Badenoch must be ruthless in dismantling Britain’s net zero rules
KEMI BADENOCH has finally taken the next step in her party’s journey away from its ruinous stance on net zero by committing to one simple goal: repealing the Climate Change Act.
Among its many pledges were legally binding net zero targets by 2050, a system of five-year carbon budgets and the establishment of an independent body – the Climate Change Committee – to provide advice and monitor progress. So for the past 15 years, Britain’s energy policy has been dictated not by ministers but by a dry act of Parliament designed to take choices out of politicians’ hands.
Take the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC). It sets interest rates and, more recently, at its own discretion sells the government bonds it bought during quantitative easing at huge losses that must be covered by taxpayers. But all without the oversight of ministers.
Another terrible piece of legislation that made the Civil Service independent of ministers is the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act. It means ministers can no longer hire and fire their staff.
This is all driving an observable decline in the efficiency of the apparatus of the state. Things like the tax office, the probate office, and the passport office are failing to meet the expectations. or needs, of the public.
Blair, Brown and the Tory governments that followed outsourced their decisions to “independent” technocratic bodies based on two assumptions. First, that technocrats will make better technical decisions than politicians, and second, that these decisions would no longer be subject to short-term political whims.
We now have a mess where governments don’t govern. Ministers cannot force their officials to implement their policies as the Civil Service is independent. So are regulators and many other bodies.
The UK has 24 ministerial departments, 20 non-ministerial departments including energy regulator Ofgem, 417 agencies and other public bodies, 127 high-profile groups including the Civil Nuclear Constabulary and 19 public corporations.
The technocratic model sounded good in theory, but it suffers from a range of problems. Firstly, the lack of accountability and failure of politicians to deliver their manifestos. Secondly, the problem of bad data. If you’re taking a technocratic approach, you’d better have flawless inputs into flawless models, or be prepared to make adjustments.
Thirdly, groupthink. These bodies have come to believe they are the sole custodians of the “right way” to operate. Unfortunately, these orthodoxies – on immigration, net zero, government finances and so on – are beginning to collapse. The public has had enough and is rebelling.
Repealing the Climate Change Act would end the statutory straightjacket of carbon budgets and net zero targets, but the legal machinery of climate law runs deeper. The Constitutional Reform and Governance Act has to go, and the long list of state bodies rationalised and brought back under ministerial control.
I’m pleased to see the Conservatives start to address these challenges, as indeed is Labour with the proposed abolition of NHS England.
This is not just about climate law, or the Civil Service, or quangos. If politics is to mean anything, elected governments must be able to govern properly.
Repealing the Climate Change Act is an important start, but unless ministers reclaim control over the apparatus of the state, Britain will remain trapped in decline.