Now Labour set to ditch its £28bn green pledge

LABOUR will ditch its flagship £28 billion-a-year green investment plan after weeks of speculation, it was reported last night.

Hours after the party’s business chief admitted the figure, once announced with great fanfare at a press conference, was now just an ‘ambition’, sources said the spending commitment will be scrapped.

The chaos came as Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, pictured, sought to woo business leaders at the Labour business conference in London.

Pledging to cap corporation tax at the current rate of 25 per cent, Mrs Reeves said companies would operate in a ‘stable environment’ under a Labour government without ‘chopping and changing’. But she repeatedly refused to promise the flagship policy would make the cut in Labour’s manifesto.

One shadow minister told The Guardian: ‘The £28 billion is definitely going as a figure. It will be changed to specific outcomes linked to specific investment, rather than being a random figure to be allocated at a later date.’

Earlier, Labour business spokesman Jonathan Reynolds said the party may not be able to ‘hit that particular level’.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury Laura Trott said: ‘On the same day Sir Keir Starmer is promising business he will provide stability, Labour are in chaos on their £28 billion spending policy.

‘Jonathan Reynolds could not say how Labour would pay for their £28 billion-a-year spending spree because they do not have a plan. That will just mean thousands of pounds of higher taxes for working people.’

Labour has gradually watered down its green industrial strategy since it was announced in 2021, blaming the changing state of the public finances.

Mr Reynolds told the BBC: ‘I can’t pledge we’ll hit that particular level because the health of the economy is obviously one of the driving factors around that.’ Earlier,

he said of the pledge: ‘That’s our level of ambition but how quickly we get there, and if we can get there, has to have respect to, and heed to, the overall position of our economy.’

Last night Mrs Reeves continued to flounder over the commitment, refusing four times to say whether Labour would still enact the plan in government.

It came as Sir Keir took a swipe at his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, saying he could not imagine bringing together business leaders under the previous leadership.

He also boasted that it showed

As Reeves refuses 4 times to say she’ll enact plan in government, sources say it is ‘definitely going’

‘Thousands in higher taxes’

the ‘ depth of the changes we’ve made to transform the Labour Party’s relationship with business’.

Sir Keir told an audience of FTSE 100 executives and global investors: ‘Let’s imagine that you were invited to an event like this, a Labour business conference, before any of the changes to our party had taken place. The question is, would you go? Four years on, Labour is the party of business.’

Business and Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch said: ‘Labour cannot say how they will pay for their £28 billion spending spree because they do not have a plan.’