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Rishi Sunak Defies Net Zero Ban on New Airports

by Richard Eldred
3 September 2023 5:00 PM

Rishi Sunak’s Government has decided to ignore expert advice to halt airport expansions as a way to fight climate change, setting the stage for legal battles with environmental groups. The Telegraph has the story

In one of the most significant moves yet of the Prime Minister’s shift to approaching Net Zero in a “proportionate and pragmatic” way, the Government will reject the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) formal advice that all airport expansions must be halted.

The move comes days after Mr. Sunak appointed Claire Coutinho, one of his closest political allies, as Net Zero Secretary, amid a growing backlash among Tory MPs over the Government’s climate policies and the cost they are adding to consumer bills.

Ministers believe airport growth will have a ‘key role’ in boosting the U.K.’s global links and helping to grow the economy. 

Bristol and Southampton airports are among those preparing to significantly expand their capacity after legal challenges against their expansions failed, while London’s Gatwick, City and Heathrow airports are also hoping to embark on major expansion projects.

Elsewhere in the world, new international airports are being built in cities such as Mumbai, while major expansions are under consideration in Dubai and Sydney.

The CCC was set up by the 2008 Climate Change Act to hold the Government to account over its efforts to reduce greenhouse gases, with its most recent five-year “carbon budget” put into law by Boris Johnson in 2021.

Rejecting its recommendations would set the Government up for a major legal clash with environmental groups. Last year, a High Court judgment said that “considerable weight” should be given to the CCC’s advice. Groups such as Greenpeace are planning to cite the committee’s latest recommendation in legal challenges against further airport expansions.

But a Department for Transport spokesman told the Telegraph: “Airport growth, and the aviation sector as a whole, has a key role to play in boosting our global connectivity and helping grow the economy. We remain supportive of airport expansion where it can be delivered in a sustainable way.”  

Ministers are putting their hope in the rapid development of green aviation fuels to decarbonise the sector. This week, Ms. Coutinho will unveil a proposed legal duty on the Government to draw up plans to subsidise so-called sustainable aviation fuels (SAF).

The Government’s approach will heap pressure on Labour to take a position on the issue. 

Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Chancellor, told the Telegraph last week that she would do “whatever it takes” to attract investment to Britain.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: AirportsCCCClimate Change CommitteeEnvironmentalistsNet ZeroRishi Sunak

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21 Comments
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DHJ
DHJ
2 years ago

Building a recruitment pool for the military. Never let school absence go to waste.

8
0
Paul B
Paul B
2 years ago

“Three years on from the pandemic” – is she taking the piss?

They dragged the “Pandemic” kicking and screaming into 2022/23.

25
-1
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago

What pandemic are you referring to? I have recently lived through a period during which various evil actors told everyone there was a pandemic, but I never saw any evidence of one. FFS get a grip on the way you use langauge.

51
-1
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
2 years ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

Thanks editor/author for fixing the article title by removing the P word. We know there was no pandemic, but we don’t want to reinforce the lie for any casual readers new to the site.

35
-1
stewart
stewart
2 years ago

Maybe after schools tried to put them in muzzles and tested them for disease relentlessly as if they were farm animals for the best part of two years, students might have developed some doubts as to whether schools are all that good for them.

71
-1
soundofreason
soundofreason
2 years ago

The total number of persistently absent pupils rose again to 1.89 million, about 20% of pupils and two and a half times the number that regularly missed school before the pandemic lockdown.

29
0
JohnK
JohnK
2 years ago

What a surprise. A complete loss of competence when it comes to proper planning. No doubt it will take a while for organisations involved in education to recover and provide a proper service for younger generations. They have a lot to learn, not just the students.

15
0
Ravin Mad
Ravin Mad
2 years ago

I work with a number of primary and secondary schools who are all struggling with persistent absence. It’s far far worse than pre-pandemic. It’s not just the disadvantaged children who are going missing. Term time holidays are worse than ever (not only because of the costs but also because they think it’s their entitlement having missed out during the pandemic). Schools are analysing patterns of absence and they think that working from home is also having a big impact. “Let’s do something nice as a family on Friday when it’s less busy”. After all, in some parents’ minds school isn’t valued anymore – how can it be that important if the Government was happy to keep children at home for so long in 2020/21?

48
0
LaptopMaestro
LaptopMaestro
2 years ago
Reply to  Ravin Mad

Net Zero is making school less important – they need to focus on survival skills

16
-1
Mogwai
Mogwai
2 years ago
Reply to  Ravin Mad

Do you happen to know if one of the reasons is that parents are removing their kids so they can be home-schooled? I’m just wondering if anyone can actually access and share this data, because it must surely be recorded somewhere such as with local authorities. It would be interesting to know this detail as opposed to presume all kids are just bunking off because they come from broken homes and have parents who don’t give a stuff about their education or whereabouts.

20
0
Ravin Mad
Ravin Mad
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

These persistent absentees would not include those who have elected to home school. However I have heard of parents taking their children out of mainstream schools to home-school because they haven’t been willing to force their child to go to school regularly, so their absences would be included until taken off the school’s register. The latest stats estimate that 86200 children were being home-schooled at the start of 2023 https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/elective-home-education

6
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
2 years ago
Reply to  Ravin Mad

Thanks for that. Can’t believe I’m linking The Guardian, but it’s only because I was doing a bit of a brief search myself, just to see how the figures compared with previous years and the reasons why people would choose to homeschool. Actually, given the state of schools, teachers ( not all, obv ) and the teaching material nowadays in the UK I can make an educated guess why any responsible parent would wish to take their kids out of the standard education system. Anyway, more here if anyone’s interested;

”Figures published by the DfE for the first time suggested that 86,000 children in England were home schooled on one day this year, while 116,300 were in elective home education for a period over the 2021-22 school year.
Both figures are steep increases on estimates by councils before the Covid pandemic. A previous survey by the Association of Directors of Children’s Services (ADCS) estimated that 55,000 children were home-schooled on one day in 2018-19, which suggested a rise of 50% compared with the DfE’s 2023 figure.”

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2023/may/18/more-children-than-ever-are-being-home-schooled-in-england-data-shows

6
0
DickieA
DickieA
2 years ago
Reply to  Mogwai

Interesting. All 3 of my children went to a good rural comprehensive. All of them had at least 3 or 4 fellow pupils in their year who never went into school and self taught at A Level – all gaining very high grades and going on to university. The Headmaster turned a blind eye to this.

Perhaps some pupils and parents have realised that schools have become “right-on woke cesspits” and that they are better off following the syllabus at home.

Last edited 2 years ago by DickieA
12
0
LaptopMaestro
LaptopMaestro
2 years ago

Net Zero means that all that they will require is farming skills ….. they can be learned on the job.

12
0
DHJ
DHJ
2 years ago
Reply to  LaptopMaestro

Farms are being rewilded so not much need for farming skills. War is exempt from Net Zero so there will likely be vacancies for drone pilots and cannon fodder. Isn’t that the recurrent theme of government policy, have a war?

Last edited 2 years ago by DHJ
12
-1
DHJ
DHJ
2 years ago
Reply to  DHJ

Consider this question during the calm of 2019. Seems like an alternative to farming.

“To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what steps she is taking to increase recruitment to the armed forces from rural areas.”

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2019-05-07.251335.h&s=recruit+speaker%3A14026#g251335.q0

4
0
RTSC
RTSC
2 years ago

To be honest, if I had school-age children THEY’d be absent from school ….. because I wouldn’t want them indoctrinated with the WOKE, trans-gender, climate “crisis” b0110cks which schools are promoting.

10
0

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