for removing fossil fuels from UK electricity production was brought forward by five years by the new Labour Government.
GMB leader Gary Smith branded the Government’s flagship net-zero pledge ‘bonkers’ and ‘fundamentally dishonest’ – and claimed it was ‘not rooted in the real world’
Mr Smith also blasted ministers’ decision to accelerate the phasing out of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea
The Tories had promised to do it by 2035.
The slapdown by the union, which represents thousands of North Sea oil and gas workers, is a devastating blow for the Prime Minister because it was the second-largest donor to Labour in the run-up to the general election.
Asked about the party’s 650,000 jobs claim, Mr Smith said: ‘If we don’t change course, if we don’t get real about what’s happening in the energy sector, I fear that over the next decade we will lose up to a million jobs – far from creating jobs.
‘This is not just a Scottish issue, this is going to decimate communities all the way down the east of England.’
He said the current energy policy amounted to virtue-signalling by politicians, accusing them of ‘exporting jobs and importing virtue’ because roles are being created abroad rather than in the UK.
Mr Smith added: ‘Electricity is four times the price of gas this winter.
‘The idea that we’re going to power industry, we’re going to move from industry being powered by gas to electricity – with industrial bills going up four-fold… what do you think is going to happen in terms of jobs and the economy?
The policy Labour has, I’m sorry, is not rooted in the real world. It is going to close down the North Sea prematurely and there will be nothing for our people to transition to.
‘The risk is that, in this rush to net zero, we’re going to keep driving bills up and it is costing people money – that’s the truth of the matter.
‘There’s a flat tax on energy bills subsidising the renewables industry at the moment. The poorest pay most and the jobs are not going to arrive.’
He warned that the ‘route to net zero is not going to be cheap’ and would ‘hollow out communities’ in the same way that happened after mines in the Midlands and North were closed under Margaret Thatcher’s government.
Labour has lifted the effective ban on onshore wind farms, sparking fears that thousands of turbines could blight the countryside
He said 2050 would be a ‘more honest and realistic’ target than 2030 for decarbonising the energy network.
‘The jobs are not happening and yet we are decarbonising, we’re putting people and communities on the scrapheap,’ he said.
He also warned that it will create a political ‘vacuum’ for Right-wing parties such as Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to step into and steal votes from Labour at the next election.
Part of Labour’s plan involves people switching to heat pumps and ditching their gas boilers.
But Mr Smith, speaking at an event hosted by The Spectator magazine, added: ‘We’re not going to be heating our homes with heat pumps. This is not going to happen, folks.
‘We’d have to dig up every street and every road in this country and rewire the whole nation, and who’s going to pay for that? It’s not going to happen… And in fact, many people live in flats, so it’s not going to happen.’
Labour has been more hardline with net zero targets than the previous Tory government.
While former prime minister Rishi Sunak said they would be achieved in a ‘proportionate and pragmatic way’, Sir Keir Starmer has accelerated the ban on sales of new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of oil and gas drilling in the North Sea.
Labour has also lifted the effective ban on onshore wind farms, sparking fears that thousands of turbines could blight the countryside.