MP claims members are ‘too old’ to care about Net Zero

CONSERVATIVE party members are unwilling to prioritise the Government’s 2050 Net Zero targets “because 90 per cent of them will be dead”, an MP has claimed.

Chris Skidmore, a former junior minister and chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for the environment, cited a “rather depressing” membership survey that found “only” 4 per cent of the Tory party wanted leadership candidates to put the Net Zero strategy front and centre of their time in No10.

At a panel organised by National Grid, Mr Skidmore said: “They would say that, because when you cast the question as Net Zero by 2050, probably 90 per cent of them will be dead.”

Mr Skidmore said the leadership candidates were saying “let’s not do it too far or too fast”.

All five leadership candidates have now committed to Net Zero, after Kemi Badenoch told a meeting of MPS yesterday that she would not change the targets.

It came as a ruling at the High Court found the strategy failed to meet its legal obligations under the Climate Change Act and would have to be updated. During the proceedings it emerged that it fell 5 per cent short of its target to cut emissions by 2037, according to calculations by officials.

The ruling was hailed as a “political embarrassment” by Jolyon Maugham, the director of Good Law Project, which helped bring the case alongside climate activists Friends of the Earth and Clientearth.